Chickens, and Kittens, and Fish, Oh My

There is always a lot of opportunity at Grandma and Papa's house to interact with animals. My kids' favorite thing to do is help Papa with the chores at the end of the day. They get to help feed the dogs, cats, chickens and then gather the eggs. They fight over who gets to hold what bucket and who gets to gather the eggs. It is probably more of a chore for Papa to have the kids "help" him, but he is a good sport about it!! The girls helping Papa get the food for the animals. They know which one has dog food and which one has chicken scratch. They learn pretty quick!!

Heading up to the chicken coop and orchard where the dogs hang out!!

Lauryn taking a break to give me a cheesy grin.

The kids checking out the chickens.

The chickens were grateful for our delivery. They were hungry!!The chickens are Grandma's and she is hatching out some more chicks. There are some that are a little bigger but these little babes just hatched a few days earlier!! They still wanted to snuggle under mama.

This is the chicken that Ayden had to learn to get the best of in order to get the eggs. He really wanted to carry the eggs from the coop to the house. My dad told him that if he wanted to carry the eggs then he needed to GET the eggs. Ayden has a bit of a thing with touching things and to touch something that pecks was a big task. Papa showed him how to cover the chickens head with a cup with one hand and then reach in with the other hand to get the eggs. It took some serious coaxing but Ayden finally got some eggs and he got to carry them into the house for Grandma!!

The next night after chores were done my Dad heard some crying, like from a kitten and he went out with a flashlight to search for what it was. He had noticed that for about three days the cat food hadn't been eaten on. Well come to find out the mama cat was gone but had left four little kittens. It isn't unusual to loose a cat to a coyote, we think that is what happened to the mama. Regardless of what happened we had four babies that needed fed. Of course the kids were in heaven with these kittens, especially Meysa. She is a natural mama and these kittens needed taken care of, so she jumped at the chance. We tried letting them lap up milk by themselves but they weren't getting enough that way so my Mom took to feeding them by syringe. Meysa loved watching her feed these babies.

They were sweet little guys.

He is saying he is hungry, could you please hurry up!!!

The Saturday before we left to come home to Washington Papa Chip and Uncle Aaron took, Ayden, Meysa, Jaci and Quian fishing at Mann's Lake. A couple of days before that Ayden and Quian went and found a jar full of grasshoppers. Ayden was really excited to go but we told him he needed to be able to bait his own hook. Did I mention that Ayden has a thing about touching stuff. Especially stuff that can MOVE on it's own. Well he wasn't sure about having to handle a grasshopper in order to bait his own hook. It took Aaron about a half and hour to work Ayden into holding a grasshopper. He started by having Ayden touch the wings, then the back legs, then front legs. You get the idea. Finally he held a grasshopper for 10 seconds and didn't freak out. He asked if we could just use worms, so I asked him if he would touch them instead, he said no!! I think this kid appreciates the invention of gloves. If he doesn't have to touch them with his skin he is ok!!

Some of the day's catch. Meysa caught the most, Jaci caught the biggest.

Jaci's catch. She was pretty proud of herself, and she should be!!

Aaron teaching the kids how to skin and fillet the fish. They were pretty tasty with a little butter and salt-n-pepper.

Meysa was Papa's fishing fool. He said every cast but one she caught something. She reeled it in all by herself and really had a lot of fun. Ayden learned a very valuable lesson about fishing. You have to WAIT for a while once you cast out your line, or you won't catch anything!!! Finally on his last cast he WAITED like Papa said he needed to and he caught his one and only fish of the day. Sometimes it pays to listen to Papa!!