Harry...

We are watching Harry for a good part of the summer and it's been a blast! The kids run around and play all day. They move from one room to the next with their games, then run wild outside or swim in the pool. Everyone is tired out by the end of the day but they are really enjoying themselves. Each night each child asks "will Harry be here tomorrow?" even on the weekends. We will miss him when he goes back to school but we will treasure our time with him this summer.

Here they are all eating breakfast together.

Lima beans...

We have a nice sized teepee trellis growing lima beans. I built it last year with some bamboo and the beans have been growing since! We have eaten them raw and steamed them, they were sweet and don't taste anything like the ones in the store.

I let a bunch of them dry out on the vine and recruited my littlest helper to shuck them. She did an awesome job! We picked them all off the vines and I spotted new ones growing. I suspect that we will have lima beans to eat in a few weeks. I didn't think that beans were supposed to grow in the same spot in succession but I guess I was wrong! I just never got around to pulling them out and planting something else! Anyway, Rebekah is such a wonderful helper, we shucked them all and got 2 1/2 pounds of beans! Nice :)

Eggs...

A few months ago we got chickens. We bought 6 chicks, 4 of them will lay dark brown eggs (a 'terra cotta' color) and 2 of them are Easter Eggers which lay green-ish blue eggs. The lady we bought them from said that they would start laying around now. At the same time, a friend of ours needed to move out of their home and they needed a space for their 8 hens and coop. I told them that if they wanted, we could take them for them. That way they could see them when they were over here. They brought them over at the end of April. Instantly we had 14 chickens.

We built the "Poulet Chalet" with a nice big run and attached their coop to ours. During the day the chickens run free in the back yard, hide under the trees and bathe in the dirt. They go into the coop and run to roost at night and to eat their laying feed. They have been keeping us busy and have been providing us with eggs on a daily basis. The young hens have started to lay, some as early as last month! We weren't expecting their eggs until August! Their eggs are a beautiful dark brown.

We have a daily 'Chicken Checker' job so that the kids turns are rotated around and everyone has their turn. They want to get to a point where they sell the eggs, so we are trying to get them to take care of the chickens and not just play with them. There really isn't much to the job since the chickens are pretty self-sufficient. The kids LOVE to be the Chicken Checker. Rebekah doesn't have a day yet but she is eager to! She absolutely loves to take care of the chickens, change their water, put out food and go hunt for the eggs. Someday soon, she will be the tiniest Chicken Checker around!

This picture is a small variety of what we get on one of the daily checks. The cute little brown speckled egg is from one of our young hens who is starting to lay. They start out small and get bigger with each egg laid. I'll get pics of the coop and the chickens out soon. :)

Reading...

We seem to have had an explosion of sorts with our kids reading! Being a teacher with a Masters in Literacy, I have found it to be a huge struggle within to not push them into reading. I have stood back though to allow them to try and find out their right time to want to learn. I had faith and confidence that it would happen because I have researched and discussed with others "who have travelled this unschooled road before" but it has been so hard to wait. I'm so used to doing things for them.

This morning I found Ben reading a chapter book while eating breakfast. He was trying to finish the book to start another. Hannah was on the couch reading to Rebekah, while a CD was on reciting the letters and their sounds. It sounded like she was trying to teach Rebekah some letters and sounds. It was such a wonderful feeling watching this happen and what a sense of accomplishment that they have when taking charge of their learning.

What a great morning! Here's to hoping it lasts!