for your viewing pleasure...Owen's first fudgsicle...
*Lots of little tibits of happenings around here lately. Finally got some sunshine and they kids have been able to play on the deck. This has been a huge mood booster for me and the hubby. It's surprising just how much darkness, a.k.a. lack of sunshine can affect your mood.
*The sun has had another side effect. I've noticed how dirty my windows and walls are so I've been cleaning and reorganizing and decorating. Its been so refreshing to brighten up and spring-a-fy the house. Lots of spring green and orange/yellow combos around here.
*Picked a new paint color for our bedroom and am looking forward to refreshing our room as well. The terra cotta color has been there for almost 5 years and I've hated it for about 4.75 years now. Time for a change. Almost ready to tackle that project just needing the new blinds and a new semi-transparent stain for my furniture. Planning a total overhaul which feels *good*. Why is it that the master bedroom is always the last to be done? Is it that others don't really see it so its not deemed necessary?
*In other news I think Owen and I are going to be finishing up nursing. He only nurses at night before he goes to bed and has been sleeping through the night for the past 3 weeks so I'm loosing my milk supply and he needs more. He is almost 11 months so I'm ok with this. I've been able to nurse him longer than the other 2 and even through the boughts of thrush/mastitis I've enjoyed it so much. Although parts of me are sad that this might be coming to an end I think that I'm ready. I think that the sadness is just for the simple fact that he is growing up too fast. My baby is fast approaching his 1st birthday and to be honest I'm not ready for it.
*Abby had a pretty eventful day with loosing tooth #5 after supper. This poor girl better start getting in some teeth to replace those that are gone! She might be eating yogurt and scrambled eggs only soon. The kids are heading into the last 3 months of school (!) and poor Abby has had a ton of work to do before the school year is done. Because of a situation that is totally beyond our control her schoolling has been sporatic and this has taken a toll on her. Thankfully my Abby is up for the challenge and was ahead of her class significantly before this happened so with continual help from home she should be ok. It just sucks that this happened in Grade 1.
*My Ethan has just astounded me and made me so proud of him. In his first report card of the year there were some disappointing marks due to some organizational issues and just the fact that in Grade 5 the students are required to take a more active role in there learning. We gave continual support at home and worked with his teachers and I'm proud to say that on the second report card he brought up his marks considerablely and is now on the honor roll! Super proud momma here :) We've promised him a super surprise if he continues this to the end of grade 5.
This is one of our Impeyan pheasants which originally comes from the Himelayan moutians. We actually have 2 breeding pairs of these birds which are just stunning.
This is the female Impeyan and though she isn't as stunning as the male, she's actually quite spectacular in relation to other female Impeyans.
This guy (same bird as the above) is actually the son of our Grand Champion. In the pheasant world there are actually shows and your birds compete with others. They are penned up and then a judge goes around and judges each bird on the pheasant standards. Which basically means that the closer they are to the wild original birds the better. So good bloodlines are important. When birds get bred to substandard birds they produce incorrect colorings, body sizes and sometimes genetic failings.
This guy's dad has won Grand Champion which means he was the best bird of the entire show.
Beautiful isn't he?
He totally didn't mind me coming into the pen and taking pictures.
This one is called a Yellow Golden Pheasant and belongs to the Ruffed family of pheasants. He's actually a mutation of the orignal Red Golden Pheasants which we have but I didn't get photos of.
Here he is displaying to his mate. He was hissing at me so all these pictures are through the wire of the pens. All males do this in some form or another, humans just drive big trucks without mufflers ;)
Here he is with all of his beautiful tail.
This is one of our Chuker partridges. We actually have a trio (2 hens and 1 male) and between them last year we had over 2 dozen chicks.
Here is one of our pairs of Impeyans. Ron likes to make sure that their pens are a pretty close representation of the wild so that it makes them more comfortable. Despite the fact that all of our birds were born in captivity you just can't tame pheasants really. I mean sometimes you can get them to eat out of our hands (peanuts being a favorite) they will never truly be tame which is totally cool.
A lot of these birds don't have much natural habitat to go back to anyways. Most has been destroyed by humans through wars, farming and just natural expansion on our part. There are actually type of pheasants that are extinct in the wild and only exist in zoos now. Pretty sad.
This is the second set of pens that Ron has built here. He worked on these for the past 2 years and did an awesome job. He actually did this all himself, from landscaping the ground to make it more level, adding wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of sand and then smoothing it, placing rocks and stumps in natural configurations, then building the framework and placing the netting on the tops and sides. He's pretty awesome I think ;)
This is a trio of Jumbo Ringneck pheasants that we picked up last year at an auction. People might be more familiar with this breed of bird just because some have been know to be let out into the wild. If I'm not mistaken I think that there is a program out by Brooks that raises a whole lot of ringnecks and releases them into the wild. Don't quote me on that.
I think that they are pretty spectacular in their own right though.
If there are any questions please ask away and I'll find out the answer from Ron ;)
This was officially my last order before I started my next round of "100 projects" challenge. I made sure to stock up on some cardstock. Especially chocolate brown, apparently I use a lot of it. I have some great ideas already churning in my head for that Prima burlap. Proud to say I got most of my stuff from the clearance section. Can we say $0.20 pattern paper? 
