Good gracious... Gavin's got goats!

Somehow an offer to let our neighbors' goats graze in our dog run turned into a gift of two goats of our own. Try not to get attached to the kid. She's on the menu for Hart's 4th of July festivities. The older one has been dubbed "Sally". Not sure if we're going to keep her, but she's real sweet.
What can I say... he likes flowers!

Spring Harvest

We've been nibbling at our garden lettuce for a week or two now, but today marked our first radish harvest.
Gavin is great about eating vegetables, but for some reason whenever we have salad he doesn't want to eat the lettuce. Even when we made a salad with our garden lettuce, he refused. But today when Brandon showed him that he could eat the lettuce right off the plants in the garden, he started stuffing his mouth and it was all we could do to get him out of there before he ate our entire crop.
The chickens just keep getting bigger. We've discovered that we can open the door to their run and let them roam around free without having to worry about them going too far. Gavin is pretty good at catching them, but they seem to be getting faster and better at eluding him. With a little patience he can woo them with worms from the compost bin and with his dulcet, "here, chicken-chicken...". Oh, and by the way, he got his hair cut today. Now he looks less like an orphan and more like the handsome little dude that he is.

More camping, more fishing, and a last-minute Sunday afternoon trip to Bear Lake.

We finally got our gardens planted on Friday and we did enough other chores around the house and yard by Saturday afternoon that we decided we'd earned a family night of camping in Left Hand Fork canyon. Brandon did some more fishing and Gavin threw more than his fair share of rocks into the river. A couple of tin foil dinners and s'mores later, we were all pooped enough to call it a day. When we got back to town Sunday we had a message from Sean & Emily inviting us to join them on Sunday afternoon at Bear Lake. So we unpacked our camping gear and packed up our beach gear and joined them for a few hours of fun and sun on the shore. The water in the lake is still really (really) cold, but the shallow pools along the shores are just right for sloshing around in, which Gavin was very happy to do. And it wouldn't be a trip to Bear Lake without a little wind, so Brandon sent our dragon kite into the sky. S & Em joined us back in Hyrum for dinner before heading back home to SLC. So great to see our friends again.

Meet the baby

We found out last week that our little bundle of joy is a girl. I'm at once ecstatic and terrified. What am I going to do with a girl (besides take cover when she becomes a teenager)? I don't know, but I'm looking forward to figuring it out.

Trout Slayer

We spent Saturday through Monday of Memorial Day weekend in the Wind River Range in southwest Wyoming. We followed our friends Lev and Shanna to a great little camp spot tucked away in the trees, overlooking the Green River. It was chilly, but there was plenty of firewood laying around and we somehow even managed not to get rained on. On Sunday we took our canoe out on Green River Lakes for a family float. Brandon fished for awhile and eventually Gavin said he wanted to fish too. Brandon cast the line, then steadied the pole as Gavin reeled the line back in. After a minute or so of reeling, WHAM! A bite! Brandon helped Gavin reel the fish in and when it got close to the boat, Gavin grabbed the net and hauled in a ~4-lb. lake trout. It was the only fish our group caught all weekend. Brandon cooked it up over the campfire that night and Gavin ate it voraciously.

Click HERE for more photos from the weekend.

A great artist in the making

Rainy day window art (thanks for the neat markers, Aunt Brooke!) Singing, dancing, and even a little headbanging

The coop is coming along...

Access doors to coop - check!
Pop door - check!
Enclose run with wire - check!
Access door to run - check!
All that's left is to put some siding on (just for looks) and put a hinge on the nest box lid for easy egg access. We are READY for some EGGS!