Our day was spent discussing rockets,  outer space travel,  artwork,  how rockets work,  checking out NASA's website, playing the discovery.com Nasa Mission Control game and this afternoon we launched a few rockets. We also had fun watching the Mercury capsule come in for a safe landing with it's parachute.

 Joshua received this awesome stomp rocket launcher for his birthday.  It is a blast!!

This stomp launcher really does launch those rockets pretty high.

After reading about the time line of rockets and researching some modern day  rockets we had to just have some plain silliness.

Joshua thinks I need to shave!

WOW  what a wonderful day we had with our very special birthday boy!!

We took Joshua to his favorite museum,  AMNH.  We first saw the space show...Field Trip to the Moon.  The birthday boy decided he should wear his official NASA space suit for this trip.  The employees of the museum loved it!!  They were asking the commander if he was ready for his space trip. They truly loved his suit and played along.  One even said as we got on the elevator to go up to the planetarium,  "mission control said it's time to go up to the rocket. Please step this way onto the elevator sir."    During the show the narrator who was also in a NASA suit asked the audience to use their imaginations and imagine they have on their very special invisible space suits on....then he looked at Joshua and said,  "except you! because you have the real thing on!"  Oh it made his day.

My very proud astronaut!

Leaving the planetarium.

After the space show we went to check out the Butterfly Conservatory.  It was magnificent walking through the exhibit and getting to see so many amazing butterflies and moths. 

Then we went to see the IMAX movie,  Dinosaurs Alive.  It was fantastic!!

Afterwards we ventured home to open presents and have birthday cake.

My mom's best friend from childhood sent Joshua some fun stuff for his birthday.  We all were having fun with these glasses!!

Some space presents.

Rocket stomp blaster.

Joshua asked mommy if she would make a shuttle birthday cake.  I did.  We also had six dinosaur candles on the cake.  Space and dinosaurs....Joshua's favorite subjects.

His birthday ring that we started as a tradition when he was two.

The space shuttle cake coming in for a landing...noises and all.

A lot of candles to blow out.

Our happy boy!!  We love you.  Happy Birthday baby!!!

Rocket Man - Elton John  

Joshua is my little Rocket Man.

Here he is outside launching off some of his rockets.  He had to quickly go out,  no time to even get out of his PJ pants. 

Launching rockets requires a lot of concentration.  The tongue should be out as you think.

Joshua is thinking he needs to climb the big rock in our back yard. He needs a higher elevation.

He thinks this is a great spot.

There it goes!  (look towards the top of the photo and you can see it).

Success!  Happy Rocket Man.

We love to go hiking at our farm.  Yesterday,  the boys went for a hike while I was healing from the virus that sweet hubby passed to me.  Still having a few effects of it today,  but all and all it's a short lived bug! 

Dad had fun snapping pictures with his cell phone and emailing them to me.  Technology is wonderful.  I was getting emails almost as fast as he was taking the shots.  However,  I would have rather been hiking with them.  Oh well, there is always tomorrow! 

Discoveries:

Ice which formed around a stick.

One other discovery they made,  the sap was running in the maple trees.  Pretty soon we're going to need to tap the trees.

I have really dry skin.  I like face cream and lotions that our rich, smell good and do an excellent job in moisturizing my skin.  Today, I decided I would make my own.  I'm so glad I did!

The ingredients were:  3/4 cup of Calendula oil and 1/4 cup of St. John's Wort oil.  I made these oils this past summer from the flowers of calendula and St. John's Wort with organic olive oil.  The flowers came from our farm.  I also added 1 tablespoon of organic coconut oil.   I made a tea of crushed up dried lavender and water early this morning.  I added 1 cup of this "tea" and about a tablespoon of vegetable glycerin.  I also added about 2 tablespoons of beeswax.  The lavender and beeswax were also products of our farm. 

I melted the beeswax in a double boiler....I used a stainless steel bowl over boiling water.  Then I added the oils to the melted wax for a few moments and stirred the mixture.  The lovely color is from the calendula and st. john's wort oils.

I put the water, essential oil, and glycerin into a blender.  On a slow speed I slowly added in the oil and watched before my eyes how the oil and water transformed into a cream. 

It smells so good and feels very good on my skin. 

This was my first batch and I'm sure as I continue to make these,  I will perfect the formula to just the way I like it.  I'm happy with this first batch.  It was a wonderful birthday present to myself!  Joshua was very interested in watching mommy create in the kitchen. Best of all,  he loves the end product.  He keeps saying,  "It smells so goooood!"

We've been very shiny lately and we're loving it. Joshua  has been drawing a lot. Trees, dinosaurs, volcanoes, flowers, trains and rocket ships. He's almost went through a ream of paper. I made him a file box for any art that we don't put up on the walls. Our kitchen cabinets are covered with his art. I just love how he taped up the art on the cabinets...he did it so you can still open them up without damaging the art. It was clever and I don't think I would of thought of that.  He decorated the file box with rockets and dinosaurs.  We hung some of his artwork up at our office. It looks great! 

He lost one of his front teeth this past week and the other one is hanging on barely.  It is so wiggly it moves when he talks.  We said he's going to be singing "all I want for my birthday is my two front teeth."  He turns six at the end of this month and we're planning on going to the moon on his birthday. He's so excited. American Museum of Natural History has a great show in the planetarium called Field Trip to the Moon. We've done it before and he loves it. If he wants to that day, we may also see the Dinosaurs Alive at their Imax. He has requested that I make him a space shuttle cake for his birthday. I've been online and found a cake that he approved of to try and make. We were just at the museum this past week attending the first of a series called Science on Sundays. He listened to two paleontologists speak about their discoveries and exhibitions and one animator explain how he creates those great shows on Discovery/National Geographic with dinosaurs. I love how he shines at the museum. You can just fill his joy. He smiles and gets so excited. He really loves to look at the dino bones and explain things to me.  He takes it all in like a big sponge.

One night last week dad was out of town, so we had a movie night. We made popcorn and snuggled up to watch The Astronaut Farmer. The whole time he kept chatting about the differences of the Mercury, Apollo and Gemini rockets. He loves to play a game on the Discovery site where he launches the rockets. I love how he's learning to read by playing the games online. He's also learning to read by the DVR menu. He
came in yesterday and said, "Mom, dad did record the Astronaut Farmer but I couldn't find it at first. It had that word "the" in front of it and it threw me for a loop!" I just cracked up.

Lastly, he makes me laugh so much and I love his stories and thoughts that he shares.   We were planning to go to the movies. There is a movie theater nearby that has $2.00 movies all the time and $1.00 on Tuesdays. He decided he wants to wait until Dad can go with us.  I thought that was very sweet. He also sweetly announced that he wanted to take us to the movies! However, we would have to go on a Tuesday because he only wants to spend $3.00 not $6.00.   I like his thinking!

We've also been enjoying the snow with snowball fights,  sledding, and snowshoeing.

Exhausted from snowshoeing.

We've been baking in the kitchen too.  Joshua was having fun learning to use the icing bag for decorating the cupcakes we made.  It's so much fun to bake with him.  We always wind up having these long conversations about measurement, ingredients, and how they work together to make something soooo delicious.

Oh how we love this  very "shiny" unschooling life!!

This morning I went to milk lovely Brie-anna at 5:00 am.  Now for a typical dairy farm that is not early, but for me,  it is!  My sweet hubby needed to leave the house this morning by 6:00, so I needed to get my barn chores done earlier than usual.  It was 13 degrees as I walked out of the house.  It was quiet and dark,  as I walked you could only hear my foot steps on the snow crunching.  As I reached about halfway to the barn,  the chickens heard me and the roosters start crowing.  Buster the pony sees me and lets out a very hardy good morning nicker.  Brie-anna sees me and moos rather loudly.  She's not happy that I didn't let she and Buster Brown spend the night together in the stall.   "Sorry mama", I tell her, "we needed some milk."  She follows me into the barn. As I tie her up to be milked,  Sally  the pony gives me a hardy morning nicker too.  I turn the lights on  in the barn.  The sun hasn't even started to rise yet, but now the chickens are coming off their roost.  I think the light in the barn is confusing them.   Buster Brown starts mooing and complaining to me that I'm taking his milk.  I promised him I'm only taking 1/2 gallon and I'll be sure to save him some.  He quiets down.  As I start to milk Brie-anna, I don't feel the cold anymore.  Brie-anna's body is warm. She relaxes and her udders become full of milk.  The animals have become quiet and all I hear now is the rhythm of the milk hitting the bottom of the milk pail.  This rhythm is so calming.  It's like meditation to me.  I'm thinking I should make this my regular milking time.  It's really wonderful.  The goats are all around me as I'm milking, they are getting in an early morning snuggle with me.  Billy is rubbing his face on my back and trying to eat my hair.   The chickens are running around pecking at the ground.  It's peaceful.  Just as my gallon pail looks about half full,  Brie-anna moves away from me.  She's telling me that I've got enough and it's Buster's turn.  She lets out a moo to make sure I understood her body language.  I unhook her.  She's very impatient and really wants to be with Buster.  I open the stall door and in she goes,  fast as lightning.  He runs over to his mama.  He runs right up to her bag and gives it a big lift.  He gives a few more hard knocks to her bag and he starts nursing.  I can hear the same rhythm,  although it's a sucking noise now,  not the milk hitting the pail.  She looks content.  I thank her for my milk and I thank Buster for sharing his milk.   

 I had a bowl of yogurt made from Brie-anna's sweet milk with frozen black raspberries and strawberries for breakfast this morning.  I love how my meal came from our farm.  We are so fortunate to be able to produce a lot of our food.  I am grateful.

  Winter is a time to plan next year's garden and I've been working on that.  I saved a lot of seeds from last year but will still buy a few from  http://turtletreeseeds.com  Turtle Tree Seeds.  Next month I'll be planting onion seeds.  I need to jot down all of my mental notes about the garden last year.  What did not work well and what did work really well.  Overall  I think our garden was pretty successful.  I plan to do some tweaking here and there.  I also plan to make some more beds in other places on the property.    There is a big pile of leaves, kitchen compost and manure going on in one corner of the garden.  We will move all of that in the Spring  into the raised beds.    I  really like using the raised bed method. 

   Joshua's birthday is next month and one of his presents is the book listed above.  Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots.....  I am really looking forward to some of the projects in this book.  One project is making a house out of sunflowers and morning glories.  It looked so magical and I know my little boy will love putting this together.   If you have children and they like to garden,  I highly recommend this book.  There is another project that's called a pizza garden.  It's shaped like a pizza and each slice has a different vegetable that you would use on a pizza.  I thought it looked interesting too since pizza is one of our favorite foods. 

This fall we switched from small hay bales to the large square bales.  It is working out quite well for us and the critters, plus we are saving a few dollars.  Feed costs a lot for this crew and this fall/winter we've had our share of vet visits.  Buster Brown the calf recovered from his mystery illness/injury.  We all think the pygmy goats hurt him.  Reggie our beautiful gray horse has seemed to recover from his cellulitis as well, but he's still too thin for my liking. I discovered a lump under his front right leg the other day.  I worry that he may have cancer.  Apparently,  gray horses seem to get skin cancer and he does have a few lumps under his tail.  I hope I'm wrong  and the cancer is only on the lumps on his tail and has not spread through his body.   We are trying to get him to gain weight with supplements and special feed.  He seems happy and does not seem to be in any pain,  so we are just keeping a close eye on him.  The vet is aware of everything and at this stage this is what he recommends as well.  He is such a sweetie!

    Sally one of our ponies has developed laminitis.  She is slowly recovering but we will have to watch her to make sure she does not get any grain or rich grass, as we don't want this to happen again.  I call her my little Princess now.  She's so sweet and we just adore her.  She's been getting all this special attention and she's soaking it up! Knock on wood,  everyone else seems to be healthy and happy despite the frigid temperatures. 

  Brie-anna is still giving us milk....when I milk her.  Buster Brown is doing a good job of milking her.  The beauty of Buster Brown getting his milk is I can go away and not worry about Brie-anna getting milked.  Joshua and I just returned from a week long visit with his grandparents.  It was a wonderful trip.

 The hens have continued laying quite well this winter.  I managed to get 10 eggs yesterday.  Today,  I managed to only find six but there could be more hidden around the barn somewhere.  We have one crazy banty hen sitting on eggs in the upstairs of the barn.  I found her the other day.  I couldn't believe it.  She was nasty and went to attack me when I got near her.  So she shall sit,  I don't feel like fighting her.  I really don't like it as it's too cold to be bringing chicks into the world.

Joshua and I had a big surprise when we got home.  My sweet hubby had hooked up the wood burning boiler that we purchased from Craig's List this fall.  

   
It was a great deal!  We love it.  It provides our heat and hot water by burning wood.  We have approx 40 acres of forest so we can be harvesting dead trees as well as fallen trees for a long time.  A free source of fuel!  We worked today stacking wood and bringing it into the basement.  There is something very satisfying about providing your own fuel.  As Jonathan gave Joshua his bath tonight,  he asked Joshua if he realized that the hot water in his bath came from our own firewood.  Joshua loved it. 

The turkeys have grown so much.  I could not believe how big they seemed to have gotten while we were away.  When I come into the barn,  they start talking to me.  I love to listen to them. 

I was thinking a little bit about Spring today but I'm not in any rush.  We are enjoying the snow.  We've been sledding, snowshoeing and Joshua has been out on his cross country skis.  I'm thankful for winter,  it gives us time to think and plan our Spring and Summer.  Stay warm!

Joshua and I had so much fun sledding this afternoon in one of our pastures.  Unfortunately,  there were a few objects to avoid....poop piles.  We tried three different sleds.  I can't believe how much we laughed and giggled.  I am so thankful for this little boy who makes my life such a joy!   Emily, one of our dogs got on a sled and enjoyed riding down the hill. She mostly enjoyed running down the hill next to us.  A few weeks ago,  our dog Henry got on a sled and went down a hill too.