Tennessee pride

Watching Grant march was a blast, having fun with Chelsea and Eva at the game was great.

July Finishes with a Flourish

Emmie decided this was her car and she spent a lot of time relaxing in it during her visit with us.

 Flies are a problem on the Smiley Farm, Maddie teaches Emmie how to swat them.

 July was truly special because Grandpa and Grandma came all the way from Tennessee to visit everyone.

Jack & Maddie are preparing for their swimming lessons.

The LadyBug nesting boxes that Jack, Maddie & Emmie built are doing fine and attacting lots of ladybugs in grandma's garden.

July Fun

 Rock climbing at Morro Beach with Uncle Ryan.

 Emmie wants to look pretty like Auntie Katie

 The best part of camping is roasting marshmellos for S'mores.

Maddie is trying to find the ocean but might be looking through the wrong end of the binoculars.

Other Interesting June Events

 Fun at Pixie Play Land, even though Maddie looks a little apprehensive on the train ride, she enjoyed it.

 Jack & Maddie love flying the airplane, Jack is really good at the controls, getting the plan to go up and down.

 Auntie Katie and Maddie go for a very fast car ride by the candy house.

 GrandBob loves to take everyone out for frozen yogurt, our favorite.

And, of course, we have to play some fun games.

June on the Smiley Farm

The blueberries are ripe in our backyard. Christie shows Emmie what to do and she joins in the fun of eating big, fresh berries.

Our early apricot tree is also ripe. Jack figures out how to pick the beautiful fresh fruit, next year perhaps he will be able to climb the tree.

The sweet cherries are ready for picking, they're a little hard to reach.

GrandBob and Uncle Ryan build Lady Bug houses to hang in the garden.

Newest additions on the Smiley Farm

Whatever can be in this box on Grandma's table?  Little chirping sounds are coming out of the box. Grandma better check the box before Zoey knocks it off the table. Zoey gets overly excited when she hears interesting sounds and she will want to see what is in the box.

 Four little baby chicks! It looks like there are Aracauna chickens in the box. They will lay green eggs when they get to be about a year old. Right now they are about one week old.

The new babies don't have a chicken mother, so grandma will have to take good care of them and give them food and water. Grandma doesn't have wings for the baby chickens to huddle under and keep warm, so she put a infrared warming light in their coop to help them stay warm in the cold nights. The baby chickens have their own coop outside in the chicken house with the big girls. The big girls are very interested in the peeping noises coming from the baby chicken coop, but Grandma cannot let them get near the baby chicks because they are not the mother and they will scare the babies and sometimes will squash them accidentally.

Now the baby chicks need names, who is going to name them?

Grandma the dentist

Did you know Grandma used to work for a Dentist? yep, she did, and she learned the secret about checking loose teeth to see if they are ready to pop out. Grandma just happened to be visiting Jack when his tooth was loose. She had a look and goodness sakes, the tooth just jumped right out of his mouth. Jack was so surprised, he didn't really know his tooth was gone until his tongue felt the big hole.

Jack & Maddie really wanted to make donuts. So, grandma figured out a way to make sugar donuts, they sure were good. Jack ate a few and Maddie ate the frosting, but we had lots of fun.