Dollars and choices

Today started with Cairn doing more research about chickens and telling Skylar everything she learned.  She tried to get Skylar and Andrew to take a quiz about which breed would be best for us but they weren't interested.

Andrew decided to get out the Lincoln Logs and build this house.

The girls joined in later after they finished up some schoolwork and their craft project.

It was a pretty calm morning but right before lunch we headed out to run a couple errands.

In the past whenever we go to the dollar store (which isn't all that often) I would tell them they could pick one thing that I would buy.

Today, I tried an experiment.  I had 3 one dollar bills in my wallet so I gave one to each kid and said they could spend it at the dollar store.  Skylar pipes up, "what if we don't find anything we want?"

Just the question I was hoping for - I said, "you can either spend it or save it - it is up to you."

Both girls chime in that they are going to put it toward their American Girl dolls they want.  I didn't say a word.

Then off we go into the store.  We did walk each aisle but in the end only Andrew bought anything.  Both girls said they just didn't find anything they wanted.

It was very interesting.  Cairn looked around a lot, she picked up a lot of things but always ended up putting them back.  Skylar seemed to know from the get go that she wasn't buying.  She never really looked at anything but she did walk the aisles.  I loved that they made a choice and I had nothing to do with it.  I just gave them the opportunity to make a choice.

Tonight, we went to a friend's house for a party/get together.  The kids ran around the house playing while the moms sat and talked.  It was a lot of fun and the kids came home tired.

When we woke up this morning it was clear, sunny and warm.  By late afternoon it was cloudy and cooling down quickly.  We noticed when we left our house that it had drizzled a little but didn't think anything of it.  When we left the party 3 hours later - it was snowing (probably 2 inches out there).  I checked the weather since we have stuff to do tomorrow - back into the 50's!!  Crazy!

Piano and Chickens

This morning we started off doing our schoolwork and hanging out.  The weather was sunny and warm in the morning so the kids were running in and out all morning.

After lunch we headed to Andrew's piano class.  He had a solo.  The girls hung out in class because immediately after class we headed to a co-op class.

The class was on chickens.  Back in December when we went to the 4H Discovery days, Cairn and Skylar had fallen in love with the chickens.  They talked about wanting to get chickens and even had a plan on what to do with the eggs.  (Feed them to Dad).  After a day or so the chatter died down and we didn't hear about it again.  At the end of January, Cairn brought it up again so when a Chicken 101 class came up on the co-op I jumped on it so she could learn more and decide if that was really something she wanted to do.

So we learned about why people have chickens (the eggs, free organic fertilizer, fun to play with). Then we learned about all the things a chicken needs - a coop, a house, water, food (lots of different kinds) and things to do.  They don't just sit in their house all day.  We also learned about how to clean out the coop and house.

 Skylar got to hold the eggs.  These eggs are from 2 different chickens.  This is when we learned that different breeds of chickens lay different colored and sizes of eggs.  You don't always know what color the eggs will be until you figure out each chickens eggs.  How do you do that?  You listen for the chicken to sing their "I laid an egg" song - then you run out, figure out who is singing, look in the egg nest and see what it looks like.

Did you know that the wattle on the top is warm?  In the summer, that is how a chicken keeps cool.  I felt it - it was very warm.

Driving home both girls talked about how they wanted chickens and did I think Dad would let them get 4 (that's how many we can have in our neighborhood).  I told them they would need to do some research about chickens, how to care for them (more details), get the prices of all the things they needed, and make a plan for how they would build a coop and care for them.  Then present it to Dad.  Cairn immediately got to research when we got home.  Then she did more research for about 3 hours at bedtime.  She stayed up late. She started crying at one point.  She said, "I don't know if I can handle all this." (talking about the work involved in chickens)

Andrew will take the chickens or not. He would rather do this.