I just had to include this picture, too, because look at Violet’s hair. De-pig-tailed.

Introducing Mr. Krispie all decked out for the holidays!

Look at the elaborate mural they had spanning the entire back wall. The girls each said they wanted this for their room one day. Keep dreaming ladies.

Violet and I were perfectly content to hang out, color, and put Zhu Zhu pets up to our heads.

I almost forgot to point out that the girls are only wearing their socks because the shoe selection was either very small toddler size or started at youth size 3.

Violet even got to bowl her entire 10 frames with a little help from her big sisters.

But mostly she just did this. Notice what looks like flapping arms.

In other news, it’s apparently not very exciting to go shopping for space heaters at Walmart.

Speaking of which, now that I’ve got a space heater in the den expect that I’ll be posting more often on the blog because my fingers no longer break off like icicles while trying to type in our frosty den.

He also came home with a huge fuel tank the other day. I asked him what it’s for, and he honestly didn’t have a response for me. I think getting a lot of land may have been a mistake because now we are going to end up on the t.v. show “Hoarders“.

The girls got the chance to ride in a neighbor’s (and church friend’s) Bobcat this weekend, and Mike has been drooling ever since. I can see those wheels turning in his head each day as he tries to think of a way to convince me that we absolutely need one. I have my prepared response though, “No, you can just use the Taylors’ Bobcat.” Ha, we’ll see how long that will hold him off.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9kBcqIGMsg

In other news, Lucy spotted some pheasants in our woods, and the girls were thrilled to help their daddy get one. We had some delicious cracker pheasant that night. Although Annie did declare that she likes cracker mallard better (we had that last week with the duck Mike got last weekend). Mike also made a huge pot of pheasant noodle soup that we’ve been eating the past couple of nights. Yum! I also told Mike to start saving those feathers since they seem to be the in thing for girls’ hair these days.

Maya and Steph were totally smitten with the kittens.

Dylan couldn’t get enough of the chickens even to the point where he’s now forming plans to get chickens in his own backyard (sorry Jake and Steph). He and this R.I. Red became quite the good buddies.

Ha, we caught this image on the game cam.

The girls were very ecstatic to come home to see their cousings and show them around the farm with all the new animals.

On Thursday night Mike started a bonfire that didn’t want to stay in one place and caused quite a scare for a while, but by the end of the evening all was under control. Of course, I’m almost positive that Mike was pleased with this mishap though. After a very filling breakfast and gymnastics for the girls on Friday we headed out to the Children’s Museum in Brookings and stuck around until closing time at 5pm. Jake and Mike put together a delicious dinner of pheasant stew for us that night.

On Saturday we headed to Watertown for a tour of the office, some lunch, and a quick jaunt through the corn maze before the Hawleys started their journey homeward bound. It was a fun weekend, and I hope that our close proximity allows for more visits from them. The girls love their cousings so very much!

And in case you didn’t catch the mention of our new barn cats, we now have two of them. Mike saw a posting for free cats somewhere and thought now is as good time as any to stock up on our barn cats to help decrease the unwanted critters from the barns.

This is Ramona.

And this is Beazus.