Shearing day

Last Saturday was an exciting day at the Kocina Homestead. Jason went out and bought a pair of shears and with a little help from Google and YouTube away he went. Luckily he had Rob and Nate to assist. Here are just a couple of photos. I will have to let Jason come back and write his narrative later.

Last but not least I sent Layla out for her turn. She's never had a haircut before, she was not thrilled.
Goody after

Saki after (Jason did go back and clean him up a bit after this photo)

I love how accomplished he feels!

Here is a before shot of the boys earlier that morning. Calvin was rounding them up for us.

No, that horrible sound is not coming from the clippers, that was the noise Saki was making pretty much the whole. Jason did get a spit to the face at one point. Rob ended up covered in green goo too but I think he just rubbed in it somehow.

My Birthday

So I am a few weeks behind, life will get boring in no time and I'll be able to stay up to date on our adventures - right? Hopefully not!!! I had another wonderful Birthday this year. I really like our tradition of going out to Dad's, jumping on the boat and jet ski and going to Maynard's for lunch. Mom, Niki and Brecken have been joining us as well. Now if I could somehow get Jason and Bill away from work and join us it would be perfect.

The girls decorated a very tasty cake for me. Piper and I whipped up a chocolate cake complete with cookies and cream icing and then I was kicked out of the kitchen while the girls decorated with very litte help from Jason. It said Happy Birthday Mom. I love you and had a golden retriever on it. I was asking for a golden retriever for my birthday but after moving in and seeing how busy I was going to be I decided now would not be the ideal time for me to train in a new puppy. Perhaps later in the summer we will get one or maybe we will wait until Layla gets a little older. Then again, maybe never, we will see.

Golden Retriever (or yellow elephant, you be the judge)

Girls looking at the carp and geese at Maynard's.

Piper is the happiest when she's out and about with other people. She loves the stimulation.

Without making a fuss and asking people to take pictures I just whip out my camera when everyone is in the middle of something else and take a quick shot.

Mom knew I was taking a picture, she just tried to pretend it wasn't happening.

The girls on the 4 wheeler waiting for Grandpa and Jill to get all packed up. They just looked so cute waiting patiently.

Randomness

Here are some random photos we've taken. It seems like just about every day we have to grab the camera and take more pictures. We are just in love with our new house and having so much fun exploring our house, yard and new pets.

Look what the cat tried to drag in, we thought she had an creature for us but upon further inspection she was just full of a big old cobweb. Jason was nice enough to clean her off before bringing her in.
We've enjoyed our new fire pit while disposing of all our moving boxes.

Reagan has had a blast discovering all her dress up things, this little crown thing is her favorite.

We had a woodpecker get stuck on our screen one evening, it was so in shock that it just sat there so Jason took the opportunity to pet it.

These are out of order but Jason push mowed the yard for the first time, it took about 3 1/2 hours. For Father's Day I picked Jason up a newer model. He now mows in about 1 - 1/2 hours. Bill and Dad also loaded me up with Bill's little trailer to pull behind the mower so we can load up the garbage can to bring out to the street. It's only a 1 mile round trip. :)

Goody and his buck teeth, he's definitely the shyer one of the boys.

Saki (or Socky), I'm not sure how we are going to spell his name yet. Jason bought a harness for the boys and got him in the barn and we had the opportunity to get a hold of him and put the harness on. He is so fluffy, Jason describes it as touching a pillow. I discovered that he likes to be scratched behind his ears but he's not used to being touched and was a bit nervous. He didn't even flinch though.

With all the crazy weather we've had the for the past week we've been enjoying watching the clouds. Luckily we haven't gotten any of the nasty stuff.

Gardens

These are for Grandma, Grandpa and Steph, here are some shots of the yard and my out of control gardens. They are beautiful gardens but they are in desperate need of weeding.

The vegetable garden - we've located rhubarb (easy to spot), dill, carrots and chives along with a composting pile - yummy! Since it's so late in the year I probably won't get to this until later this summer so I won't be growing any of our own vegies this year but next year will be a different story.
Looking westward from our front porch there are some random bushes, I know some are lilacs but I'm not sure of the others.

I'm not a fan of evergreens of any type but these are pretty neat little ones by the pool.

Porch in the front of the house - the peonies have since been trimmed off along with part of the bush in the corner, a lot less messy.

Other side of the porch

Out in the middle of the yard we have two apple and two pear trees.

The little window in the corner is my kitchen sink window. This area of the garden is really pretty, as each flower dies off another new flower blooms. Unfortunately I haven't gotten in to weed it very much yet and Layla loves to hunt chipmunks in the gardens so she keep trampling a lot of the bigger bushes.

This is the other side of the driveway, we have three choke cherry trees and a bunch of other things in there, one of my earlier posts highlighted the before and after of the bushes I trimmed along the back side. We even have a bird bath that I am intending to uncover and bring to the front of the garden.

Another porch shot, can you tell I really love my porch?