Tessa has been wanting to plant a garden for years, and this year we started it.  First garden for our family, and it has been fun.  I learned that tilling is NOT as easy as walking behind the tiller, I haven’t been this sore in years. (Continued…)

We had a party for Tessa’s 31st birthday party last week.  We had it at the Training Center with all the family and the kids.  Everyone had a good time.  Check the captions for more. (Continued…)

Tessa took us to a pumpkin patch yesterday, and besides picking up some awesome pumpkins, the kids got to pose for some really cool fall pictures. (Continued…)

A sad day today.  Our 30 lb triploid carp died.  Triploid carp are cleaning fish, that live off the green vegetation in ponds like ours.  The heat here has dried our pond up so much, that they are all having a hard time living. (Continued…)

Catie had her 8th birthday party yesterday!  We had the family over to celebrate with cake, ice cream, and pizza.  Everyone got to see Catie’s birthday gift, her Chameleon named Pascal.  Silly string and confetti wars went on outside, even though most of still found itself inside the house. (Continued…)

Nan and Gary have a dog named Harley.  Harley, a black lab, is a very rambunctious, but good dog.  But when Harley is left alone, without friends to play with, he “plays” with our chickens. (Continued…)

This year, we went to San Antonio for spring break.  We rented a big hotel room, went to sea worlds, The Alamo, and played hard. (Continued…)

I can’t believe we’ve had this kind of snow two years in a row. It was a lot of fun this year for all of us to go out and play in the snow. We built a snowman, had snowball fights, and they didn’t even cancel school. (Continued…)

No, its not halloween. All the talk and attention on the school plays got Mikey into action. He pulled out the lion suit that he wore when he was in 1st grade, then Catie put on the monkey suit, then Evie the elephant costume. Well here is a picture or two. (Continued…)

I was telling mom about how many chickens we had, and decided to take some pictures and show them off. We started this about a year ago with six hens, now with a few added on here and there and us hatching some of our own, we are up to 24 chickens. (Continued…)

Catie and the first grade class at Stafford Elementary put on the Deep in the Jungle production. Catie got the prestigious part of Monkey number 1. She really blew everyone away with her performance. (Continued…)

We have new baby chickens! After one bad incubating batch, Tessa started another one with a new strategy. 21 days later, 5 baby chicks hatched out perfectly. These chicks were laid right here from our chickens. (Continued…)

This spring break we went to the Science Place in Dallas. Its one of the best place to take kids during vacation since most of it is geared towards children. Click on the pictures and read the descriptions for more story. (Continued…)

Evie’s class had a school play this year. Evie’s got to play the elephant. Tessa mad a really cool costume for her, although it proved to be very hot. They had a circus program here all the kids were dressed up as different animals. They also had motorcycles ( big wheels ) and other things riding through. (Continued…)

We had our first space derby with Mikey and the scout troop. The actual event snuck up on us, so Tessa had to make most of the rocket with a little help from Mikey. Long story short, we came home with 1st place. (Continued…)

Here are some pictures from our trip to the Zoo this last spring break. The kids had a lot of fun. Click on the pictures and read the captions for more. (Continued…)

Our incubating has been having a tough time, but we couldn’t wait to get some baby chicks in our brooder. We went down to the feed store and bought 6 Baby Rhode Island Red chicks. (Continued…)

Yesterday we went to Sea World. It was a long day, but well worth it. We got to see the killer whales, all kinds of dolphins, and had the opportunity to walk a couple miles. Then to top it off, we got to hit rush our traffic in San Antonio and Austin, what more could you ask for. (Continued…)

We had a very exciting trip to the Fossil Rim Animal Park on our first day of spring break vacation. It included a giraffe eating out of our hands, and a crazy ostrich that decided, “where are they trowing that food from, there must be a crap load in there” and came in after it. You’ll have to watch the video for more than that. (Continued…)

We got our basketball picture that the kids took scanned finally. Here they are, take a look. (Continued…)

Last week, we made a visit to the party store to buy supplies for Evie’s class party. Its was fun to take pictures of the kids will all of the crazy things that they put on. So here are some more fun pictures. (Continued…)

Tessa and I found the solution to our bobcat troubles. It includes a cute fluffy white bunny, and a steel trap. Don’t worry, this trap is designed to keep the bunny safe. (Continued…)

This year, we are trying our first shot at incubating chicken eggs. These eggs were home grown in our coop, and should be exciting to see hatch. Stay tuned, we have about 15 of the 21 days left before hatching. (Continued…)

I found some broken eggs this morning while walking between my house and Mom’s house. I just assumed it was an opossum or something so I set a trap, only to find my self face to face with a skunk. (Continued…)

It was Dr. Seuss birthday yesterday. The school had various activities. Tessa made a huge cat in the hat cake for the Pre-K, and Catie’s class make their own Dr. Seuss books. (Continued…)

About 6 months ago, Mrs. Riddle, our neighbor called and said that a bobcat had attacked her chickens. Now, we finally have got one of the bobcats, but there is still another one. (Continued…)

Check out this video of the kids having fun on the historical snow day in Italy, Texas. Mikey, Catie, Evie, Sydney and Frankie had a lot of fun making snowballs, snowmen, and the start of a snow fort. (Continued…)

February is a really busy month our family. We have Tessa’s Birthday, Dad’s Birthday, Mom and Dad’s Anniversary, and Gary and Nan’s Birthday. The kids helped blow out the candles, and dad had a little too much fun with my son’s sugar addiction. (Continued…)

Today we bought six chickens. The kids are really excited about getting eggs and taking care of the chickens. We drove to Waxahachie, to the Boyd Feed Store and purchased a mix of different breeds. We got 2 Americanas, 2 Brown Leghorns (in Texas it pronounced Legerns), and 2 Rhode Island Reds. (Continued…)

When Tessa came up with the idea of building a chicken coop, we didn’t know how to start. So we went to visit the only people we knew that have chickens, the Johnson family in Milford. They had made two chicken coops using hog panels, and we loved it. (Continued…)

Thursday morning, it started to sleet. Then, by around noon, it started to snow. Over the next 24 hours, it would lay down 5 inches of snow in Italy, and twice that much in the DFW metroplex. (Continued…)

Evie took my sunglasses during one of Mikey’s basketball practices. Once I turned on the camera, she started cheesing for the camera. (Continued…)

One of the first things we did today was visit Sodimac, the local “Home Depot”. We went there to look for prices for materials. I’m telling you, these people aren’t missing a thing. They have stores with everything just like the US. (Continued…)

Carlos and Linda had a meeting in the morning, so we went out. First was to a Honda shop where we could look at some motorcycles. Most all motorcycles here are 125cc or 90cc, they have bigger ones, but not very many people have them. You can buy a nice 125 for about $3,000. The 250s were available on special order, but you could get them for about double the 125s. (Continued…)

Today was business. We went and talked to Segundo, the man that was in charge of the association that was helping get the land. We went out to the job site to see the land, and it looks like it will be a very nice place to build. We talked to various building supply people, a contractor or two, and an engineer that can help with the utilities. (Continued…)

We made it to Lima about 8:00am, got through customs, located the bag in Miami, got it scheduled to be shipped to Chiclayo (our final destination), checked in and ditched Andrews bags for the flight to Chiclayo. The Chiclayo flight wasn’t until about 6:00pm that night, so Linda had lined up for a niece of Carlos’ to meet us there and show us the sights. (Continued…)

I left DFW airport on a flight to Miami at around 8:00pm, even though the flight was scheduled for 6:20pm. So the first day was already late. The flight was around 3 hours, and was just like you would imagine. (Continued…)

Over Thanksgiving, Evie got really sick with Pneumonia. This is the story of her ordeal. (Continued…)