A Day In the Life of...Sasha, Nina and Jake

We are having a great time with our young guests and they are having a great time helping us out with daily chores and fun projects...while I was mowing, Sasha & Nina helped me with the gardening chores like picking all the ripe cherry tomatoes & green beans;
and "deadheading" my flower gardens. They really got into deadheading and I am grateful because it really needed done so we'd have more blossoms.




  
We also had to bake bread since we were nearly out...Nina wanted to bake regular sourdough, Sasha wanted to make rosemary bread and I made Mark's favorite, sourdough oatmeal berry, with the help of Sasha. Yummmm to all three! We had a few slices of each of Sasha's and Nina's bread for supper and it was delicious. Jake had so much bread at supper that he fell asleep at the table!  Oh, a "bread coma" as Matt G would say ---such a nice way to go to dreamland.

Nina is concentrating on kneading the dough. She did an excellent job.  I was told by the girls that they practice kneading with playdough. The practice shows. With just a little tweaking to their technique, they were as good as any adult.

Sasha was proficient with kneading too.  She remembered some of the steps she learned with me just over a year ago when we stayed with her family for a few weeks before moving to Nebraska.

Sasha proudly showing her beautifully shaped sourdough rosemary loaves. Notice the flour on her nose...and there is quite a bit around the kitchen too!

The girls are now glazing their shaped loaves with an egg wash and sea salt.

Now, I ask you, isn't that beautiful bread? Just out of the oven, fragrant and warm and lovely to look at. I think they did a GREAT job!

We decided we needed MORE birdhouses so today was birdhouse painting day. We set up the table under the Tree of Heaven and the kids each painted a birdhouse for us to be part of the Parade of Homes.

Jake is taking his painting seriously and he has a definite design plan. He declared he is painting the Christmas birdhouse.

Walking down our road to put the birdhouses on our split rail fence. Mark has a drill in his hand and not a gun - he looks like a cowboy walking down mainstreet for a gunfight!  This is just outside our driveway.

Putting up Jake's Christmas birdhouse... 

And Nina's colorful birdhouse...

And Sasha's soft pastel birdhouse. Aren't our birds lucky?

After we installed the birdhouses, we took a tour of our current birdhouses and we got this picture of bluebird eggs in one of our three bluebird houses that are all occupied.  We have high occupancy in our various birdhouses. This new subdivision of houses on our split rail fence will be welcomed by our fine bird friends.

Speaking of birds, the Dots followed me around the yard this morning while I was mowing because the bugs are great around the lawnmower.  They then went to one of their favorite places under the maple tree to rest in the shade. They are such girls - they stay together all day - searching for food, chatting, and napping together. I LOVE these girls. They have such personality. If you've never been around chickens, you don't know how funny they are and so fun to watch. 

Then, it was cookie making time...chocolate chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin.  Everyone had a hand in making the cookies.  When I went into the kitchen after the cookies had cooled to put them in the cookie jar, I noticed that there were "several" missing - certainly less than we baked. I asked the girls how many they had, and one admitted to having three, the other four so that meant that Jake ate NINE! OMG!

They are licking the spoons, bowl, etc. I hope they survive our house! 

...and then it was time for homemade playdough. Thanks to the internet we found the recipe for the original playdough.

Jake's very blue playdough... 

Nina's green playdough...

and Sasha's soon to be purple playdough. 

Here they are playing with their playdough...

WHEW! I'm in the other room with my feet up, drinking my well deserved wine, and blogging!  It's a good life!