Jam, butchering, and playing in the fountains!

Whew! We had a full day yesterday! First thing in the morning we got up, ate breakfast and took care of chores. Then we made Strawberry freezer jam! Yum! After that I was headed to take a shower so we could leave and run some errands when Matthew suggested that we butcher the extra rooster we have been meaning to get rid of.

Every year I fall prey to those adorable little balls of fluff in the local feed store and end up buying extra chicks! Usually of the straight run "assorted" bantam variety (that means you pay your dollar and you take your chances... no telling what breed or sex you'll end up with!) They are so fun to have around and I love the extra variety they add to our little "barnyard-backyard". Well this year we found that we had several extra roosters, one of whom seemed rather ornery. I might have ignored that fact, but we now have a baby in the family, who will be toddling around soon, and I have seen too many "ornery" roosters turn down-right mean when they see a little bitty person roaming around "their" yard. I wasn't going to let that happen! So we talked about it and decided that we would just eventually put that rooster in the stewpot!

Well, the boys decided that yesterday was time to do just that! So we took the rooster and had regular high school biology dissection lab in our backyard. The boys were enthralled! My parents weren't very big on raising their own meat when I was a kid... so I learned how to humanely kill, eviscerate, and butcher poultry, deer (that is a story for another day), etc. from a book! (That is what you get from teaching a girl that she can learn anything she wants from a book, and allowing her to be interest led and practically self taught! Homeschooling really is great!!!)

After the rooster when into the Crockpot, and I finally had my shower we set off on our errands. Meanwhile some friends called and invited us to go down and play in the big fountains in the World's Fair Park. We had a wonderful time! The boys stayed cool and wore themselves out playing in the water, while Claire and I sat under a big shade tree and occasionally strolled over to splash in the water a bit too!

Matthew with the Sunsphere in the background.

Then we all went up into the Sunsphere to have a look around. We had never been up there before; it was a lot of fun looking out over the city trying to recognize familiar things!

After that we went home to enjoy a delicious supper of chicken chow mien! :-) and tell Daddy all about our day's adventures!