Quad L Farm and Homeschool: A Few Days Later ....

Well I haven't posted in a few day. It has been rather busy around the Quad L. We picked Kevin up from the metro late Saturday evening from his week long trip. One of the few downsides of living on our little farm is the commute for my sweet husband. He is assigned to the Pentagon and we live 54 miles straight south, down I95. If you are familiar with the DC area traffic, you know that particular interstate is a nightmare anytime of the day or night. So, to get to work, the choice of transportation is a van pool or the VRE and metro combo. To get to the airport it is the latter option unless it is the weekend. The VRE doesn't run then, so we take and pick him up at the nearest metro, which is 32.23 miles from our drive. Granted, we knew all of this prior to deciding to live here. It is our last tour of duty before retiring after a very successful 30 year career and our kids, me included did not want to live the city life with all the hustle and bustle. We prefer the more spacious, free living :) Knowing that Kevin's new job would keep him on the road a majority of the time, he made the commute sacrifice for his family. Everyone say, "Awww, how thoughtful." He deserves those thoughts because we are very grateful and happy he made that choice. The kids and I are extremely happy here on the farm with all our chickens and it gives Kevin a very tranquil and peaceful place to come home too after a long day of work or days of traveling. After this last trip, however, he came home to a situation that needed his attention.

As mentioned in an earlier post, we brought some unhealthy chickens into our flock. I knew if there was any hope in saving our favorites, the new girls had to go! Even though my 13 year old is more than willing to man up to many responsibilities while dad is away, I just didn't want him to have to be the barer of the ax and I am way too wimpy for that!!! Lol! On Sunday morning, Kevin culled the hens and we thoroughly cleaned the coop, including burning all the old shavings. Boy did that coop smell better!

Scrub a dub dub!

And scrub some more!!

The chickens are going to be very happy with their nice, clean, and fresh smelling bedroom. I wonder if they get the same feeling like we do when crawling into a bed with fresh, crisp, clean sheets ?:)

With that chore done, we moved on to Kevin's garden. I say it is his garden because he is the green thumb of the family. Actually, Lydia and him both are, so when he is gone, she is in charge. Noah and I confess to being dumb thumbs when it comes to gardening! Lol! This was the first time for Kevin to see the new fence we had put up while he was away. We were anxiously awaiting his approval. After careful inspection, we got a thumbs up!!! Yay team!!!! With Lydia's magical thumbs, the seeds Kevin planted just prior to his departure were breaking through rather nicely and the garden was starting to really look like a garden :)

Monday, we left the farm bright and early so I could join Kevin in attending a promotion ceremony at Bolling AFB. Because I really needed the bodies in my van so I could use the HOV lanes, I brought the kids along. Now before you start feeling sorry for them, let me just say they were not suffering, except for the lack of sleep maybe :) They had iPhones, iPad, dvd player with numerous movies, not to mention the bag of snacks I packed for them. Seriously!!! I had to play license plate games going down the road for entertainment. Needless to say, once I arrived at the base, both kids were sound asleep. They remained in the van with all their luxuries while I attended the ceremony and then we were off to the National Mall. Yes, I did it! I drove in downtown DC and found a free parking spot right in front of the Air and Space Smithsonian :) Of course we had to ride the metro while there. Lydia loves the metro! We went to China Town and ate at one of Kevin's favorite places, Pho DC, and then sent him pictures. Yeah, that was pretty low of us, but it was funny!! The food was delicious!!! Look for yourself:)