More Spring Springing

We had a beautiful sunny day yesterday, though it has been quite rainy lately.  We had three guests staying with us from Tuesday night to Friday morning.  A woman we knew from Napa, CA, her daughter, and her daughter's friend.  The two girls had been spending a semester in Tanzania and stopped here en route home.  They were about the easiest house guests ever because they were enthralled with things like carpet, potable water, cold milk, etc.  Her friend left on Friday but the other two went the the Netherlands/Paris for a week and will be back with us for 5 days at the end of this week.  So for all thinking of coming to visit, we now have enough towels, pillows, blankets, sheets, etc. to have guests. 

So many flowers are blooming here.  It is gorgeous.  The tulips especially are amazing.  They are just all over growing wild.  Some pics below are of a planter in the middle of the road that we happened upon during a walk.

We are probably going to get a couple of pet rabbits.  We can't have pets in the house, so we thought rabbits would be a good outdoor pet to take care of.  We went to a shelter yesterday to check out the pairs available.  We picked out a nice pair of rabbits so once we get set up with a hutch and run we'll bring them home.  Very exciting. :-)

Kelly feeding a bunny at the shelter

We have another public holiday next Monday, so we'll have a three day weekend while our guests are with us.  

Spring on the Farm

Ryan came home Wednesday night finally from his out of town work. This weekend was one of the "lambing" weekends at a national trust farm near us, so we decided to go see if we could see any baby lambs be born. We didn't see any actually being born (despite much coaxing of the ewes to have their babies) but we did see a ton of lambs that were just recently born. There were also pigs, cows, horses, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and donkeys. There are still a lot of daffodils out here and the tulips are all coming in now too.

Fields of daffodils at the farm

Me and a bunch of kids probably under 10 years old helped feed the goats at their feeding time. They were really obsessive about hand washing, so then I got a sticker that said "I washed my hands at Wimpole Home Farm". Double bonus.

Goat slobbering all over my hand

A pen of lambs that were rejected by their mums and were being bottle-fed

Mom looks like she's not having nearly as much fun as the kids

Hi it's Kelly again. I'm in trouble. Another posting without pictures. :-) I keep forgetting to take the camera with us when we go places.
Ryan was gone this whole past week so there was less picture-worth than normal going on. He was able to come home Saturday at midnight and then had to leave again Sunday evening. He might have to be gone this whole week too. He's not too keen on his job right now. He's working in a rock quarry/coal mine doing 12 hours on/12 hours off shifts. Apparently the fires from the work going on are so bright that they have to wear spf50 sunblock at all times so they don't get burned. And safety goggles, coveralls, steel toed boots are mandatory at all times. There is so much rock dust in the air that anywhere uncovered gets coated black by the end of the day. He's been sending me some pictures on his phone, but in my imagination I picture it pretty much like hell. You know, lucifer up on a hill, the workers down in the quarry with pickaxes, fires all around...sounds lovely.
Yesterday while Ryan was home we took a long walk. It was sunny but really cold again. We took a half loaf of bread down to the river and fed the ducks and swans. There is this really cute family of baby ducks that lives near where we are on the river. I'll post a picture of them soon. They were all fluffy yellow when they were first born, but now they just look like miniature ducks.
That's all the news from here. We booked plane tickets to Berlin to meet up with our college friend Amy when she's there in May, so it's nice to have a trip to look forward to. We'll see where we get before then.