4-H symbol

I have been active in 4-H for my entire life, since cloverbud 4-H!  I have been a leader for the llama 4-H club for almost 10 years, etc.  Basically, long story short, one of my llamas has a four leaf clover on her back!  She is an appaloosa whose spots make a clover, which I think is totally cool!

This is Maddie's mid-section, showing her four leaf clover!

Safety Village

One of the field trips the kindergarten class takes is to Safety Village which is a small, child sized village made to teach children safety practices and run by the fire department and police department.  In the older classes, the kids learn how to escape a house filled with smoke in the case of a fire.  Kindergarten is taught how to be responsible pedestrians and what it is to be a pedestrian.  The officer in charge has been doing this for 28 years and the kids sure seem to get along well with her.

After the kids learned the responsibilities of being a pedestrian and how to be safe, they got to practice it with imaginary cars.  Then, the kids got to drive peg perego cars and 4-wheelers around the village.  Mischief realized she is NOT a fan of motorized bikes!!!  She was very concerned, kept getting hit by the kid behind her, bumped into the kid in front of her and got yelled at by the little brat, and burst into tears!  Poor thing didn't have any fun driving, but she was super cute doing it.

"Just in Case You Ever Wonder"

You all know we read a LOT of books.  And, by a lot, I mean, a lot of books!  We have a double book case full of books just for the kids.  The number of books we have is a little absurd.  It is especially absurd, because the kids know the story line of almost every book on the shelf, except for the new ones they just got for their birthdays!

Anyway, the kids brought me a book tonight called Just in Case You Ever Wonder by Max Lucado.  Max Lucado books are all Christian fiction books.  They are very heavy Christian based story books.  This one is a nice board book, which is very sentimental about no matter what, parents will always love their children, just in case the children ever wonder.

One quote in the book says, "If your grades are bad and your teacher is mad, come to me.... 'cause I love you.  And I always will, just in case you ever wonder."  Most children would get a nice warm feeling about the love of a parent, but Mischief is not most children.  She promptly got all huffy with me and says, "My grades aren't bad, and they won't be.  So, we don't even have to worry about that!"

Guess she's never really wondered...

Rooster Wrangler

Today, Mischief's 4-H club took the llamas and the rooster to the park for the kids' day at the park and to a nursing home.  We have been going to this same nursing home for roughly 15 years, so it's important to keep up with tradition.  Now, Mischief is too young to handle a llama in public or without help, so the mini 4-H'ers do not get to take the llamas anywhere except for their little show in July.  Therefore, we take the resident rooster, Elvis.  Elvis is the holding chicken, and Mischief loves to be his rooster wrangler.  She likes to hold him, carry him around, and ask people if they want to pet her rooster.  She is so stinking cute.  Pretty much the cutest rooster wrangler I've EVER seen.  I'm not sure who the residents like more - Elvis or his wrangler!

Simply a perfect couple!

Even when she set him down because her arms were going to fall off, she had to stay right next to him the whole day!

Farm Field Trip

Today was Mischief's field trip to the farm.  There was mass chaos while the FFA students from some area high schools put on a farm visitation for hundreds of elementary students yesterday and today.  They tried to have it down to a science, but they managed to take too long and not all the kids got to do all the stations.  But, the kids had fun anyway.  They got to milk the fake cow, pet animals, learn about candling eggs, etc.  The class took a group picture, and one of the kids in my group had his hands down his pants "scratching his leg."  Then we had a girl who saw the other kids sleeping on the bus and thought it was cool, so she pretended to sleep and not wake up!  It's always interesting what you're going to get into when you attempt to do anything with kids...

Wheat penny  hunt