Buss Family Christmas

On Saturday, the Buss crew gathered at our new home to celebrate Christmas.  The grandkids exchanged gifts and then Papa & Grandma showered them with presents.   

Ella received Emma's dollhouse.  Such a sweet & sentimental gift!

 Miles got a Lego fire engine from Grahmm, who will be a fireman very soon!

  

Since Ian is living in Colorado, we FaceTimed him while Miles opened his present.

 

our first chicks and ducklings.

We spent Saturday morning running errands around town. 

Somehow, we managed to come home with 5 ducklings and 6 chicks!!

The kids could not be more excited about this new adventure...

Notice the residual white duck feathers all over the ground from when we were duck sitting...    

Miles and Ella are pretty good with the chicks.  

Emmett, on the other hand, is perhaps the biggest threat to their life on this little farm.

I wanted to photograph him with a chick as well, but he just can't hold one without potentially squishing it's guts out or slamming it back down to the ground.  He's like a real life version of Bam-Bam.

This is him grabbing Miles' face to try and convince him to "yet gooooo...put it right 'dere".

We have 

5 ducklings: Boomer, Sooner, Toothless, KD & Betty

and

6 chicks: Olaf & Elsa (light yellow), Brownie & Spike (brown), Jake & Elwood (black)

I'm so scientific in how I identify them.  I know not whether they are male or female.  And I sure don't know what breed they are.  

When we were duck sitting, the grown ducks really enjoyed eating tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden.  Emmett and Ella wanted the ducklings to eat some so bad.  They filled the cart with a variety of veggies and came to the porch...

They weren't too disappointed when I told them the babies don't eat that stuff yet.  

They just did it themselves.

I've ordered 10 different books through the inter-library loan system that should be here this week.  Any tips on raising ducklings and chicks for this rookie?  

{this moment.}

Amanda Soule aka SouleMama.com does this on a weekly basis.  I've decided to join her each Friday.

{this moment} ~ A new Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

dress up. {jake, izzy & peter pan}

I love that they love to dress up.

Peter Pan, Jake & Izzy of Neverland

If you ask Emmett to say "Arrrrrrrg, Matey",  he does this face and I crack completely up.   

If you ask Ella to pose for the camera, she will in fact strike a pose. 

I'll be thankful every day that he still plays dress up with them.  His creativity inspired their own.

Oh, how I sometimes wish that I had a bit of Neverland so that I could keep them small.