Christmas 2009

Hey everyone - it is that time of year when we start thinking about Christmas! Some of you have inquired about names this year (mainly Jenny) so I will post them for you!

Jenny - David
Rebecca - Sarah
Sarah - Rachel
Rachel - Jenny
Jeff - Rebecca
David - Jeff

Have fun!

Can't Wait (maybe not)

Three weeks to go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. I am wondering if it will be a good or bad experience to have a baby brother.But oh well I'll live through it well enough.We now have three horses!.There names are Lady,Charm,and Cocoa.All is well here at the Hirschi household.The pool is being used(fairly enough) And the kittens are prospering.(Indy,Marzi,and Smoky).I hope all is well at everyones households.Here are some pics



Love Martha

Tubing

Our friends just bought a boat and invited us to go out on it on Saturday. We had a great time tubing and playing at the lake! Max was a little nervous at first-but he ended up loving the tube!

Here's Kate chillin out on the boat!

Jeremiah, Julia and Emily waiting to go out.

Emily being a nut case.:)

Spring concerts

It has been a little crazy with all the concerts this year. Here is Jeremiah playing trumpet in the Jazz band. He'll be starting marching band in the fall.

Emily with her baritone. She actually just decided to switch to the tuba. It's huge!
Here's Julia in the chorus. She also plays the alto saxophone

Baby Eli

Just wanted to add these pictures of Eli and the kids. He is growing like crazy. He loves to give smiles to the kids. he is now 9 weeks! The time is going fast.

Josh's Eagle Court of Honor

Sorry it has taken me so long to post the pictures of Josh's Eagle Court of Honor!

Wish you all could have been there!

Here are some displays that we made with pictures of Josh's "scouting career."

Here's Jason pinning Josh's Eagle on his uniform. Careful now - don't stick him.

Here's the handsome devil - wearing one of those rare smiles! :) We love him!

Nathan!

Here is Nathan on his 15th Birthday in April. Can't believe how big he is getting! He is about 5'9" and wears size 10 1/2 shoes!

This is Nathan's school teacher, Mrs. Sosebee. She is great! He is off to high school this fall.

These are two of Nathan's buddies - Jose and Jesus.

I will post some pictures of Josh soon - we are just waiting for some of his Eagle Court of Honor pics to come back to us.

Jared!

Thought that I would give you an update on Jared's activities of the past few months! In April he entered the computer he built in the Fulton County Technology Fair. He won 3rd place in the Hardware division among all middle and high school students!

Here is Jared playing a solo at the Jazz Band concert. He loves playing the baritone saxophone! Look out Dizzy Gillespie. (oh wait - he played the trumpet - oh well) I think the bari weighs as much as Jared does!

Here's another shot of him at the Technology Fair with his computer. He is now creating a "how-to" website to help people make their own computers. We'll let you know the launch date!

Emma, her calf, and what the???

Emma loves her calf, Star, and has done a great job halter breaking him. He loves his walks about the yard with her.


What the heck is this??? An item that Emma wanted to photograph to put in her calf record book. Any guesses???? Hint: She helped remove this when the calf was a few weeks old. Yes, you guessed it.... a dried up calf scrotum/testicle! How's that for farm life!?

Hey Happy Mothers Day to You!!!!!

Hello Everyone,
Today is Mothers Day and Poor Dad's Birthday...I wonder what he thinks about that!.
We have a busy day baking a cake making breakfast and lunch but otherwise the rest is fun or mostly work.
We have got baba chicks and a poor dog.
Mom is having a baby boy (you may have heard) and things are busy




MRTH
HRSH

Our Mother Dear!

Happy Mother's Day to our MOM!!

Some of my favorite memories with Mom include...

Dates to Baskin and Robbins :)
Thrift store shopping with Mom
Mom letting me choose the colors of the afgan she made for me (even though the colors I chose were yucky)
Mom making homemade bread for us for an after school snack
Mom singing hymns
Mom playing the piano for us and singing with us
Mom reading aloud to us
Girls camp with Mom - seeing her creativity in writing fun skits for us girls
Long walks with Mom
and of course Mom in the garden with the cat on her back :)

We LOVE YOU Mom!!

New Pigs @ the Hirschi Farm!

Martha, Mom, and I (Sarah) drove 6 hours to Albian, MI yesterday to buy pigs!
Here are the name suggestions(so far) if you have any, please tell us ASAP!

Legolas, Gimli, Sam, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, Gandalf, Eowyn, Eomer, Theoden, Aragorn, Strider, Rosie,(guess who just finished watching Lord of the Rings:)), Happi* Soni, Mary, Marilyn, David, Madeline, Jenny, Rachel, Zach, Amanda, Joe, Tatiana, Natalie, Brian, Hershey, Bernd, Jeremiah, Julia, Emily, Kate, Max, Baby, Lindsey, Valerie, Thomas, jeff, Holly, Phoenix, Nathan, Jared, Sarah, Solca... I could go on forever, but I'll spare you the pain of reading.

*Happi is Emma's pig.
*= named

Well, we'll post later.
LOVE YOU ALL!

Sarah

Swimming in Our House

Here are the girls on the first day swimming in our pool - it seems so crazy that we can swim inside our house! But we are enjoying it and it is great motivation for the girls to have clean rooms, homework done, and piano practiced so they can swim. Notice our dog watching through the window wishing she could swim too!

Elder and Sister Ord

Seeing Mom & Dad off at the airport on Saturday.

Happy Birthday to the youngest! : )

This is Miriam and I am typing a happy birthday to uncle David from my sick mom, who is to sick to type. We want to know if you did anything fun for your birthday?! My mom thinks your an awesome dad. And her favortive youngest brother!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!! :) :) :) :)

ARE YOU 31???!!??!!

Hello everybody Emma is getting a cow at reduced price($10.00) and I hope to finally get my very own horse this year or hopefully in 2 or 3 months!!.I can not wait until we move so I can practice riding Miss Popit in the indoor riding area in the new barn.They sadly moved our moving date to the 26 of February.We had a great Valentines Day and I hope you all had a great one to.
Love,
Martha Shayne Hirschi

Backyard Update!

So - you all know we have been working on our backyard project since October. It isn't finished yet, but we are getting close! The first picture is a view from the woods behind our house.
Here is a shot of the decking and the pool. That big rock over there is a diving rock for the kids to jump off of. I think they better wait until there is water in the pool!

Here's another shot of the decking and pool from the opposite side. The interior of the pool looks blue right now because they had to seal the zero edge. It will be black pebble-tec when finished. I know it sounds gothic, but it comes off looking like the deep blue of a lake.

Here's a close up of the deck addition and stone planters.

So, when are you all coming to visit us? You know we did all of this just for you!

EMMA'S NEWS

I auditioned for a play at school and got a part as a no-it-all girl named Linsey with a twin named Linus.I also got a solo (i was not happy about it) but I got a part lots of people wanted.

Martha's News

Hey everybody! Tomorrow I am getting lunch with the principal, which is good.How is everybody doing hope to hear from you soon.We have to sell our big red barn which is really sad.But the good news is we will have a bigger barn.And will be able to ride horses in the winter or you could probably train a horse in it.My bunny is happy to have a bigger barn to hop around in.She is dying to raid the chicken coop again.The horses will be moved and they are also excited to see the new barn.









Love Martha

House SOLD and NEWS!

We are leaving the new red barn! A miracle happened in our lives and the day we put our home for sale it SOLD!!! All of the inspections have been done and now we are just waiting until the closing. We have completed paper work for our new home and can hardly believe this is all happening! We feel really thrilled because the new home is bigger and we will reduce our loan from a 20 year to a 15 year and only increase our payment by $100 a month!

And now for our news.... The reason we decided to move to a bigger home is because in August we will be needing a bigger home for our 5th baby!!! Exciting and surprising!

So needless to say our lives have been a bit crazy. We are packing and cleaning and anticipating more room to stretch out. The new home has an indoor swimming pool so come and swim anytime:).

Dead Chickens, Old Pony, and House for Sale

Greetings from the Cold North! Here is a brief Hirschi farm update....

Nalla says hello! She loves to play with frozen horse apples! Want her to lick your face now??



A few days ago we moved our hay from our old barn to our new barn and in the middle of the hay stack we found a dead chicken! Crazy, huh! It must have fallen down deep in the hay and couldn't get out. Luckily it is winter and everything is frozen or our hay would have smelled something awful! So our next animal horror story is our poor old pony Cinders who is now a walking skeleton. He looks so bad and I've taken him to the vet and they said he was fine but the poor old pony can't eat very much at all so he has just been losing weight. I've been soaking his grain in water and trying to baby him along but there is only so much I can do. The humane society is going to be calling me pretty soon so I think we are going to have to put him down:(. On the other hand our other pony, Poppy, is fatter than fat! No eating problems with her!

And a big change in our lives is that we are trying to sell our home. The property adjacent to ours (10 acres and bigger home) has dropped to a crazy low price so we are thinking this is an opportunity to expand the amount of land we have AND score a bigger home without a greater cost. Our family is only growing bigger and our 10x10 bedrooms seem to be shrinking so we are going to see if we can work it out. If all works the way we hope... we will acquire our neighbor's house and land for the same amount of mortgage we currently have. Say extra prayers for us:)

Other farm news? Nalla, our dog is getting bigger and has fallen in love with chicken eggs- not a good thing! She has been entertaining a friend (we've been dog sitting) for nearly a month and it makes me think I might want another dog. (probably not a smart idea because Nalla's food consumption is enough for 4 small dogs -12 cups a day!)

We'll have to send more news later... it's late here....

It's a Boy!

Hey there everyone,
I just wanted to let you all know we had an ultrasound and found out that we are expecting another boy.:) All our kids are quite excited. We are still tossing around names, but it is nice to know what we are having so we can prepare. From the ultrasound everything looks fine-the baby is growing well and has all his fingers and toes.:)
We hope the holidays went well for you all. Sorry we were slackers and didn't get out any Christmas cards. I'm just glad the kids are back in school-we all needed our routine back! We did love staying up late and sleeping in and I think the kids were thrilled to have more than enough time on the Wii...Mario Kart is the big hit! Anyways...it's back to Max and I. Whoopee. Max is obsessed with Kung fu Panda, so everything right now is "Awesome" and all things must be karate chopped, even if it does damage to Max's hands and feet. He's got some pretty funny moves. :)

Love you all lots!

Thanks

Hey thanks guys, and a happy New Year. Sarah I did send you a Christmas gift. It should have been there by now. Jenny I did get your Email, thank you.
My birthday was nothing big. Just me and the family this year. Didn't even take any photos. Business is slow right now(blame the economy). Hopefully it will pick up soon. Maybe I can get some of that bail out money. Ya right!!
Anyway, I am grateful for all you guys. We have a good family, and knowing that helps things go better in terrible times like these. May "...angels be round about you to bear you up." always.

Happy Birthday Jeff

Hey Jeff......Happy Birthday. Our first brother!! You are who you are because of all of us, your evil sisters :) But we love you.....well I love you :) Hope you had a great birthday and we want to hear all about it on the family blog.....including pictures. :)