Hughes News: June 2013

On Memorial Day weekend, we went to Gram and Papaw's to visit with Ryan's family that flew in from Seattle.

Ryan brought his banjo he got for Christmas and Julie pulled out her dulcimer:

Ryan forgot his finger picks so he made some out of guitar picks and duct tape! Hilarious.

It was so fun watching them pickin' and grinnin'.

Maybe I should pick up the Mandolin to join them!

Then Monday morning, we woke up and went out to garden with Gram & Papaw.

Gav found four frogs and spent the next hour catching them!

And of course a trip to Gram and Papaw's is not complete without a tractor ride!

Then Monday night we had a date night with some Knoxville friends of ours that have just moved to Chattanooga:

I wish I had my Nikon to take pictures of the boys in Meghan's glasses' reflection! My cell phone had to do because it looked really cool:

Then to celebrate Memorial Day, we drove through Chattanooga's National Cemetery. It was a great end to the day and seeing families gathering around their loved one's graves really reminded us what the day was all about.

It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend!

I promise to post updates of my biological children again soon, but my newest babies are getting lots of camera time lately and I want to share!

A few videos I want to share that I didn't get to on the last blog post...

Most people don't believe me that these quail see me as their Mother. They seriously follow me in a line. It's bizarre:

My favorite thing they do is tweet to call for each other. I never understood that these guys would ALL stay together. When they get separated, they don't stop tweeting until they find each other. They're a sweet little family!

And this will probably not be exciting to anyone but me, but these guys crack me up when they give themselves a dirt bath. They use any dirt around our yard and ruffle their feathers up like this. Oh goodness, I love them so:

But the biggest (and saddest) news I have is that our numbers are dwindling.

We started out with 8. My Mom said we would lose half of them once we released them, and she's sadly exactly right. The week I posted the last blog post, Gavin accidentally killed one. I went to the front yard and when I came back, he was holding one with a broken neck and said, "Mom, look what I did." It was so sad. He was just trying to pick it up too hard because it kept trying to run away.

Then, we started letting them out in the backyard unsupervised. It went great for 2 days, then they ventured into our neighbor's yard and their dog killed 2. So sad. (This has been a great lesson in subtraction, by the way.) Then, our other neighbor's dog (the neighbors who gave us the quail) killed one of ours and one of theirs. They're selling their dog after this, by the way. Ha! So as of this week, we're down to 4.

BUT, of course I still have pictures to share! They sure are growing!

And getting a Bobwhite Mohawk!

Their new defense is to hunker down like this when they're scared (like when one of us walks by). They also do a warning call when they do this. Yes, I'm learning their cries like a momma knows her newborn baby's cries.

And they are doing great at learning to camouflage in the clovers and tall grass!

We used to leave the box in the house and bring them out for Recess:

But when my mom and her dog Belle came up for a couple of days while my Dad went out of town, we moved the box to the garage for the quail's new home.

This has worked out GREAT because now, these guys are footloose and fancy free! We leave the back garage door open and they come in and out as they please. They are actually acting like wild birds! This week, they slept outside every night and would randomly show up in the backyard in the morning.

And would be very fluffed up in the sun warming themselves up! They must miss their heat lamp!

We are loving them being around for this short time because I'm sure they will fly off for good one day soon! My friend Kim asked to come see them with her little boy Rev. I put this guy on her shoulder and he preferred her head. :)