Chickens in my bathroom (again!)

Yep, I really do have four chickens in my bathroom again. I decided to get some new baby chicks this year so we could double our "flock" and have more eggs. We have four full-grown hens and today the boys and I went to our local Bomgaar's and bought four more "girls". By this fall, we should be in the organic, farm-fresh egg business. My sons are old enough now to be more involved in caring for the chickens and gathering the eggs. They can profit from their efforts by selling the eggs to friends and family. It is so fun to raise chickens from chick-hood. They are so cute. I sat in the bathroom and watched them for a long time tonight. At this age, they fall asleep very easily. When they sleep they completely sack out and almost look dead. Sometimes they will be standing up and their eyes will drift closed, then their head droops down, finally their legs collapse and they are sound asleep. I watched one tonight who was getting drowsy right by the water bottle. Her head would start falling until her beak dipped into the water. Then she would startle awake, raise her head to swallow, then quickly fall right back to sleep. It was so cute. For you poultry-minded folks, we got two Ameraucanas (they will lay bluish eggs, which should be fun), one White Rock and one White Leghorn. The Ameraucanas are the darker ones, and the White Rock and White Leghorn are the yellow ones. The White Rock will lay brown eggs, and the white leghorn white eggs. They should be laying by September. PS: For those of you who are wondering, the chicks in the bathroom are in a Rubbermaid tub with a vented lid. They are not in my bathtub!! PPS: I apologize (to myself as much as to anyone who reads this blog) for not posting more often. Hopefully that will change after the school year ends. PPPS: Some exciting news which I have not yet shared online.............this fall I am finally going to be...........a homeschool mama!! Yay!! I am very excited. I've wanted to do this for 10 years (I've been a mom for about 10 years) and am finally taking the plunge! I will document this journey on a new blog which I will start posting on sometime near the end of May.

Au revoir, Arthur!

In other chicken news of the year, we regretfully had to part ways with our rooster, Arthur, in May. As you can see, he had grown up to be a fine and beautiful rooster. However, he became very aggressive this spring with my husband and the boys. It got to the point where no one (except me) could go into the chicken yard without being attacked by him. It was a real dilemma because neither DH or I wanted to end his life, but the boys couldn't even go outside and enjoy the hens because of Arthur. So........a friend of ours ended up taking him off our hands because his rooster had been killed by a fox and he wanted another one. On Mother's Day we loaded Arthur up and took him to his new home. He was happy there for a few weeks, but ultimately fell prey to the same fox that took his predecessor. We'll always remember Arthur fondly. But it's been nice to just have our four friendly hens and not have to worry about rooster attacks.



In the photo below Arthur is trying to attack DH's shoe. (DH tried so hard to make friends with Arthur but Arthur was having none of it. I guess in Arthur's mind there could only be one rooster in the flock. Since Arthur never attacked me I joked that he thought of me as one of his "girls.")

Incubating Eggs

Another exciting event in early May was incubating eggs in my Montessori preschool classroom. My assistant, Miss Melissa, loaned us her egg incubator and I brought several fertilized eggs from our flock and another assistant, Miss Carla, brought some fertilized bantam eggs from her flock. I think we had about 19 eggs in all and if I remember correctly 11 hatched. Below you can see them in the incubator. It was awesome to actually be able to see them hatch. So amazing! The Xs on the shells are so I knew which side was which. The eggs have to be turned about 3 times a day and marking them helps keep track of that.







The babies stayed in the incubator for a few hours to dry off.









Then they were moved into a tub in my office with a heat lamp. They stayed at school for a few days so all the children could hold them and look at them. Then they moved to Miss Carla's house where they have made their permanent home.

HopAlong is doing well :-)

I wanted to post a quick update to my last (gruesome) post. Sarah is doing really well with only 1 leg. We kept her inside the first night, then put her back out with the flock the next day. We tried to change her bandage this weekend but it quickly fell off so we are leaving it uncovered. Her stump looks like it is healing nicely. She is quickly adapting to her new condition. In fact, yesterday when I went outside to get a photo of her I took a ripe banana with me. I tossed several chunks into the yard for the chickens to eat. They LOVE bananas. Sarah, on a single leg, totally beat Arthur the rooster to a chunk of banana and ran off with it before he had a clue what was going on. This is very impressive since she has only one leg and is less than half the size of him. I was really happy for her, especially since she still has to fend off his "romantic" advances on only one leg. There is a lot of truth to the saying, "Like a rooster in a henhouse." You can see from the picture below that she is looking healthy and happy. I am SO glad.

Bloody Stump

Some other titles that were considered for this post include: "Missing: One chicken foot" or "Where the heck is Sarah's dead foot?" or "Guess what I discovered in the henhouse today?" Instead, I settled for what you see above. Yes, "bloody stump" pretty much sums it up nicely with no sugar coating or beating around the bush.

DH told me when I got home today that he thought Sarah (the chicken with the dead foot) wasn't doing very well. We have been free-ranging our chickens a little each afternoon and today when he let them out Sarah didn't want to leave the coop. Instead, she was huddled next to the nest box. When I went out to check on her I picked her up to see how her sore foot was doing. You can, perhaps, imagine the alarm and shock that I felt when I saw a bloody stump where her foot had been. And no foot in the near vicinity. It was a truly gruesome discovery. I immediately headed inside to enlist the help of my DH. I was a teeny bit panicked if you want to know the truth. My husband was more diplomatic and calm about it. He reminded me that we actually had HOPED her foot would fall off on its own. We discussed it further while waiting for the vet to call us back. I heavily insisted that my husband go out to examine the stump for himself. Truthfully, I didn't want to look at it. Long story short, DH talked to the vet (who happens to be a friend of ours who goes to our church) and we brought Sarah inside (again) for the night, put Neosporin on her stump (DH did that while I held her; he's nice like that), and wrapped the stump in a piece of gauze and taped it up. She is currently resting in the Rubbermaid tub (AKA "chicken hospital") in our bathroom. Hopefully she will fully recover and be a cute and friendly "disabled" chicken. A few people who have learned about her situation, knowing my crafty nature, have suggested I design a chicken prosthetic. However, I am pretty sure that is outside the realm of my capabilities. I think Sarah would just peck it off anyway. I'll keep you posted. You can thank me later for the absence of bloody stump photos.

On the to-do list

Since I am back in the mood to blog again, I thought I would share what is on my to-do list for today. I had the day off of work yesterday but basically frittered the day away. Honestly, I get much more done when I have less time. Is that true for anyone else?



At the top of the priority list was mucking out the muddy chicken yard. With all the snow melting (finally! Praise God!) the chicken yard (even though it has a roof over it) has been SO muddy this past week. Muddy as in standing puddles of water, boots slipping around mud. I have been researching some options for it on Backyard Chickens. I was originally planning to get a bunch of sand to put down. Then I read about some people who put the old pine shavings from the coop out into the run. Since I needed to put fresh shavings down anyway I thought this was a great option. I told my husband that I felt like a total Farmer Cluck this morning as I headed out to the local feed store just after 8 a.m. I bought 4 big bales of pine shavings (which ended up being way too many..........but I'll need them over the summer anyway). Then I came home and put on my "work boots"...............





And headed out to the coop, shovel in hand. It took very little time to scoop out the old shavings into the chicken yard. Now I have a nice thick layer of shavings and no mud showing at all. I love it. My boots will stay mud-free and my chickens will have clean feet. I have been bragging all morning that I have the cleanest coop in the county. It smells so good after you lay down a fresh layer of pine shavings.






I grabbed the camera to get a shot of the hens "fighting" over the nest box. I had really disrupted their laying schedule with all my cleaning, apparently, and three of the hens managed to wedge themselves into our nest box at one time. In the first photo Sarah's beak is open because she was basically cackling her head off at Abby and Reba.





Then she managed to wedge herself into the box with them. You can just see her white tail poking out. Reba quickly removed herself from the nest box with Abby following shortly thereafter. Then loud-mouth (dead-footed) Sarah had the whole box to herself. She is such a boss!





After that task was completed I wanted to make some homemade granola. So I have that done. This recipe makes a ton, keeps really well, and tastes SO fantastic.

I must be feeling very domestic today because I also have a batch of bread-dough rising as I type this. I am using this No-Knead yeast bread recipe which we like so well. I divide it into two loaves and it never lasts long.

Once the bread is done the boys and I are going to go to Target to pick up some Project Life photos (I am about 2-3 weeks behind) and to a teacher supply store to get birthday crowns for my preschoolers and a birthday gift for a party my oldest son has later this afternoon.

Also on the list.........we need to write a letter to our Compassion child, Fernando. We got two letters from him within a week of one another and have to write back. And I need to finish revising our preschool brochure, find some songs about birds to sing in class next week, run, put away Valentine's decorations. Oh, and take a shower! So it should be a pretty busy day. It's been productive so far. I love Saturdays!!

Where has the time gone?

I know I've been lax about writing on this blog for a while. And I'm even worse about keeping up on Random Acts of Reading. Don't give up on that project if you were initially excited about it. I am really hoping to find the time to pick back up where I left off very soon. It's been so hard to make book drops with the yucky, cold, snowy weather we've been having. I plan to be very inspired and motivated to get going with those again soon.

Anyway..........you may wonder what's up with our invalid hen, Sarah. We were able to reintroduce her to the flock on Valentine's weekend. She was getting around on her foot and was not very happy in her Rubbermaid "cell" in our bathroom. I was not sad to see her back outside with the other chickens. However, last week I noticed that her "bad" foot was turning black. My little guy and I took her to the vet on Monday and he confirmed that her foot is, indeed, dead. So...........amputation is an option. Since I am not Bill Gates I had to inquire about the cost of this surgery. The vet told me, "For your $5 chicken it would cost you around $150 to do surgery." However, he kindly assured me that even Warren Buffett would have wanted to know the cost and that my asking didn't necessarily imply my indifference to the plight of sick animals. Sarah, for her part, seems as perky and clucky as ever for now. So..........we are opting to wait and see what nature will bring. There is a chance that her foot will shrivel up and fall off on it's own. (I know that sounds very gross...............and I'm not looking forward to going out to the coop one morning and finding a detached chicken foot lying on the ground.) I have heard from other people that they have had chickens or ducks with one foot who survived just fine. So we will see.

In other news, I've been doing pretty well (until this past week) keeping up with my running. I usually run 5K on the treadmill 4-5 times per week. I am really looking forward to running outside very soon. I'm considering entering a 5K race in early May. It will be my first race ever, so it should be fun. I now know I can very easily do a 5K so it's not intimidating from that standpoint. And I think it will motivate me to train for a longer race later in the summer.

Work is keeping me VERY busy but very happy. I cannot imagine any other job that would make me happier than my current job. I love working with preschoolers.

Well............that's what's up around here. I haven't done anything crafty or creative lately though I wish I had so I could post a cute photo or two. Until next time...........

Chicken in the bathroom (again)

Today I did something that I have never done in almost 41 years of living. I took a chicken to the vet. Why? This morning when I went outside to open the chicken coop, I found our favorite little chicken, Sarah, stuck to the wire netting on the chicken ramp. She had most likely been stuck there all night long with her toes caught in the wire and her leg pulled out behind her body. When I unhooked her the leg was completely stiff, cold and deformed looking. I was beside myself. When I shut the chickens in for the night yesterday, she must have just been getting ready to jump off the bottom of the ramp when I closed it. I don't usually open the coop and look in after I close the ramp, so I didn't realize her foot was stuck. I sobbed when I went inside to tell my husband what had happened because I felt responsible for her injury. Unfortunately, we both had to get out the door, DH to take my oldest son to school, and I to get to work. Luckily, my husband's schedule allowed him to come home and bring Sarah inside around noon. He held her for a long time and warmed her up. Gradually he was able to reposition her foot and leg so they looked more normal. He set up our "brooder box" in the bathroom to keep her in. When I got home I called the vet and they suggested we bring her in. So my little guy and I loaded up the chicken in her box and headed to the vet. Luckily, she did not break any bones. She also seems to still have some intact nerves in that leg. The vet is worried about her circulation, however, and gave her a steroid shot. The wounded leg is very swollen and is still colder than the other leg. Hopefully the steroid will reduce inflammation and that, perhaps, will get her circulation going again. For now, she is living a life of luxury in our bathroom. It is about 69 degrees in our house as compared to less than 20 degrees for the other four chickens out in the coop. She may decide she wants to be a house chicken from now on. We are certainly babying her a lot. Within a week we will probably know whether or not her leg will recover. I will be sure to keep you all updated. Below you can see her in her luxury suite. She is sticking her wing out to help keep her balance. I truly hope she recovers with no long-term damage. She has always been our most inquisitive and out-going chicken. She certainly has the pluck and stamina to come through this ordeal unscathed.

What we've been up to

I haven't checked in here for over a week .........so I'm long overdue for a post. Here's a quick update about what's been going on.

First...........today I didn't have preschool because our local school district called a two-hour late start due to blowing snow. However, I was not aware of this until I went to school. I had gotten up early to work out and checked the school closings on TV before switching over to a cable channel while I ran on the treadmill. Afterwards I figured we were still on since by that time it was getting too late to call a delay (or so I thought). It was pretty bad driving on the back roads I take to get to school, but our superintendent rarely calls a late-start due to weather. It wasn't until I drove past our high school and noticed there were very few cars and NO busses that it dawned on me that perhaps something was amiss. I immediately called our local elementary school (where I used to work) when I got into my office and then found out that there was a two-hour late start. I guess the teacher was truly the last to know today. I stayed and worked for a while before heading home with my little boy.

When I got home I decided to sew a chicken saddle for one of our hens. I had cut it out this weekend and just had to put it together. For those of you who are not fully aware of the tools of the modern chicken farmer, a chicken saddle is a piece of fabric that is attached to the back of a hen who has been "overloved" by a rooster. Unfortunately one of our hens, Clara, is apparently very popular with our rooster, Arthur, and has developed a very nasty sore on her back due to his overzealous advances. Yuck, huh? Fortunately I was able to research this problem on Backyard Chickens and found that some people put a "saddle" on the hen to protect her back during mating. I found a great pattern on Back To Basic Living and sewed it up just a little bit ago. Since Clara has tan feathers (she is a Buff Orpington chicken) I tried to find a fabric in my stash that would color coordinate with her feathers. To slap any old fabric on her back would just be wrong. Of course it has to look good with her coloring. Lucky for Clara I found a scrap of designer Amy Butler fabric in my scrap stash. In case she really starts to love wearing high fashion I already have a handbag to match.........isn't that awesome?

Below you can see two photos showing the new chicken saddle. It basically lays right on the hen's back and the elastic straps snap under her wings.







OK..........chicken saddle done, all very well and good, right? The hard part, of course, was getting the dang thing on the chicken. Of course I wanted to try it on her right away. So, armed with my chicken boots, "chore" coat, camera and the new saddle, I headed out to the coop. First I took the photo you see below. I wanted to show you the sore on Clara's back that prompted this little sewing project. It is so gross looking and her feathers have come out in that area.




It took me quite a while to catch Clara to put the saddle on her, even though the interior space of the chicken coop is only about 64 square feet. She was just not grasping the idea that she was soon to become the most fashionable girl in the flock. During the "dressing" I had stuffed my camera in the pocket of my coat so I could have both hands free to wrestle with Clara. I managed to successfully get the saddle on her and put her down. Then the other chickens started pulling on it and one of the straps came loose. So...........I had to catch her again to reattach it. When I leaned over to pick her up two funny things happened. My camera fell out of my pocket and into the not-so-clean pine shavings on the floor of the coop AND Sarah, our little white chicken, flew up and sat on my back!! I'm sure that had this been filmed I could have won our family a large amount of money on "America's Funniest Home Videos". I finally got the saddle back on Clara and released her, much to her relief, I'm sure. She immediately turned her head and started trying to pull the saddle off her back. The first photo shows her doing just that.



Here is the best picture I got of Clara with her saddle. I probably don't need to tell you that chickens are hard to photograph under any circumstances, but they are especially difficult to photograph when they have recently undergone the trauma of having clothing attached to their body. I'm just sayin'..........forgive me for the poor photo, 'kay? I am thinking that the saddle might be a little big for her because it should really fit closer to her body. However, it does completely cover her "owie" which is the goal after all.

After all this hullaballoo I would not be the least bit surprised to go out to the coop later this afternoon to find my beautiful, handmade chicken saddle trampled and dirty on the floor of the coop. In fact, I am pretty sure that I WILL find it off Clara's back and buried in the pine shavings. I'll keep you posted. ;-)

PS: In other news, my husband has been busy this weekend helping our sons make their cars for the upcoming Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. We were excited to find out at last week's pack meeting that there is a separate category for siblings, so our little boy gets to make a car too. He is BEYOND excited about it. I will post more about that soon, FOR SURE!!

Edited to add: At 4:00 p.m. I went out to the coop to do my afternoon "chicken chores". As predicted, the chicken saddle was off Clara's back and lying on the pine shavings. So..........I think I'm going to try a design that doesn't use snaps and see if she'll keep that on. If that doesn't work then.............too bad, so sad. At least I tried. And for heaven's sake, if she would just keep her clothes on she probably wouldn't be in this situation to begin with!! (Sorry..............I couldn't resist writing that. Please know that I'm KIDDING!!)

Update on waffle experiments and a new obsession

If you read my previous post you are aware that during our GREAT SNOW-IN I pulled out a waffle iron that hadn't been used since the 1990s and tried out some made-from-scratch waffle recipes on my family. You would also know that my banana cinnamon waffles were met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. As I said in that post, I am not easily discouraged and planned to try out a gingerbread waffle recipe. Which I did. Let's just say that future waffle experimentation is on hold until further notice. Nuff said.

(Sidenote: I will say that between the two recipes (links are in my previous post) I really loved the banana cinnamon waffles. In fact, I ate some of the leftover ones for breakfast this morning. I had refrigerated them and I just popped them in the toaster like an Eggo waffle and ate them with sliced bananas and pancake syrup on top. It was much more decadent than my usual breakfast fixings! So I may make more of these for my own breakfasts and freeze them to eat during the week.)

In other news, we haven't retrieved any more gigantic eggs. However, today was a 4-egg day which is always exciting because that means all four hens laid an egg today. I found a frozen, squashed mouse in the chicken coop and had DH dispose of it. Before tossing it he brought it to the door to show our boys. My oldest son promptly said, "Mommy, you can write about that on your blog." So I am. :-) I will, however, spare you a photo glimpse of the mouse remains. In case you are wondering I DIDN'T even take a photo. (Thought about it, though!)

My new obsession is planning our garden for this summer. We have not had a vegetable garden since we had the boys. Usually we don't even think about gardening until about the middle of June and then it seems too late to tackle it. So.........I'm getting a head start and planning it all out now. I have been obsessed about looking up information from the Square Foot Gardening (SFG) website. That is the method I plan to use. It requires virtually no weeding..........seriously. I'm all over that. You should check out the concept of SFG..........it's a really neat idea and you can do it in very little space with very good results. I have also been looking through my Burpee seed catalog that just came yesterday and getting on the Burpee website to read the customer reviews of all the different types of seeds. That has been really helpful in deciding which seeds to order. I am pretty excited about our venture into gardening. I'm sure I will write many future posts about it. If any of you do the SFG method, I'd love it if you'd post a comment about how you like it, what you grow, etc. Below is a photo of my garden notebook and some gardening books I checked out from the library today.

Reba's MONSTER egg (and other news from the Arctic)

Laura here, reporting from the arctic zone also known as the Midwest. Temperatures here reaching a whopping 4 above today (or something like that) with windchills around -20 degrees. When this posts we will be on our third straight day off from school. The first day (Wed) due to a snowstorm which dumped another 4-5 inches on top of the MANY we already had on the ground, the second day due to winds creating blizzard like conditions, and the third day due to a HIGH of 0 on the thermometer with windchills of -30. Yeah.........that's what's going on. Because of the cold I have been going out to the chicken coop several times a day to thaw the frozen water and to collect the eggs before they freeze. I was completely blown away by the egg I found late this afternoon. Most of the hens lay in the morning, but when I had gone out around 2:00 p.m. Reba was in the nesting box although nothing was under her when I checked. When I went back around 4:00 or so there was a gargantuan egg in the nesting box........very dark brown so I knew it was Reba's. Of course I had to blog about it. What kind of blogger would I be if I didn't brag to everyone about the huge eggs produced by my girls? You can see the monster egg next to another egg I gathered this morning.



I don't know if it was just a fluke today or if we can expect ginormous eggs from Reba from now on. Time will tell and I'll keep you posted.



Wednesday morning when we had our first snow day I went downstairs and brought up a waffle iron that DH and I got MANY years ago, perhaps as a wedding gift. That would make it a circa 1993 waffle iron in case you are wondering. This baby hasn't been used since WAY before we had kids. In fact........neither DH or I could remember when we had used it EVER. Anywho........waffles from the waffle iron are my boys' new favorite breakfast or just about anytime food. Since I've been a bit of a blogaholic on my days off, I stumbled across a recipe for homemade banana cinnamon waffles. I decided to make these for dinner tonight along with roasted potatoes and scrambled (monster) eggs. Now I'll let you guess...............did my oldest son (the one who's been asking me to make waffles for him about 5 times a day since the waffle iron appeared) prefer his mother's made-from-scratch, farm fresh egg infused, fresh banana-cinnamon with buttermilk waffles OR the generic store-brand pancake mix waffles we'd been having up until tonight? I'm sure you're thinking the made-from-scratch waffles were a hands-down winner, right? You might be thinking, there's no way he could have preferred the bland, boring box-mix waffles. Oh. Yes. He. Did. About 2 bites into the most fantastic waffles this girl has ever produced he announced (in a fairly whiny voice I might add), "I don't LIKE banana waffles." Yeah. That's what he said. Seeing the obvious disappointment on my face he asked, "Are you mad?" To which I replied, "No, I'm not mad. I had just hoped you would like these waffles, but it's okay."

Later on when I was putting my youngest son to bed I asked him if he liked the banana waffles I had made........still grasping for some waffle validation, don't you know. He said, "WHAT banana waffles?" I said, "The ones Mama made for supper tonight." He said, "Oh! Those tasted YUCK! Sometimes when I eat the food you make it doesn't taste very good to me."

Alrighty then..........Not one to be easily discouraged, I am totally planning on trying the gingerbread waffle recipe in the link above sometime VERY SOON! I'll let you know how it goes. ;-)

A very Merry Christmas

We awoke to a HUGE amount of snow and blizzard conditions. As you can see from the photo below my husband had to dig out before he could take the dog out this morning. I took this photo sometime before 7:00 a.m. Our boys were up and ready to see what was under the tree by 6:30 a.m. Apparently my big boy had been awake much earlier than that but my husband held him off until 6:30. Because of the snow we did not go to our church's Christmas Eve service last night. I am 40 years old. I can honestly not remember ever missing church on Christmas Eve. It was a little different to say the least. However, we enjoyed a quiet evening at home. We did our Advent wreath and were able to finally light the Christ candle in the center. My oldest son found three stories in his Jesus Storybook Bible that he wanted to read aloud for our home Christmas Eve service. My husband, little boy and I used our fabric Nativity characters to "act out" the stories as he read them. It was quite nice.





Here are a few more photos of our massive snowfall. You can see how the snow has drifted against our chicken coop halfway up the windows. I had to step through huge drifts to get out there today.






And this big mound is on our deck.






It is still snowing as I write this post at about 6:45 p.m. We usually have our extended family on my side over on Christmas day. As I wrote earlier, we were planning to get together on Tuesday but couldn't due to the weather. We have yet to reschedule that event and my oldest son has asked me several times today when we will have it. I am glad that being with family is such an important part of Christmas for him. When we planned the big get-together for Tuesday we still planned to have my parents over here on Christmas Day. Because of weather that didn't happen either. So it was just the four of us home all day. In all honesty our little family being snowbound and together all day has made this the most peaceful and relaxing Christmas in my memory. We just hung out all day. The boys played with their new toys. I read a book for large periods of time and played with the boys off and on. My husband relaxed some too in between going out and shoveling every few hours so we could at least get out our doors. It was a really nice day and I feel so very blessed to have a family whom I love dearly.



The boys both loved their gifts. I didn't get many pictures of their new toys without the boys in the picture. Below you can see the Hot Wheels race track that my little boy got. He loved it and has played with it a lot all day. My big boy got a few new geography puzzles among other things and is in his room assembling Asia as I write this. He also got a cool circuitry kit and has been constructing projects from that as well.

And I am thrilled to report that today, Christmas Day 2009, was a 4-EGG DAY!! I went out mid-morning to check and found one egg on the floor of the coop and one chicken, Reba, trapped against the wall in the nesting basket!! Poor baby! Apparently someone in the coop had flipped the basket over against the wall and Reba couldn't get out. She probably trapped herself. So.....I repositioned the crate so that can't happen again. When I went out in the late afternoon to bring fresh water I found 3 MORE eggs! This can only mean one thing.........now all of our hens are laying. I loved that one of the eggs was really dark brown. It actually brought back a childhood memory that I will share here. I hadn't thought of this in about 30 years. When I was in elementary school we were asked to bring an egg to school for an art project. When we pulled out our eggs in art class my egg was the only brown egg in the class. I do not remember specifics, but I do remember being teased about the color of my egg. I also remember feeling embarrassed about having the only egg that was different. And I think I was even mad that someone would make an issue of the color of my egg. Anyway........we made Santa and Mrs. Claus faces out of our eggs. I went ahead and made a brown Mrs. Claus. It's funny how something can trigger a memory like that..........I haven't thought about it for years. Below is a photo of our diverse, multi-cultural, egg collection from today. I am excited to cook these up tomorrow morning. After my last egg post I got a great comment giving me specific guidelines for cooking an egg. Thanks, Annicles. Also, I now know that my good buddy, Amber, is an eggspert at cooking eggs. Who knew? I knew she could bake an awesome cake, but eggs? You learn something new every day!

PS: I almost forgot! This morning I knocked over our Christmas tree when reaching under it for a gift. The leg broke off just as it had on our other Christmas tree. So.........that makes 2 artificial trees that I've accidently broken in the last few weeks. My little boy burst into tears when the tree fell down but recovered quickly when presented with the distraction of opening all his gifts. DH and I decided that this is a sign that from now on we will get a real tree every year. We've talked about it in the past but when we had an artificial one to use it didn't seem practical. Now it seems like a necessity. So that's a new tradition we can look forward to next year.

It was a two-egg day (and other happenings)

Well, this morning after I jogged on the treadmill (I finished the 8-week running program and am now officially a "runner") and took a shower I decided to cook up the two eggs I had gathered from our chickens over the past few days. Only a blogger or scrapbooker would take a bunch of photos of cooking an egg. Since I happen to participate in both hobbies (though much more of the blogging than the scrapbooking lately) I DID take some photos. Below you can see the two eggs ready to be cooked. Is it just me or are those yolks incredibly yellow?



I was originally going to do fried eggs but realized once I got going that I don't really know how to make a fried egg. Isn't that lame? I am sure I could Google it, but I think that is even more lame. So I made fried/scrambled eggs instead. My little boy was excited when I started making the eggs, saying he wanted to eat some. My oldest son was not so enthused. He stated that he would rather eat the eggs from our chickens if they were baked in something instead of cooked on the stove. He also informed me that he really liked them "like Easter eggs", not fried or scrambled.



Here you can see that I went from fried to scrambled since I don't know how to flip an egg without it going everywhere. I am sure my husband could teach me. He is really good with eggs. I think he was outside running when I was doing this.




Here is the finished product. Let me tell you.............those eggs were AWESOME!! Seriously. Once they were done my oldest son decided he wanted to try them. So the boys and I all had a fork and that egg disappeared faster than a ripe banana in a chicken coop..........in other words, it was gone in under a minute. After we scarfed down the egg, I decided to go out to the coop to see if any more eggs had been laid. I think it was about 11:00 a.m. when I did this. I was pleased to find another little brown egg (there hadn't been any when I was out in the coop earlier in the morning). When I brought it inside my little boy wanted me to cook it right away (which I did) and to eat it right away (which he did). The new egg was laid right under our nesting box so later in the day my husband went out and removed the nesting box I posted about yesterday. We decided it may be too small for the hens to lay in. He replaced it with a plastic milk crate that we just put right down on the litter in the corner. When he was doing all this he also found a white egg in the coop!! So that means that two of our hens are now laying eggs (and that's why today was a 2-egg day). I am so proud of those girls! They are awesome! I can't wait to eat more of their eggs. They are so tasty.




Moving on to other news since you are likely sick of hearing about eggs. My mom invited us all over to her home this afternoon to exchange gifts. Traditionally we go to my parents' house on Christmas Eve to eat a meal, exchange gifts, then go to the Christmas Eve service at our church. Because of the big snowstorm that we are supposed to get tomorrow our Christmas Eve service has already been cancelled and we are likely to be snowed in for a few days. So we got together today. It was fun. My mom always finds really fun gifts for the boys. Below you can see my little boy's hands. He got a Playskool race car driver helmet. It comes with a hand-held control/steering wheel that has all kinds of cool sound effects. The helmet has a microphone that you can talk into. He LOVES it. He played with it so much when we got home.

One of the gifts my oldest son received was a little magic tricks kit. He immediately went off to my parents' bedroom to study a trick. Below you can see him and his volunteer (AKA Daddy) doing a ring and rope trick that he learned.

When we got home I holed up in my craft room to sew the boys' Christmas Eve pajamas. I had painted their shirts earlier in the day. I didn't have a sewing pattern........I just grabbed a pair of pants for each of them that currently fit them and used that as a pattern. The PJ pants went together really quickly and I think the boys will be excited to open them tomorrow night. Below you can see the shirt and pants together. In hindsight I kind of wish I had bought red shirts instead of the dark blue because I think that would have looked cuter with the flannel I bought. Oh well!

This last photo makes me go "WAH!!". I took the PJ pants I made last year for each boy and laid them on top of the new ones, all lined up at the waistband. In the photo you can see how much longer I had to make the ones for this year. Of course I want my children to grow and be healthy...........but I still feel wistful when I think of how fast they are growing up. I want to hang onto and treasure every moment with them. I love them both so much!!

The boys and I were also pretty busy today trying to finish some more of our Advent books and ornaments. I will do some posts on those soon. I am positive now that our Advent book activities will have to trickle past Christmas Day. Even though I planned only 15 (not 25 like last year) we have so far only done nine. Again.........oh, well! We've enjoyed doing it and hopefully the boys will be up for finishing all of them. Then I can stash the ornaments away for the Festival of Trees next year!!

A bit of everything

Be forewarned..........this is a very photo-dense post. I am too lazy to do a bunch of separate posts so I'm playing catch-up and writing one big post to describe all that's been going on here since I posted one week ago. First let me say that the reason I finally found time to blog tonight is because we had to cancel a family get-together that was supposed to be at our house TONIGHT because there is a big ice storm moving into the area. I was really bummed out because the boys and I were really excited to have everyone over here and we had made a bunch of stuff to give out to the guests. But, I would rather have my loved ones be safe, so instead I am catching up on blogging.


I guess I'll start by summarizing what I've done in the past week. OK...........last Wednesday night I went to my MOPS Christmas party which was very fun, as always. We had an ornament exchange. I forgot to take a photo of the one I brought home.........it's a glass snowman with green accents. Love it! On Thursday last week my oldest son had his winter program for school. The theme of his program was "Peace". His role in the program was to read aloud a report he had written about Nelson Mandela. He got up in front of an auditorium filled with people and read his report out loud. He was so poised and read with such expression. I was so proud of him that my eyes welled up with tears as he read. He is such an awesome kid!! On Friday I went out to a local Mexican place with a few friends to celebrate the 40th birthday of my neighbor. On Saturday the boys and I went over to Amber's house. She is our daycare provider. My little boy goes to her house two half-days a week. She always hosts a Christmas get-together for her daycare families and had a breakfast this year. There is always a special guest who appears during her get-togethers----------Santa Claus! And he always has a gift for each child. My boys got two new games from Santa...........Chutes and Ladders and Yahtzee. These are great additions to our games collection. Thank you, Amber! I went shopping Saturday afternoon and Saturday night the boys and I and my mom went to a Christmas pageant at a mega-church in our area. We met my friend Julie and her family there. (DH was home with the dog. We have to keep him on a rigid medication schedule. He has made it almost 6 weeks without a seizure, the longest he's ever gone and we don't want to mess that up!) The pageant is amazing.........almost like (I imagine) a Broadway show. There are live animals (camels walking past us only 1 foot away) and angels who truly fly across the set on zip-lines. There was real snow falling on us during one part and there is always just an amazing and touching reenactment of the first Christmas story along with an inspirational modern storyline. I am so glad we went.


During the past week in my preschool classroom, the children and I were busy making parent gifts. Below you can see the one my little boy made for me!! If you are curious about this project, read this post over at my school blog. These would be great to make if you need to still whip up a last-minute gift. They take only a few minutes and turn out really pretty.







Last Friday I read this post on WhimsyLove and instantly knew I wanted to make some of these to give my female relatives at our get-together that was supposed to be tonight. When I was out and about on Saturday afternoon I stopped by my favorite thrift store and picked up 5 vintage spoons for about 75 cents. They had the half-price colored tag on them!! I typed up the story from Nikki's post and printed it out on cardstock. I used a corner-rounder to decorate the corners and then I adhered them to another color of cardstock and fancied up those corners. I tied a ribbon around the spoon and stuck an ornament hanger through the back so the spoons could be hung on the tree as shown below.






I punched a hole in the corner of the story and tied it to the spoons as shown here.

I love the message behind this story. I truly believe that the best IS yet to come. Hopefully I can still get-together with my family soon and pass out the spoons I've made.

When I went to Hobby Lobby Saturday I picked up supplies so my boys could make an ornament for each person at our family gathering (the one that now ISN'T tonight.........can you tell I'm disappointed?). All the holiday items were at least 50% off, so I got some great deals. I wanted the clear glass ornaments but they only had the frosted ones left. I have seen lots of initial ornaments around the blogosphere lately and wanted to copy those. I wasn't totally thrilled with the sticker letters I found, but they were glittery and Christmasy.

We stuffed red gift shred into the ornaments as shown. This was much harder than you would think as you pretty much had to do it strand by strand. My little boy soon tired of the project after this photo was taken. I can't say I blame him!

After filling them with the shred, we attached the top, added a letter sticker, an ornament hanger and a ribbon. We made 15 ornaments in all and have some left for future crafting.

The photo below shows one finished ornament.

Also this weekend I made a ton of chocolate pretzel rods to give as gifts to Sunday School teachers, school teachers, bus drivers, etc. OOPS! I guess DH needs to get a bag since he is the bus driver for our oldest child who attends a private school!! I think I have an extra one, honey!

Here they are all packaged up and ready to give out!!

We also have exciting news from the chicken coop. On Saturday I went out and found a perfect little brown egg frozen to the ground in the chicken run. I had to pour warm water on it to get it off the ground and the shell broke in the process. I didn't get a photo of the FIRST egg due to this! Below you can see Sarah and Abby hanging out on the roost in the chicken run. I have suspicions that Abby is our egg-layer.

On Sunday there was another perfect little brown egg, this time inside the coop on the floor. It was still warm to the touch when I brought it inside. Since we didn't have a nesting box in the coop yet, DH and I had to scurry to put something in place with the hope that our egg-layer would soon find a proper place to deposit her daily treasures. The next two photos show two little sets of hand holding our first (unbroken) egg!!

We decided (for ease of time and labor in very cold weather) to repurpose an old kitty litter bucket to use as a nesting box. DH just used a screw to attach it to the wall of the coop as shown below. On Backyard Chickens I have read that it helps the chickens know what it's for if you put some fake eggs in it. So you can see two plastic Easter eggs in it in the photos. On Monday there was another perfect little brown egg. It was found below the nesting box, not inside. But the two eggs IN the nesting box, the fake ones, were mysteriously moved to different places so there has definitely been some fowl play involved. haha

Below you can see the nesting box relative to where the roost is in the coop. Today I could find no evidence of an egg anywhere. So we'll have to see what happens next. Very exciting developments in chicken farming I must say. I have yet to cook one of the two eggs we've retrieved. DH seems a bit squeamish about the whole thing but I've just been too busy. It's kind of scary that we have moved so far from our agrarian roots as a society that we are cautious to eat food that comes directly from the animal of origin. When you think about it, there's nothing more natural than eating an egg laid by your own hen, is there?? I'll let you know once I cook it if it's the best egg I've ever had.

On the homemade gift-making front I've been busy. Below is a photo of a little doodad I made for my oldest son's teachers. As I mentioned above, their winter program theme was "peace" so I decided to make these little word-art knick-knacks for his teachers as a gift. I had seen something very similar in a Country Living magazine a few months ago. Luckily I had a thrifted Scrabble game in my crafting stash. I just sawed off the letter-holder pieces to the right size and glued the letter tiles onto them with Elmer's glue. Easy peasy! These would be great to make for Valentine's Day, spelling LOVE or other sentiments.

In keeping with my "give thanks" pillow from Thanksgiving I decided to make up some "believe" pillows. I gave one to each of my classroom assistants who are also my youngest son's teachers. I also gave one to Amber, our daycare provider. And I kept one for myself since I am also my son's teacher and since all his other teacher's got one................. I love how these turned out. I am already thinking of "let it snow" on blue burlap for January, "love" on red for February, "get lucky" on green for March...........OK..........maybe not that one!! :0)

Also for Amber, our daycare gal and my good friend, I made a Christmas apron. I didn't use a pattern, just kind of winged it. I started it Sunday night and finished it yesterday. I gave it to Amber today and to my face she said she liked it. Actually, I know she really did like it because she loves aprons. I loved the really big rick-rack. Aprons are so easy to whip together. I can't believe I don't actually own one. I need to change that!! Maybe a good Christmas break sewing project.

Here's a closeup of the rick-rack trim and fabric.

The only other handmade gift I need to finish (I mean, start and finish) is pajamas for the boys. I made them a set of pajamas last year and wanted to continue the tradition. I already have the shirts and fabric so I'll start those tomorrow. They'll be ready to wear by Christmas Eve. Whew! Now you can see why I haven't posted in a week! In case I don't post again before Christmas, please have a blessed day with your family. And treasure the reason behind the season. There is truly no greater gift than Jesus. My wish is that each of you reading this would know and embrace that truth this year.