Mike is doing well. He was officially hired on July 8 by CR England.  As I type this, he is in Minnesota headed to Indiana, then on to Colorado.  He texted me a bit earlier, saying today was a bad day and he’d talk to me later. Yuck.  Until then, he has sounded so good every time I talk to him. Better than he’s sounded in a very, very long time. But, gotta have a bad day sometime, huh?

Summer is passing quickly!  I took a part time job at our JoAnn’s store so I can get out of the house some and meet people my own age with similar interests.  That was one of the “deals” with Mike going on the road. He said I HAD to get out of the house some. Well, I love my job and am having so much fun!

We have a new care provider (aka “Nanny”) for Gregory, that also watches Felicity for me. She’s wonderful and has experience working with Autistic children. The kids both love her and it’s wonderful to come home from work to a peaceful house and not one of utter chaos.  She will be teaching both of the kids and I how to play piano and guitar. We are so excited! She, Felicity and I will be doing some sewing, quilting and crocheting, as well. Gregory is showing interest in crochet, so maybe we can even teach him.

The kids and I are hoping to make a trip to Albuquerque, NM sometime in August and then to Ozfest in Liberal, KS in October. Liberal, KS is the *official* home of Dorothy and “The Wizard of Oz”.

We are down to one chicken. Nonnie, our Serama pullet. She has become mostly a house chicken. She goes in and out with the dogs. We hold her alot and let her run free in the house supervised. Otherwise, she has a very large cage she calls home in the family room.  She even layed her first egg yesterday!  I have more Serama eggs on the way so Nonnie can have a couple of *girl* BFF to hang out with, besides us humans. Of course, she doesn’t seem to mind hanging out with us one bit.

It’s been so long since I have posted regularly on this blog. I miss posting and I miss all of my visitors and friends that post such wonderful comments here.

Here’s things in a nutshell:

• All my chickens are all being sold/re-homed for now. Two of our rabbits have been re-homed, and one to go.
• We’ve had a house full for the past month. Matt & Katie and Katie’s friend, Jane, will all have places of their own within 2 weeks and be out of our house. Matt & Katie’s 5 dogs will be leaving with them, as well
• We sold our land to Matt & Katie, and plan to purchase more at a later time, once we decide where we definitely want to permanently call “home”.
• Mike’s last day at Tractor Supply Company is today.  He leaves tomorrow night for CDL school and will then be an OTR (over the road) truck driver. This is something we have considered for over a year in order to get us out of debt, pay for our dream farm and build a nice retirement for us. He will be gone several weeks at a time then home for a couple of days at a time, but we will be fine. Our future is worth it in the long run.
• Felicity, Gregory and I will remain where we are in Amarillo, at least for now. Our lease isn’t up on the house where we are living until November, so we have time to decide where to go from here.
• Gregory is finally interested in potty learning!!! WOOT  He also is vigilantly working on new words and sounds every week!
• Felicity is doing fabulous, as always.
• My mental health is mending, with the assistance of a new doctor. She told me it will take a while, but she will get me back to “myself”. I’m ready to get out of this yucky funk I’ve been in for three years.

Ok. I think that covers every base. Get ready for next week.  The theme of our family blog will change just a bit.  See you then!  Have a great weekend!

Farmwoman over at Life on a Southern Farm is giving away on of the wonderful nest box sets that her dh, FarmMan builds.

Here’s the link to register for the giveaway…just leave a comment on her post
Register to win —-> HERE

Enjoy!

…when they scratch at the back door wanting to come in the house. ROFLOL

Seriously, we had the chickens out in the backyard for a couple of hours this morning.  I kept hearing a scratch at the back door and continually told the dogs to get away from the door that they couldn’t go out with the chickens.

THEN I realized the dogs were all laying at my feet while I was working on the computer.  I heard the scratching again and realized it was the darn chickens!!!! Gabe, Tuff, Charlie and Pierre.  CITY CHICKENS I TELL YA!!!!!

During the kids spring break, we went to visit with Curt (works with Mike) at his farm. Curt is helping mentor us with information and advise for our new farm. Here’s lots of photos…enjoy!

We were there for hours…we had so much fun!

Petunia, our Chihuahua, had her puppies last night, four healthy little ones.

Chicks are hatching as I type this.

I’ll post more details and photos later today or tomorrow!

I’ve been quite preoccupied lately and haven’t posted like I should.

I thought the best way to catch up would be to catch up with photos.

Here we go!

Here are some pictures of our farm. It is pretty much a “clean slate” for us to start with, just a small amount of clean up work. We will plant fast growing trees around the back and side property lines as a windbreak and also to hide the view behind us.

February 20 would have been my Mother’s 84th birthday. We had our first two Serama’s hatch that day. Felicity named the first to hatch Tina. I named the second to hatch Nonnie. That is what my Mother’s grandkids called her, and being her birthday, I felt it appropriate. If it turns out it’s a boy, we will call him Jack instead. Jacqueline was my Mother’s middle name.
This is Tina.

This is Nonnie. The baby chicks love Beanie Babies to nestle up to.

Here are the two of them together.

Gregory loves to hold the chicks and is a very good incubator monitor. Here he is holding Tina.

We also celebrated the birth of our first Naked Neck (Turken, aka Transylvania Naked Neck) chick. Her name right now is Liza, but if it turns out to be a boy, will be Curly.

Mike once told me he thought the Sicilian Buttercup chickens were pretty neat. Since they are on the critically endangered list, I though I would surprise Mike with some eggs for these chickens. He thought it was neat, but we figured we wouldn’t be able to keep the chicks, since they are LF (large fowl, meaning full size chickens, not bantams). Well, once we signed the papers on the farm, he decided he wants to keep them and raise the breed. Here are his first chicks to hatch this past week.

Here’s ONE ROTTEN CHICKEN, Gabe!

Yet another baby in the house, Bunny is her name.

I am participating in Judy’s Quilt a Long over on her blog at PatchworkTimes. Here are the HST (half-square triangle) sections that were the assignment for part 2.

Last but not least…a full incubator! 75 eggs inside!

Have a wonderful Sunday evening!

Ok, yes, I did have a 2nd hatch of chicks.  Just so happened they hatched the preceeding two days before Gregory landed in the hospital for four days.  A post with the details just kind of “fell through the cracks”.

Here’s photos of a couple of the chicks.  We had a total of 8 hatch. The last of the group, I had to help out and it died on it’s way out of the shell. I gave it chicken CPR and it started breathing again.  I loved on it and talked to it almost non stop for two days, but it passed away.  We have 7 living chicks from that hatch now.

Here are some photos from the hatch.

Charlie

Charlie also.

Another chick hatching

Ok, now on to our babies from the first hatch!

Tuff, Gabe and Kota both photos 1-11-09  13 -14 days old

Gabe 1-11-09  13 days old

Kota 1-11-09   13 days old

Tuff  1-11-09  14 days old

I’ll have some more fun photos tomorrow or Tuesday.  We discovered that Gabe loves Yahtzee and being include in family game night!

Well, instead of completely filling in about the past 3 weeks.  I’ll just pick up here and let you know everyone is finally healthy and things around the house are getting back to normal.

All is well again. Hopefully it will stay that way for a while.

I will be back to blogging on a regular basis again. I missed it!

If you are following our first hatch of chicks, the CHICKS ARE HERE!  Actually, one hatched on 12/28 and the other two on 12/29.

Click here for the first hatching post.

Two of the chicks I had to help out of their shell, rather, I had to hatch them.  Their air cells were very large and when they pipped, it was way down in the middle of the egg, instead of around the top of the large end where they know how to pip then zip themselves out. 

The first to pip, Tuff, pipped then for 12 hours was very active and very responsive to voice when I talked to her through the incubator.  But, at about 12 hours, she stopped moving and trying to get out and was almost completely unresponsive anymore.  She came right out after I broke away her shell and did fine.

The second to pip, Gabriel (was Gabby until we realized we’re pretty sure she’s a HE).  At 10 hours he zipped himself right out!  The zip line was right around the top of the large end of the egg, just as it should be.

The third to pip, Kota (short for Dakota), ended up in the same situation as Tuff.  I finally realized what the problem was, though, because I noticed the pip hole so far down in the egg instead of close to the large end.  So, after about 8 hours with her, I went ahead and broke away her shell.  As soon as I got a large piece off, she stuck her leg out and grabbed my finger with her toes.  She came out screaming and is still, by far, the loudest one of the trio.

Many people will disagree with me assisting the hatch of my two chicks.  I would rather help them and they not make it than sit back and watch them die because I didn’t attempt to help.

All three are doing awesome!  These chicks are Frizzle Cochin Bantams.  Frizzle means that their feathers stick out, as in grow opposite of the way they should.  These chicks all carry the frizzle gene, though it looks as Tuff is the only one with frizzled feathers.  All three have their feathers growing in rapidly on their wings.  I will be posting photos tomorrow or Thursday of current photos.

Here are photos of their births and shortly after:

Tuff fresh out of the shell (Gabriel has large hole in egg and Kota small pip in egg)

Newborn Tuff

Gabriel hatching

Newborn Gabriel

Kota hatching

Newborn Kota

All three newborns

All three in brooder 12/30/08

Here’s why we changed Gabby’s name to Gabriel….he keeps trying to crow!

Felicity and her chick, Gabriel

We have more eggs from the same person due to hatch Friday or Saturday!  We can’t wait!!! I’ll try to do better with posting about them when they hatch.