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.

No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, though some may think so.

There’s not been much exciting going on around our house right now, plus “writer’s block” equals no posts.

Anyhow, here’s what I’ve been up to.  I’m going back to work.

Conception and Beyond is a turnkey store for Momma, Baby and Young Children. The business/site is for sale. You can see it live at www.conceptionandbeyond.com. This business is being sold through my new web design business, www.workathomedesignworks.com

Most of my readers aren’t aware that I designed and manufactured a line of cloth diapering accessories a few years ago.  In 2006, I sold the business, thinking I really just wanted to be a Stay at Home Mom.  I’m coming out of retirement with a fabulous line of products very soon. I’m ready to “rock-n-roll”! I’m so jazzed about my new businesses!

Other than that, not much is going on around our house.  Too many chickens equals we re-homed 9 last week.  We have about a dozen more to re-home, but we’re waiting to find out if they are roosters or pullets first.

I’ll be back soon!

I have started another new blog, an autism blog.

Hugs by the Pound   Link is also in the far right column ——> over there

I will do a lot of updating on Gregorys successes over there and keep our daily life adventures here.

Please be sure to add it to your favorite blogs and visit often.

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!

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!

I received another batch of eggs from Lisa on Backyard Chickens (same place my other eggs came from).  They arrived Saturday, and I put them in 2 egg cartons in order to let them warm to room temperature.

Well, as I have told everyone before, Gregory is really fascinated with the eggs in the incubator. Soooo…. Felicity found him in the kitchen with 2 of the eggs in his hands. YIKES!  We put them back in the carton and moved the carton back on the counter away from Gregory’s reach.

Later in the evening, as I was checking the incubator temp and humidity….. I found 2 of the eggs already in the bator!!! GREGORY!!!  Well, one was fine but the other he had cracked, looks like he dropped it. BUT only the shell cracked, not the membrane and nothing was leaking out. So, we duct taped the egg and we’ll see if it develops. LOL  Gotta love my little guy.

So, all the rest of the eggs went in the bator late Saturday night…so 21 days from then, we’ll have more little chickies running around.

On Friday, Gregory actually started holding Tuff and Gabe. Actually picking them up and holding them!!!  I was so excited! That is an incredible accomplishment for my little sensory boy!

We’re keeping Tuff and Gabe from the first hatch and Charlie from the second hatch. The rest we will sell and place in good homes only.

Have a great Monday!

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!

Sorry I’ve been MIA. After a few way too long nights of finishing up handmade Christmas gifts, my mental health took a nose-dive.  I had a few days that I just felt blah and didn’t want to do anything but “nothing”.  I’m rested again and back on track again.

We had an AWESOME Christmas!  Katie was here with us the entire days/nights of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  That’s the first time since Christmas 2001 when Felicity was a baby.  She even helped out on the making of gifts, too!

Christmas Eve, we had our friends, Mike, Dorey and their dd, Stephanie over.  Katie’s guy-friend (not boy friend), Jessie and his 17mo old son, Coleman came over and I made homemade Vegetable soup and Muffeletta.  Everyone ate until they were stuffed!  Mike, Dorey and Stephanie opened their gifts from us.  Coleman did as well.  It’s pretty fun having a baby around to make Christmas gifts for. We enjoyed catching up with Mike, as he is a OTR truck driver and we don’t get to see him much. 

Christmas Day, we opened gifts, then went to Mike & Dorey’s for Christmas breakfast.  We opened gifts from them.  Then, since we were up so early to go eat breakfast, and were to bed so late on Christmas Eve, we went home and everyone except Felicity took a 3-5 hour nap.  I fixed dinner around seven o’clock, cleaned up the kitchen and our day was done.

I’ll add some Christmas photos to this post later today.

Hope all our readers had a fantastic Christmas!!!

We finished the incubator around 10pm last night and it took until 1:45am to get the temperature and humidity levels stabilized and where they should be.  The eggs went into the incubator at 1:45am on 12/7/08 for “day 1″.  Expected hatch date should be early 12/28/08. 

We used the directions from “MissPrissy” over at Backyardchickens.com/forum to build our homemade incubator.  Our ice chest is the same brand as hers, but looks to be about 1/3 larger.  I also had to bump up to a 40 watt light bulb in order to get the temps up high enough. The incubator is so large I could incubate 5 dozen eggs in there at once, easily. Hummmm.

Here’s the link to her instructions:

MissPrissy’s Homemade Chic Chick Incubator

We were all involved in the making of the ‘bator last night. Here’s photos!

Mike swears he doesn’t give a flip about anything to do with my chickens. Then why in the heck was he sitting there at midnight waiting for the temps to get where they need to be so I could put in the eggs???? LOL

Gregory checks out the incubator situation nearly as much as I do! :0)

Pardon the mess in my sewing room.  I am in the middle of re-arranging things to make room for my chicks and the incubator!

Our new members arrived today!

They have been removed from their voyage to us box and are now “resting”.