Popping in...

The problem with setting goals (at least blogging goals) is that I feel super guilty when I don't meet them.  Yeah, like that little goal of posting here once a week...you know, the one that lasted for about 6 weeks, and then I didn't post anything from the beginning of March until now?  And then I feel like I'm so far "behind," and there are so many things I missed...Sam's birthday and our Ohio trip and VBS at church and, and, and... Then it's hard for me to jump in and just post SOMETHING!  But anyway, here I am...popping in to say hi to anyone who might still have my poor neglected blog in their newsfeed somewhere. :)  I'm not even going to recap the past few months right now, I'm just going to ramble a bit for a few minutes and see what happens.

It's chilly here today, in the low 60s.  This is pretty rare for July!  We've had a pretty rainy/cool summer so far, with just the occasional day or two of hot, muggy weather.  I can't say I mind the cooler weather, though it would be nice to see the sun a little bit more often. ;)

And I also want to know WHY summer goes by so crazy fast?!  June didn't seem too bad, but July is flying by like it's out of control.  I have/had so many things on my to-do list for this summer, and there are still lots of them I haven't had time to tackle yet.

I'm sure everyone is eager for some kid pics, so we'll start with Miss Ari:

 This girl cracks me up so much sometimes!  One day she was tired and decided to lie down on the couch with her...blender?!  I posted this on Facebook with the caption, "What? Doesn't every girl snuggle with her blender when she gets sleepy?"

Another day this happened while I was vacuuming...she actually took a pretty long nap like this! 

Ari is now 2 years and 8 months old.  (Just another example of how time goes by crazy fast.) Everybody tells you the days are long but the years are short, and it's all too true!  She is becoming such a big girl these days.  I had two goals for her for the summer: get her potty trained and get her weaned (yes, she was still nursing once a day...longest I've ever gone with any of the kids!).  Well, I'm happy to say we have tackled both and accomplished both, before the end of the summer!!!  Yay, Ari!!  Oh, she still has the occasional little oopsie in her undies, and I still put a diaper on her at nights, but she usually wakes up dry.  I'm so proud of her.  It feels so good to have her at a more independent stage, and it also feels SO GOOD to finally be getting a full night's sleep almost every night!!!

The big kids are all having a good summer too.  I had planned to keep them going with some schoolwork, but that lasted until almost the end of June and then we took a break.  It's all good...we'll just jump back in where we left off in a few subjects and start fresh in others.  They did their CAT (academic testing) the last week in June and that went pretty well.  It's nice to be taking a break from school for a bit, although I am already in planning mode and have that on my mind a lot.  I will have an 8th grader this coming year, which means high school is looming, and THAT makes me a bit nervous!!  Here are a few random pics from this summer:

I got my hair cut in June, and later that week I bought a flat iron to play around with.  It's been fun to straighten my hair on occasion, and I can also make curls with it!  I like playing with curls on Julia...so pretty! :)

 When we got back from Ohio in mid-May, the bugs had just come out and they were BAD.  Julia was not impressed!  One weekend we worked on the flower garden and got it looking beautiful for summer.  My bleeding hearts were gorgeous this year!

 A little collage from one Sunday in May.  I received the beautiful bouquet from my secret sister at church!  Also, this was my first time doing a bun in Ari's hair...she and Julia loved having matching hairstyles. :)

 We got new chicks after we got back from Ohio.  Ordered 18, they sent 20, and 1 died, so we ended up with 19.  We had them in the house for a couple weeks till they got too big and stinky, and the kids had fun with that!

 Julia and Josiah each ordered 4 chicks of their own (different breeds)...Julia brought some of hers in her room to snuggle a few times.  I think she wished they would stay little longer!  

 We had a lot of rain/flooding in our area the weekend of July 4th.  We dressed up for the holiday for church that Sunday and got a few pics in front of the flooded river.  Down there where the flagpole is, there is a little amphitheater where the college does outdoor plays sometimes, and it was pretty full of water.  The church kids had actually been playing games down by the flagpole at VBS the week before!

 Less shadowed pic, but the sun was in their eyes!

 Family selfie

With that I will stop for now, because I have a kitchen in great need of some attention!  I'll try to post again soon.  Oh, it's felt so good to sit down and chatter a bit!  I hope all of you are having a wonderful summer so far!!

Links, Pictures, and More

I gave myself permission to take some blogging time today. :)  First, I posted in my pregnancy blog for anyone who's interested . . . and now I'm going to chatter here for a little bit!

I'm making homemade yogurt today for the second time ever.  I made 3 quarts a couple weeks ago, and it was so easy, and came out great!  I used Trina Holden's recipe found here.  I'm also trying a new granola recipe.  I tried a molasses granola a few weeks ago which was pretty good (Jim and I both liked it, but the kids didn't), and then a friend shared a chocolate almond granola recipe which is what I'm making today.  It smells really yummy!  I actually didn't have any almonds on hand, so I threw in a bunch of coconut instead.  And I used coconut oil instead of canola, and substituted brown sugar for some of the honey to make it cheaper.  Granola and yogurt is a nice, fairly healthy breakfast or snack, and I used to make granola all the time, but got out of the habit in the past year or so.  I really need to get back to it!

Another thing I need to get back to is menu planning.  Can you believe I haven't menu planned consistently since mid-April?  Oops!  Now that I have more energy again and actually feel like cooking more often, I need to make a plan. :)

We had 3 new baby chicks hatch this week, so that was the big excitement around here!  Our Henny Penny is such a good mama.  This was her third time going broody, and her second successful hatch.  Last fall she hatched 6 chicks (only 5 survived).  This time she hatched 2 on Memorial Day, then the third egg hatched sometime between Tues. night and Weds. morning.  The babies are sooo cute, and we enjoy the fluffiness while it lasts (because it doesn't last long!!).  Here are a few pics.  No names yet, but I'm sure the kids will come up with some soon. :)

These are the first two hatched:

 Then after we moved them all to the little coop for extra protection, this little guy hatched:

Jim is finally done with the work on his truck!!  It's put back together, repainted, and it looks like we might even have a working air conditioner soon (which would be awesome, since we plan to drive it to Ohio later this summer)!  Anyway, Monday was the day he painted it.  Our garage is under our house, so I spent a lot of time outside so I wouldn't breathe in too many of those nasty fumes.  With the way the timing worked out, he was going to need to put the clear coat on around 3 am the next day . . . so we decided that the kids and I would sleep in the camper that night.  The kids slept great, but it was a short night because none of us went to sleep till after 10:30, and Sam woke up (and consequently woke the rest of us up, except Josiah) sometime between 4-5 am.  YAWN . . . But at least we weren't breathing in paint fumes. :)  And after the two older kids got up and out of the camper, I went back to sleep for a while . . . until I was awakened again by Jim and Julia sweetly delivering breakfast in bed!  Meanwhile, Josiah (our champion sleeper) kept snoozing till sometime between 7-8 am, I think.  By afternoon, the rest of us were pretty tired and Julia actually fell asleep on the couch . . . and we got everyone to bed early that night!

Last weekend was a busy one, too, as I was working on sewing reversible aprons for graduation gifts for two sisters, whose party was on Saturday.  Here's how they turned out (some of you long time readers might remember that I made aprons from the same pattern for gifts about 4 years ago, too)!  The only "problem" is that I have always made these for gifts, but so far haven't made any for me!  I think I need to change that this summer, since some of my old faithful aprons are starting to fall apart. :) 

The blue one is my favorite . . . 

 But I also love how bright and cheery the pink is!

Julia will be getting some cute new skirts out of the leftover fabric from these, too! :)

One more link before I go . . . I think I raved in my last post about the Read Aloud Revival podcast, a brand new one that I am loving!  Through that podcast and site, I heard about this summer reading program, Traveling Through the Pages, that I am thinking about having my kids do.  It looks like a lot of fun--I just need to get organized and think of some rewards/incentives I could use. :)  

Well, gotta run and put leftovers in the oven soon for supper . . . so happy I don't have to cook tonight. :)  Hope you are all having a great week!

A post a day--Dec. 5: Quotable kids

Here are a couple funny things the kids said yesterday . . . too often I forget to record these things, so I wanted to do it while I still remember. :)

Josiah was looking for Julia last night before bedtime.  He thought she was hiding from him, for some reason.  As he kept quizzing me to find out if I knew where she was (I didn't), he popped out with, "Do you suppose she's hiding in the closet?"  It just cracks me up when one of the kids--especially him--comes up with a phrase like "do you suppose!" :)

As I was helping Julia put on her PJs, I commented that she was growing like a weed.  Her reply?  "No, I'm growing like a FLOWER!" :)

In other news, our Sleepy chicken died yesterday. :(  It wasn't really a surprise; we had noticed lately that she hadn't been growing like the others, and when I picked her up last week, she felt so light and frail under her feathers.  She hadn't really been acting lethargic, but Jim thought she wasn't drinking much, and we don't know if she was eating much, either.  Maybe her rough start in life was just too much for her, or maybe the colder weather was too hard . . . the other chicks never really accepted her, and while they didn't seem to pick on her, they also didn't seem to like her snuggling up with them to stay warm.  Poor thing . . .  When I went out to check on them last evening, I found her lying in the coop.  I don't know how long she had been dead.  It was hard to tell the kids, but they took the news pretty well.  Of course they were all sad, and Sam cried a little, but they got over it quickly.  She was their favorite chicken (of the new chickens) and they already lost their favorite from the old chickens a couple weeks ago when we had to put Buttercup down because she was sick.  It's been kind of a rough time for chickens around here lately, I guess!  Now we are down to 3 hens and 1 rooster of the new chickens (none of the hens are laying yet), and 5 hens and 1 rooster of the old chickens (and their days are numbered--we are only getting about 1 egg a day lately, and sometimes none).

Well, I guess I'll call this a randomness post, and hopefully whatever I write for tomorrow will be a little more focused. :)

Chicken Tales

I have so many things to catch up on in this bloggy space! One of the biggest "new" things around here is our little chickies. :) Here's the background story: Ever since before we got chickens, almost a couple years ago, Jim has been interested in getting the Buckeye breed of chickens, which were developed over 100 years ago in Ohio. They are a heritage breed and somewhat rare, and they are also supposed to be a great dual-purpose bird (meat and eggs). Plus they are supposed to be really friendly, and hearty--doing well in cold winters! Well, we had never followed through on this dream of my hubby's, instead getting free chickens from close to home at first, and then buying a few more Golden Comets to expand our flock. We have never had chicks, just full-grown laying hens and our big ol' rooster.

About a month or so ago, Jim got bit by the Buckeye bug again. :) He decided to order some chicks, and they were to be shipped just after Father's Day. Well, the big day came--about 2 weeks ago! And . . . out of 13 chicks, only 5 survived the trip. :( So that was kind of a big bummer! However, we were happy to have at least 5 little chickies to raise--the kids were thrilled, to say the least! (And the company is going to send replacement chicks later in the summer, also.)

Here are the 5 chicks when they first arrived!

The kids love them!!

We have been enjoying these little guys/girls (not sure which they are yet--hopefully they are not all roosters!!!!). One of them was kinda weak from the beginning. He would do weird things like stumble around backwards, had really bad balance, but then at other times would take off and run in insane circles around the brooder, jumping over other chicks and anything in his path! But he spent most of the time sleeping and wouldn't eat.

This is what he looked like after a few days--pretty scruffy!

We were afraid we were going to lose him, too. I knew we needed to do something in order to keep him alive, so I turned to the trusty Backyard Chickens forum (thank goodness for the internet!!!). I started syringe feeding him with egg yolk, and making him take drinks. Poor little thing was so weak . . . he would just lie there with his eyes closed while I tried to get as much yolk into his beak as I could. Eventually after more research, I discovered what was wrong with him--an issue called "wry neck" or "crookneck." He had a mild case compared to some chickens (older ones can get it too), but basically it's a vitamin deficiency that can be cured with Vitamin E and selenium. So we started some new things--syringe feeding vitamins 3 times a day, as well as syringe feeding watered-down chick feed.

Sorry for the odd lighting here--we took it at night without the flash, in the glow of the red heat lamp.

After a few days, he was getting stronger. After about a week of this, he was doing so much better! Growing, running around normally . . . it was amazing! And by last weekend he had started eating and drinking on his own, same stuff as all the other chicks. He is way behind them as far as growth and development, but he is doing great now! I'm so thankful. It might seem like a lot of work to put into a little chick, but I really wanted to try, and now I'm glad we did. He is a fun and sweet little thing, and we named him Sleepy, because of how sleepy he was to start with. :)

This is what Sleepy looks like now!

Now the chickies are over 2 weeks old and growing like weeds! It's crazy how fast they change from looking like little fluffballs to looking like little chickens. :)

All of the chickens (Sleepy is the smaller one in the front)

For a close-up size comparison, here is one of the other chicks--see how much bigger it is than Sleepy!

And now for another chicken tale: We have been dealing with a mite infestation in our chicken coop (which doesn't really have much to do with this story), but hopefully we can get that problem under control soon. Anyway, because of the mites, some of the chickens have not been wanting to go into the coop at night. They'd rather stay out on the roost to get away from the nasty little critters. So a few nights ago, we couldn't find Josie Pye (our Speckled Sussex). Josie is a bit of a loner, anyway--in fact, we have nicknamed her "The Lone Chicken"--so we weren't too surprised. She has stayed out all night a few times before, in a tree (or one time on scaffolding in front of our house!), so we thought maybe she was doing that again. But the next morning came, and we couldn't see her anywhere--normally she'd be clucking and hanging around the coop for food by then. I feared the worst, but figured if something had gotten her, it was no great loss, since she's an infrequent layer anyway, and marches to the beat of her own drum! After a while, Jim had gone outside for something, then I heard him laughing and calling me to come see something. There was Josie, stuck in a Hav-a-Hart trap that we had set to catch the pesky raccoons! Silly bird had spent all night in there, gotten rained on, and never made a peep (which is weird, since she's typically our loudest hen)! It was even more funny, because this is the second time she's gotten herself trapped in there . . . apparently she is not a quick learner. :)

The chickens certainly provide lots of entertainment for us! Hope you enjoyed these chicken tales from our little "farm." :)