Back to Chickens again

THEY'RE BAAACK!

So this last year Clay decided he officially hates chickens. We've had chickens for years but this last year, well their free-ranging got on his very last nerve. Our first flock didn't really get on the porch for some reason. They were great. The only one of the porch were these rogue roosters that someone dropped off. Now THEY lived on the porch. And drove Clay crazy lol. There was one large rooster that hated Clay. Every time Clay would walk out the door he would crow and crow and crow. I loved that big ole rooster though and it was because of that that Clay didn't kill that giant rooster.

But this last batch of girls, well they just wanted to live on the porches. And if you don't know, chickens that live on porches, well they poop on porches. If they want to roost on top of your standing freezer they poop all over there. And that is a giant mess to clean up. It's unsanitary and gross and Clay was done. So this last year we went from a HUGE flock of chickens down to 3. And he was ready for us to get rid of those last girls.

But chickens are a part of every budding homestead. And after a year of really getting little to no eggs and really missing having home flocks of chickens and ducks, I miss it. And Frankie does too. He's my go-to poultry guy. He feeds, waters, catches rogue poultry and helps me deal with injuries. He goes out late at night if we're not sure we shut the coop doors.

So Frankie and I made Clay a deal. If he would buy the materials we would do all the work and build a large run outside our coop for the chickens to live in. He reluctantly agreed, but agreed.

So what did we run and do as soon as we got the okay? BUY CHICKS OF COURSE! I'll return tomorrow with some pictures of our set-up to show how to start with chicks but here's a few sneak peeks of the little cuties.

Horseback Riding Badge

So Cassie is an American Heritage Girl :) Today we went to a horse ranch with her group so they could work on their horsemanship badge. 3 hours of loads of girls, siblings and horses. Oh and gorgeous weather. Gorgeous. Love spring. So nice to just get out with the littles and enjoy the weather. A few pics from our fun day!

Cassie on the horse. In the car she thought she'd be a tad scared because horses are SO much bigger than goats but once she was in the ring with him she wasn't scared at all! In fact she put her foot in the stirrup and sprung up so fast the lady kept saying over and over that she acted like she had been on horses her whole life.


Cassie watching with her new friends.

Frankie with the BIG boy Breeze. He was so so tall. He was sweet at first. But there were these little girls who kept jumping and tapping his nose and bugging him that he was ornery by the end of the day and tried to nip fingers.

Who knew that Adric of all of them would love on the horses the most? That little pony just took to him. He didn't care too much for all the other kids but just kept sticking his head all the way out and loving on him the whole time Adric sat there.



Even Hartley hopped up and watched his big sister ride the horse around. Now of course he called them dogs :) "Dooog" So then I worked with him and he would say "hhh hhh hhhorrr". Right Hartley horse! Proud mom - of course until he turned and actually looked at the horse and said..... "doooog".

Always something for everyone to do at a farm. Pinecones? Definitely a great score.

And a couple cute baby doll pics.

So a family outing to the horse farm today and then off to Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and AHG meeting tomorrow.

My first 2011 Before and After and organizational rambles

Okay so the reality here is that I need to get this house in order. NEED. I've realized a lot about our life in our messy house lately and I have to do something about this. A messy, disorganized house causes more problems than I care to think about. But I need to keep reminding myself of them to stay motivated. In fact I'm pretty sure I will be working lots of these out for the first time right now.
Problems a messy, disorganized house causes:

• Husband stress. Husbands go work all day and when they come home, they expect their home to be a place of rest. Now our attitude as wives and how well (or not well eek!) we have trained our children contributes, but there is nothing relaxing about a messy house. There is nothing relaxing to your husband if he has to sort through a mountain of laundry on the couch for clean socks at 4:30 in the morning. Or not being able to find a clean spoon when he wants ice cream before bed. And don't forget the fact that he has to FOCUS to not be upset that he worked almost every minute of the day while the wife can't bring herself to find 15 minutes to fold laundry. Laziness in a wife is not restful to the soul of the husband who wants to respect his wife.
• Wife stress. I've said this many times here. I cannot feel at peace in my home. Why you ask? Well there is not a single place (okay actually when I show you my before and after there is now a tiny space) but for the most part there is not a single space where my eye can look and see anything other than WORK that needs to be done. Nowhere where I can look where I don't see what I didn't get done while I was on the internet or watching tv. Nothing where I don't see failure. Wife stress. Then there is the stress that comes from realizing you don't have clean pants for any of the boys for church. Or that 5:30 scramble to make quesadillas because menus aren't planned ahead of time. And for me one of the biggest... the stress that comes from feeling like my husband can't be as proud of me because of my laziness and lack of respecting him enough to take care of the house as he'd like (and my husband does not have high standards on this because he loves me so)
• It costs money! Things on the floor get ruined and need to be replaced. As do having all the cups dirty on the counter so babies get on chairs and knock them down and they all break. Clothes on the bathroom floor get stained beyond what can be fixed when walked on by mud-covered boots. Kids' shoes that aren't kept nicely on the shoe shelf get lots and a new pair need to be bought. Food left in a chaotic refrigerator goes bad and ends up in the trash. What a waste! How many things get bought only to 4 months later get found under someone's bed?
  
• It does not teach children good character. Self-control, diligence, hard work ethic, respect for things, respect for people, scheduling, all of these and way more are taught through the well-kept house.
  
• It does not glorify God when we are doing the opposite. Being lazy, messy, careless, reckless, slothful, destructive, all these and more are shown when a house is messy and chaotic. A house full of stress instead of peace does not show the wonders a family of God can and should be.
  

I'm sure there are 100 more points and if you have some I'd love to hear them. All those things plague me day in day out. And it causes pain and sadness. And the Lord is not content to let me stay on this path.

So my plan. While I am praying about how to best handle different issues like scheduling, etc. for the basics of the house, the Lord has showed me one of my major issues. There are two that I feel need to be tackled first.

First, that there isn't anywhere to PUT anything. That whole "a place for everything, and everything in it's place" blows up if you don't have a place for everything. Things get thrown here and there, things get piled up on side tables because no one knows easily and readily how and where to put things. SO I need to make a place for everything. Containers, baskets, decluttering, it's all part of this first part. My non-official plan to tackle this first part is to slowly work on getting areas of the house 100%. That means absolutely DONE. Containers, labels, paint if need be, all done. Nothing without a home in that area. Nothing not how I want it in that area. It will be slow going as I can't afford containers, etc. for all the spaces. I just can't. But a $3 basket here and there and it will get done.

Secondly, I have lost the sense of beauty in my home. I don't love the spaces like I should. I don't think everyone's house needs to look like a magazine but you should love your space. Peter Walsh, the rockin' organizer said once "Your home is the outward expression of what you value, what you enjoy, and what is important to you". For ME anyways, it most certainly holds true. So saving money for paint, doing some crafty things for the walls, etc. is on my list.

SO FINALLY... the reveal of the first TINY place that has been redone. The "blue desk" as it's called here.
Before: *note* this is SUPER clean compared to how it normally is. We had just cleaned it. But even then, when it was considered pretty clean it has t-tapp videos, maple syrup, a phone, a bowl, a notebook, lots of junk, and lots of papers.

Drumroll please................... the after
The colors in the pictures don't really tell but I painted the wall a pale icy blue instead of a dusty mocha. The middle basket holds my camera. The smaller basket holds Clay's stuff from when he walks in the door. I tried to get him to just not need a basket and put stuff away but my camera basket became his stuff basket so I needed to add one. Our little desk needs a new coat of dark blue paint. I also painted the inside of our front door a pretty dark navy (which is the leftover paint I will be painting the little desk here).

So there it is. With the addition of the calendar and white board I'm done with this space and pleased! One small victory for Kim, one large victory for our family.

The Declaration of Independence

If you haven't read this, or haven't in a long time, as we celebrate Independence Day this weekend in the US, now's the time. Click on it below and it will take you to a readable transcript. And hey, while you're there, take a peek at the Constitution, read yourself the Bill of Rights. Have you done it since High School?


Hope everyone is enjoying the freedom to assemble together with our families and celebrate this day. We're off to the July 3rd celebration at our church complete with food, fireworks, fabulous southern gospel band, fun crafts and fellowship!

Easter Pics

We snapped a few pictures for Easter. Goodness I love these people!

A family pic snapped after church:

This has to be my favorite picture of the entire day. Such love there.
My big boy and little boy:
Adric reached his hand up without any prompting. It was such a sweet loving move on his part. I will always love this picture because of it.
Look at this gorgeous dude!

The kids:
What 956 of the other pictures I tried to get of them looked like:
Hope you had a blessed Sunday last week. We did.

I think I can.. I think I can

Start blogging again that is. There's so much to talk about. Way too much to sit down and ramble about in one post. But I see changes coming to my blogging (IF I actually do blog of course. We all know that it's one "okay I'm going to start blogging again" post after another LOL). But I see changes coming if I do blog. One major one being talking about our homeschooling as well as homesteading. As of late I have been so inspired in the area of schooling and am excited to share what we're learning and doing. But for right now I'll throw up some pictures.

Wanna see our humble abode?

There it is. It's cute. And cozey. And country. And I love it.

Odds and Ends

A few minutes before bed to blahbitty blah blah.

A, have you been getting turkeys? Cheap turkeys? What? You haven't? It's pre-Thanksgiving time people. Right now at Walmarts all over the country there have been reports of 40 cents a lb turkeys. The turkeys have been around $5.50. Yeah 5 big bucks. Now there's a 2 turkey at a time limit. Over the last few days we've gotten 8. I sure wish I lived closer to town. I want 30 total. It's not looking good. But I've got my mom on the turkey hunt and she's going to be getting me 2 a day when they have them. Go Team Mom!

And in case you didn't know, turkeys are great. Yeah I wish I could afford nice free range turkeys (we raised our own this year, and unfortunately didn't take good enough care of our baby turkey poults this Spring) but at $40+ a turkey for free range, it's not in the budget. But 5 BUCKS?! Dude. And turkeys go so far. Far far far. See next paragraph. :)

So we cooked a turkey today. Actually it's me cleaning out all of last year's turkeys. We had a huge Thanksgiving turkey meal. Ahh the wonders of my mom coming and making homemade stuffing with sausage and mushrooms. Yum. But we ate loads of turkey. Then I stripped loads of turkey meat off. LOTS of it. And I put the carcass in the crock pot for soup. I easily have 2 full meals worth of shredded turkey meat. And more for soup. All those meals include a full dinner, lunch for Clay, and leftovers for us at home the next day. So that's how many meals? 8 meals in total? For $5 for the meat? Understand now why I want so many? 2 turkeys a month. Wouldn't want one every week cause we'd get sick of them, but every other week? Go budget, it's your birthday.....

What's that sound? You running to Walmart? Pick me up one while you're there eh?

*note* some Walmarts have been selling out of turkeys. The manager told my mom to call ahead of time. Might be worth a call if you live 30-45 minutes away like we do.

*note 2* if I were a cool blogger I would have taken a picture of the turkey and crock pot and whatnot. Does it ever feel ODD to take pictures of things like cutting meat off a turkey carcass? Sometimes it feels way too weird. When you're ripping tendons and hacking away at the turkey it feels pretty full of myself to take pictures of that grossness and feel like people will care about them. **Then I type out my post and wish I had taken the weirdness, narcissistic pictures to make my blog post look cool.**

B, Forget my old Last Hoorah post. I've had many of them in the last week. I'll touch on that Monday. Or late tomorrow night. Blasted weight loss. I hate it. Why can't I look like a goddess at 200 lbs? Why? Or live in one of those countries where they love their women fat? Now that, THAT would be nice. To weigh 200 lbs and be thought of as the most attractive woman in the room. Okay I don't seek to have men look at me, in fact I try to dress modestly so they don't. And the heavier I am the harder it is to dress modestly and feminine. It's not easy to find feminine modest clothes at Goodwill. So maybe the other country business would be even worse? um...No. It wouldn't. Where ARE these magical places people talk about anyways? And anyone want to make me some nursing jumpers or find some XL blouses for me at Goodwill? Okay. THis is it. So this is the LAST Last Hoorah Day LOL! Time to lose this weight. It wasn't so bad really. Some homemade stevia chocolate before bed. But let's not forget that I ate a plate and a half of Thanksgiving dinner. Even it being 5 hours ago and it was still Last Hoorah worthy. If I lived in that magical Fatland would I eat Thanksgiving every week? Do you think women specifically TRY to get fat there and being skinny is considered the state in which women are to strive to not be? That would be weird right? "Ew look at how skinny she is. Blech. Honey I love your fat." Okay enough. Must go to sleep. Can you see my tiredness morphing into madness? Eh... ignore my ramblings. This is just the tiniest glimpse into the rambling nonsense that makes my sweet rational, reasonable husband roll his eyes at me :) I love him.

C, Why am I up this late? Oh yeah, babies who don't sleep. Or prefer staying up until 1am and then sleeping til 9. I've never had a baby sleep through the night before the age of 2! And here I have this baby that sleeps 8 hours at night. But seriously me not being able to go to sleep until 1-2am isn't a huge help. I really need to buckle down and get working on him going to bed earlier. The first key is... NO, I don't want to say it. I can't. Sigh. Getting him *cough Me cough* up earlier.

D, Thanks mom for coming over and making a pre-Thanksgiving meal with me.

E, and because I read something that said people hate blog posts without pictures... I leave you with this. Garrison...
And that headdress thing was brought back from Egypt, real Egypt by my mom. Why Garrison is wearing it and why he looks so grumpy in all the pictures I found of him wearing it, I don't know. But it just feels like this post. That's what I should be wearing right now as I typed it. And I leave with that look on my face.

Sleep. Must. Find. It.

Wednesday's Visual Things To Do

Surprisingly I really enjoyed doing the pictures of the messy areas yesterday. It was quite motivating! I found myself working in things when I normally would be poking around on the computer. Be sure to check out yesterday's post as I updated as I went along. So.... we're trying round 2. But this round is scarier. Honestly. I have messes that easily trump the ones from yesterday. Ones that I cringe at the thought of taking pictures of. But here goes...

Blue desk Before:

Laundry take 2 Before:

Okay this one's going to hurt! The upstairs. This was just allowed to get totally out of control the end of my pregnancy and this last month with the new baby. Out. Of. Control. Thankfully I had Frankie take the picture and he didn't capture a good half the room lol! Sheepishly hitting Enter... Before: Status - DONE!

And the After:

Make quiches to have ready for tomorrow's dinner.

These three things I will post about here soon!
Reboot kefir

Reboot kombucha

Feed sourdough starter

Write out menu for the next week

Take shower. NO before here because an unshowered Mommy is not a good sight. Honestly.

Change sheets. We won't do a before of that because well... who wants to see my used sheets anyways?

Okay off to work!

Make and Share Monday & A Sweet Baby

Another entry for Make and Share Monday. Now I know that last month Kristy said she quit doing Make and Share Monday but I'm not one to follow directions. So pop on over to her blog and pester her about where her crafty Monday goodies are. While I'm working on some other crafty things, as usual I have some scrapbook pages to show. Honestly it's been beyond hard to find time to scrap this month, with the new baby and all. I also knit the baby a hat and I'll post that too :)

I was going to start with the scrap pages but man, this face..... I can hardly stand looking at it, it's so gorgeous. Here's two of the sweet things I made recently. This light blue knit baby hat and the lovely squishy baby underneath. If this picture doesn't make you ache for a baby, I don't know what to say.
Second, if you don't read with a feeder, you would have already seen my next crafty thing. I redid my blog template. I wanted to learn to do those static templates you see floating around everywhere. So here it is :)

It's been a while since I posted a couple scrapbook pages. Here's a couple of the new baby:

Everything from these layouts (and most of my blog design though not all) is from a great store called Scraporchard. The ladies there are super friendly and outgoing so if you're looking for a nice place to hang out and learn how to scrap and of course a great store filled with amazing scrap goodies, SO is on that list! I'm actually a team member there and have been blown away by just how wonderful the ladies that call that their scrap home are. I've worked at a number of digital scrapbook stores, but honestly from the minute I started on the team there I've really been overwhelmed with how good hearted everyone is. Was a HUGE added bonus for making it on their team.

If you have any questions about digiscrapping, he sure to comment and I'll answer next Monday. I'm going to start work again on some tutorials about getting started scrapping. Until next Monday...

Homeschool Science *warning dead animal picture*

Who needs a Science book when Daddies come home with this beauty found dead in the road. Note..... picture of dead owl ahead. In theory Gramma you won't be reading this since you saw the title first thing. Hopefully...

Originally when they saw it in the road they thought it was a hawk and threw it in the back of the truck. But when Clay brought the kids out they saw it was an owl. The kids were wide-eyed as they looked at the claws and beak. Cassie, our resident feather collector, got a huge owl feather to add to her collection. Clay and Frankie told the story about how there were two dead rodents right by the dead owl and how they looked like were run over together. Frankie felt like it told a "story" about how the owl was chasing the rodents and swooping down to get one when the car came.
Clay's face says "I'm holding a dead thing". Doesn't it?


Wow those claws really were something. Oh the creatures God has made.I think looking at the face is what made me feel sad that the owl was dead. Owls are amazingly beautiful, so unique in the look of their face. It was fascinating and sad at once.

While he supposedly brought this for the kids to see, the most excited to check it out was Daddy. It made the children more excited about it. As parents we really need to show excitement for learning for our children to have excitement for learning. Clay and I searched online until we found out what kind of owl it was. The children were most excited in this whole process when they saw a picture of what the own looked like alive. Their little brains put it all together then and I could see light bulbs go off. It is a Spotted Owl.

Clay then went to throw the owl off into the woods. Somehow he managed to get it stuck in a tree. So there the owl sits on a branch overlooking the side road. I don't even want to know what it will look like in a month. Eek.

Honestly I hate to see such majestic creatures getting killed in the road. But it's important to seize these little learning opportunities when they come.