Baby Pictures

I just wanted to post a few pictures of the chicks.  They are already growing so fast.  When we brought them home, of the four tiny ones, only the black one and started to get feathers.  Now all of them are getting feathers.  Wow!  Still no names for them.  I don't want to give them some kind of complex.  (I felt so bad calling Miss Biddy by her name when she turned out to be a rooster.  I hope we didn't create gender issues for that poor chicken.)  Absolutely no names for the chickens until we know if they are roosters or hens.  My hand is behind them in most of the pictures to keep them from jumping off the top of the brooder box.  The silly chickens are still learning with whom it is safe to be.

I think this one is the oldest of the bigger chicks.  It has the biggest comb and I noticed this morning that its waddles are starting to grow.

You can see the missing toe better in this picture.  My Little Warrior thinks that this one should be called "Toeless" no matter what its gender is.  I think not.

Look closely.  You can just barely see this chick's wing feathers.

Who'da thunk SPRING would be hiding in the bathroom?!

I love winter!  I love the snow and the cold.  In fact around mid-October I am so ready for the snow to come that I start to look forward to it.  (I'm also so ready to be done harvesting and canning that winter seems a welcome break.)  By the end of February, I can think of nothing but the coming of spring.  Spring breathes new life into my weary soul.  This has been a particularly bleak winter, so I started watching for signs of spring much earlier than I usually do.  It seems to be taking so much longer to get here this year.

There have been exciting little glimpses of spring throughout the month of March.  The garlic the Man of My Dreams and My Little Warrior planted for me last fall poked it's little green heads through the top of the mulch and the crocuses started to bloom.  The symptoms of spring have been around, but the actual event has seemed to elude me.  Last week as we packed up "Bubba" to head for St. George to a dance competition, huge snowflakes started to fall.  In November or December, snowflakes of this magnitude would have put me in a wonderful mood for the whole day.  On this cold morning at the end of March, the falling blanket of white, did nothing to improve the temperament of this already frustrated mother.  St. George was not warm and sunny, it was cold and rainy.  We returned to find winter trying to grab a final choking hold on our world.  However, when I went into the downstairs bathroom that night, I discovered the irrefutable sign that spring has arrived -- ANTS!  Never in my life have I been so happy to see ants crawling around in my house!  I almost cried.  If the ants are awake, it is spring.  Spring must have crept in and forgot to send winter on it's way, but it has definitely come.  So today, I thank Heavenly Father for ants in my bathroom.  (Of course, I swept them up and sent them outside, but they were there.)

Yesterday, as I was working with My Little Warrior and My Swimmer (A.K.A. My Silly Girl) on their school work and getting more and more discouraged by the second, I got a text from The Man of My Dreams.  It read, "If you are out & about, you should get chicks today." 

To this, I replied, "Why?" 

He said, "Idk.  I just had that thought go through my mind & it feels right." 

I said, "Ok.  I'm not out, but I can go get some if you want."

So I sent My Swimmer off to her water polo game and My Little Warrior and I jumped into Bubba and headed to IFA.  I was not ready for chicks yet.  I wanted to wait until they had lots of older chicks to choose from.  I did not want brand new chicks.  I didn't want to get chicks until late April or early May.  My Little Warrior, on the other hand, has been begging to get chicks since February 16.  That is the day that this year's first chicks arrived at IFA.  He was sooooooooo excited when I told him where we were going and for what purpose.  As we walked through the door of the store he said, "Do you want me to get someone to help us?"  I told him that I needed to decide what I wanted first.  So we looked at all of the older chicks.  They looked a little haggard -- probably just because their down was changing to feathers, but I wasn't very encouraged by the selection or their appearance.  I finally decided that we would get four of the older ones and four little ones.  I decided that we would get two white and two brown striped from the older chicks.  Yet somehow when the girl was getting the chicks out we ended up getting two white, one brown striped, and one black chick.  (My Little Warrior just couldn't let me pick them all.)  Of the brand new baby chicks, we got two Ameraucana (Easter egg layers), one White Leg Horn (I can't help picturing Foghorn Leghorn from Looney Tunes when I hear this breed's name), and one barred Plymouth Rock.  They are absolutely darling.  They are fun to watch, but I'm not feeling the excitement that I felt over last year's chicks.  My Little Warrior is terribly excited and loves them.  I have to keep telling him to stay out of the brooder box.  I know his intentions are good, but it is just too cold for the chicks to have the door to the brooder box opened unnecessarily.  (I had to sneak out there to get some pictures because I didn't want him to know I was opening it "unnecessarily", too.)

Here is our original flock:

Bertie & Alice

Alice (who likes the camera), Lucy, & Ethel

Beauty

Here are some pictures of our new little ones:

These are the brand new chicks -- left to right:  Plymouth Rock, Ameraucana, White Leghorn (yellow), Ameraucana

These are the older ones.

This chick -- the one standing up tall -- was the one I wanted the most.   (I think it fits into our flock well.)  If you look right below the white chick's beak you'll see that the tall chick is missing half it's toe.  For some reason that made me love it.

The older black chicken that My Little Warrior chose.

The older chicks -- from above

This video is nothing exciting, but the sound of their peeping is too cute to miss.

 I have so many other things I want to blog about, but it will have to wait until I have time (maybe when I'm 60.) 

No, Virginia, there is not a Santa Claus, but may the Force be with you.

Wow!  Where do I start?  Life has been so crazy that I haven't had time to write anything for a long time.  I'll try not to get too wordy, but I'm not guaranteeing that.  Sorry, no pictures this time.

Jingle All The Way
When I was a kid Christmas was almost more excitement than I could bear.  I was a little booger about Christmas, too.  I hated waiting for Christmas to come to be able to know what all those presents accumulating under the tree were.  I remember the Christmas that I was 13(?) we were living in the underground house in Declo and we had gotten a big package of presents from Grandma and Grandpa Carter.  All the presents were wrapped when they came and Mom & Dad had put them under the tree.  I seemed to do a lot of babysitting for my parents that year because in my memory they were always gone.  I became expert that Christmas at opening the presents without making them look opened.  I didn't just open my own presents, either, I opened everyone's presents. I knew what all of those wrapped presents were way before Christmas.  Even knowing what all the presents were, I still couldn't get to sleep on Christmas Eve.  That was nuts!
Christmas started early at our house, too.  We were always up by 5:00.  Sometimes we had to wait for Dad to get done milking the cows or come home from working a graveyard shift.  When we had to do that, Mom always had us breaking up bread for stuffing.  (To this day, I always get a "Christmas morning" feeling when I break bread for stuffing, no matter what time of year it is.)  That's how she kept us from going out into the veritable wonderland that our living room had transformed into in the middle of the night.  I'm not sure how my Mom managed to not kill us on those Christmas mornings.  She couldn't have gotten more than a couple of hours of sleep after putting out our presents, but I don't remember her ever being angry at us on Christmas morning.  Sadly, I cannot boast of such a quality in myself.  Around here, it has traditionally not been the children who are excited for Christmas morning and waking me up for presents.  It has almost always been The Man of My Dreams.  Most years I wake up to, "Can we wake up the kids now?"  (My Little Warrior has beaten him at waking up the last couple of years, though.)  This year I thought maybe we'd get to sleep in a little since everyone at our house was finally certain about Santa's identity.  Was I ever wrong!!!  I think My Little Warrior started asking if he could wake people up at 3:00!  We made him wait until the much more decent hour of 5 or 5:30.  I don't remember.  It's all a blur.
Our biggest Christmas surprise this year came on Christmas Eve.  That evening, there was a knock on the door.  Assuming it was a neighbor dropping off some wonderful Christmas treat, My Little Warrior and My Silly Girl raced to the door to be the one who received and the one who handed out our little neighbor gift.  (This year we handed out "Cowboy Bubble Bath," which is actually a bag of dry beans with instructions to eat them two hours before bathing, to eat lots for better bubbles, and to bathe alone and away from open flame.  Our intention was to make deliveries, but we ended up only passing them out at the door to anyone who came by.)  I also went to the door.  Somehow, I managed to get there first and when I opened it, there was a man dressed in black with what I thought was a Storm Trooper helmet on his head.  (I have been informed that it was actually a Clone Trooper helmet.  Does it really matter?) On my porch next to him was a huge box.  He said, "Is this the Mudrow house?"  I said, "Yes."  My Little Warrior hadn't registered that something was not normal yet and handed the man our gift.  In return for our bag of beans which he dropped into a big black bag that he was carrying, he handed My Little Warrior an Ipod Touch, reached into his bag and handed him another Ipod Touch and another and another.  I just stood there completely dumbfounded (literally.)  He said they have names on them.  Then he handed in a Wii console, an extra controller, a Toy Story Wii game, and a huge package of batteries. As if that wasn't enough, he started pushing in the huge box, which finally registered in my brain as a very large TV.  The Man of My Dreams had joined us by this point and he had more presence of mind than I did.  He asked, "Who can we thank for this?"  To which the Whatever Trooper replied, "the Galactic Alliance.  Merry Christmas."  Then he walked away into the night.  (If we had been in possession of working brains, we would have watched where he went, but that was not the case that night.)  As I closed the door, My Little Warrior was losing his mind with excitement.  The Ipods all had one of my children's names etched onto the back of them.  I am still flabbergasted when I think about that night.  One part of me was astonished.  Why would someone do this for us?  Another part of me was frustrated.  Why would someone do this to us?  (I am anti-gaming system and now all that I had done for my family for Christmas paled in comparison.)  Another part of me was just completely baffled.  How could someone afford to do this for us?  I am completely embarrassed to admit that on that night and for probably a week or two after, no part of me was grateful.  Looking back now, I am.  It was very kind of someone to do that for our family.  My Little Warrior told me that night that he had been praying we would get a Wii for Christmas.  I am grateful that the Galactic Alliance was listening to the Spirit so that my son's prayer could be answered.  That particular tidbit of revelation would never have found it's way into my heart or mind.  So, Galactic Alliance, thank you wherever you are.

Five A Day
As days grew shorter and colder my chickens stopped laying.  Only Alice was still giving me an egg any more.  I figured it was just because it had been so dang cold.  The Man of My Dreams was concerned that the chickens were going to freeze to death.  He wanted to install a heater, but I assured him that the chicken coop was staying warm enough.  My Little Warrior was worried because all the chickens who had stopped laying were molting.  He didn't know what that was.  All he knew is that they had no feathers only the pointy quill things sticking out of their necks.  I kept telling him that they were fine, but he was clearly concerned.  It finally dawned on me that it wasn't the cold that was keeping the chickens from laying and causing them to molt, it was the length of their day.  Everything I had read when we first got the chickens said that they stop laying in the winter because they don't get enough light.  So, we decided to light the chicken coop.  The week after Christmas, we rigged up the heat lamp that we used when they were just chicks.  The first few nights, I'd go out and unplug the lamp.  Since then, we have just been leaving it on all the time.  (It looks like a party in the hen house all night long.)  All the chickens who had previously been laying slowly started laying again.  Lucy was still not laying -- she had never started.  ThenTwo Sundays ago, I got five eggs!  I was so excited!!!  Since then, I have gotten four or five eggs every day.  Who'da thunk that all those people who wrote those books knew what they were talking about.  I was fine just waiting until spring to get eggs, but for some people around here, it is all about the eggs.  If I lived in the chicken coop, I would be a basket case by now -- I cannot sleep with the light on -- but the chickens seem to be handling it well enough.  So if you can't sleep at night, there is always a party going on in my chicken coop.

Payback After All These Years
When I had My Princess almost 16 years ago, I had a C-section.  We had some really good friends, who came to visit me in the hospital and see our little Rarah, as her not-so-big, big brother called her.  It was during their visit that I discovered the absolute pain of laughing after your stomach has been cut open.  The Man of My Dreams found this to be VERY amusing, and did all he could to make me laugh.  I swore someday I would get him back.  (I have to admit, I found it fairly amusing, too.)  On Wednesday, I finally got my sweet revenge.  Tuesday, The Man of My Dreams had double hernia surgery.  (I'm not sure he wanted that to go public, so shh, don't tell anyone.)  On Wednesday, I went to the library and checked out some episodes of the Carol Burnett Show.  We watched them on Wednesday night.  Well, he watched them, and I watched him.  It was great!  "Oh! Ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh!  Ha-ha-ha!  Oh!"   Thank you, honey, I needed that.