UNIBOOB?

I found this adorable picture Ben drew for Kindergarten. It's a picture of our family. I love the 3 fingered hands, and the 3 toed feet. Reminds me of our chickens. I also love the twiggy looking hair on the girls and the super large eyes.


As I realized which person was ME, I figured he'd drawn me anatomically correct, but with a uniboob. That made sense, since he doesn't see me without my clothes, it would seem I just have a big padded uniboob. I asked Damian for his opinion on the matter and he said, "No, that's probably your big HEART." When I asked Ben he said, "It's your TUMMY!" Apparently, I'm the only chubby one in the family. Dang it. I preferred the UNIBOOB!

Uncle John & Amy

My brother John and his sweetheart, Amy came to visit for almost a week. We were all so excited, making plans to take a day off school to see Crater Lake or go to the coast. They arrived late Tues. night and Wed. morning, Ben, Rachel and Katrina were all sick! The kids did take the rest of the week off of school, but mostly napped and laid around.

Luckily, Amy went to college in Ashland and she showed John around. I did get to see "Whip It!" with them and I loved it. I think I might take up RollerDerby in my next life. Fun stuff.

John and Amy went to Emma's Volleyball Game and John helped Em with her math homework. He tried to get the sick kids to drink local mineral water and made them all laugh. He played "Quip It!" and we all laughed together. It was so fun to meet Amy and see them both. Hopefully, next time we see them we'll get to visit them in Alaska!


And just so you know, John is preparing to be "Dwight" for Halloween (Amy will be "Angela.") John's glasses are perfect and now he's growing the chops & front part "bangs." We miss you already and the kids are finally starting to feel better! I sure how neither of you get it!

Cousin Birthdays

I have been such a blog slacker. I have quite a few nieces/nephews that I didn't honor on their birthdays.

These cute boys are my Ben and his cousin, Marcus (the Birthday Boy!) And in the bottom left corner is another nephew, Ashton. Ben's best friends, other than Josh are his 3 boy cousins.

Marcus and Ben are taking gymnastics together and Ben loves his little buddy. Marcus is a fun, loving, spunky guy. He's so handsome and smart. He's sweet to his baby sister and a good friend. I enjoy having him over. He says the cutest things. Happy 4th Birthday to Marcus!

This little Sprite is my neice, Lucienne. We call her LuLu or Luci. She's adorable. She just turned one and got her first haircut. I liked the mullet, but apparently, I'm the only "Mullet Lover" in the universe.

She is a tough kid that can take some rough play. She's fiesty and cute and I'm enjoying getting to know her little personality. Love you, Lu!

Chicken Update

We started our Chicken Farming Journey with 6 chicks. Re-read about them HERE (and notice their poultry pedicures) After a few months, we bought 4 laying hens to start getting eggs. To see the Hens in their $500 hen-house click HERE.

As our chicks aged, we discovered 5 were roosters. Of all the bad luck, I tell you! Damian killed one with his bare hands by slowly strangling it to death. It was creepy and weird to watch that, and not the most humane way to kill an animal. He plucked it and cooked Rooster Soup. It tasted fine, but none of the kids would eat it. And I couldn't bring myself to eat seconds.

We needed to get rid of the rest; they picked on and ate more than the hens and their crowing drove us bonkers. Whoever said roosters only crow when the sun comes up was wrong! Roosters crow BEFORE the sun comes up and all day/night long.

Damian didn't have the heart (guts) to kill more by strangle method. Apparently, the best way to kill a chicken is to chop off it's head or swing the bird by it's neck, using the weight of it's body to snap the neck. So we argued. I wanted the other 4 roosters gone, but Damian didn't think it was right to kill them if we weren't going to eat them. So one by one, he'd put them in a bag and let them out in the woods on his way to work. He figured if an animal ate them, at least they weren't going to waste. I thought that was cruel, but was thrilled they were gone. Eventually, after leaving 3 in the woods, he killed the last one with the neck snapping method.

Now we were down to 1 grown chick, Katrina's "Shelly" and 3 laying hens, because 1 of our 4 hens died from heat exhaustion or something!!?? After starting with 10 birds, we were down to 4.

Katrina's "Shelly" recently matured enough to lay eggs. Teeny Tiny Eggs. They are so cute. Katrina is holding a jumbo egg from an OLD hen, and "Shelly's" first egg on the right.


We get between 2-4 eggs a day. We have one hen that flies and each day she'd fly out of the coop and lay the light blue/grey egg in a bowl on our back porch. We got tired of all her poo everywhere, so we put a net over the coop yard, rather than clipping her wings. I just like looking at "Shelly's" little tiny eggs. Soon, she'll start laying one everyday and it'll be normal sized.

Webkinz World

I have slight OCD behavioral problems. I get a little obsessive about something for short periods of time. Sometimes it's scrapbooking, sometimes watching movie after movie, sometimes it's craft projects, but right now it's WEBKINZ.

WEBKINZ are stuffed animals that cost between $7 and $16. They come with a special code that allows you to access the same animal in a virtual world. I've been obsessed with going on my kids accounts whenever I have free time (or time I should be doing something else) and earning them tons of "Kinzcash." I use this online money to buy them cool house assessories . . . I made Ben an awesome backyard and schoolroom in his "house." I bought Katrina an indoor movie theatre, complete with concession stand, plus a great backyard. If I tried to analyze why I spend time doing this, I think I'd like to blame this on the fact that I want a great backyard myself, so I'm getting a virtual one on WEBKINZ? I don't know. I'm weird.

As I write this, I realize it's been about a week since I've been on WEBKINZ, because my brother Jon and his sweetie, Amy are in town and I've been busy getting ready for their arrival, so maybe the obsession is over?!

As I was tidying up the house, I went in Katrina and Rachel's closet to gather their laundry and found this little display. They had set up all their WEBKINZ pets (and a few of Josh's) for "school" I think. I thought it was so cute. Altogether, we have 22 WEBKINZ, so 6 aren't pictured here. I don't know where these kids get their OCD behavioral problems.