A Little News

It seems like I haven't posted anything forever - we've been doing remodeling projects interspursed with going out of town and just in general being crazy. So here's a small update: the new garage is finished, the old garage that is now the new game room is not. Its progress hinges on the old fireplace in the adjoining living room which has been torn out getting put back together so we can have carpet installed in both rooms at the same time. I've been looking at 5,000 pictures of fireplaces to try to figure out exactly what I want. When you're starting from scratch, and you know you can do whatever you want, and you've had 12 years to think about it, it should be easy, but it's not. In the meantime, the whole house is a wreck with everything out of place. It's getting a little old, but I know it'll be nice when it's all done.

The kids start school on August 30th, so we're entering our last free week. We'll be doing school shopping and maybe a little room organizing?

We lost another chicken. We seem to be on a streak. We managed to keep 6 alive since chicks for 1 1/2 years, then now 3 dead in 3 months. This one was the most traumatic. We got home Friday late afternoon from Utah, and normally I would've checked on the chickens or had one of the kids do it, but for some reason I didn't, I was tired. So Saturday morning when Rob went to the pen, he found one chicken in trouble. Their food bin is a 5-gallon bucket that has a large plant drip tray screwed onto the bottom of it. There are holes cut into the bucket, so food from the bucket spills out into the plant tray. Well, the bucket was empty except for a little bit of food inside. Said chicken put its beak through one of those holes, trying to get to the food. Somehow it managed to get its beak stuck on one of the screws. In struggling to get free, it only got more stuck. By the time Rob found it, the screw was going entirely through its beak. No telling how long it had been that way. Brady, who didn't go to Utah and was the designated chicken babysitter, said the last time he looked at them was Wednesday. It was still alive, we freed it from the screw but it looked half dead. We hoped with food and water it might revive, but the other chickens started attacking it when we weren't looking (thus the cause of death of chicken #1), so Colby, our resident animal biologist, offered to kill it to put it out of its misery. Everyone in the family had a different opinion as to whether we should kill it or not, or how long to wait it out, but I'm the chicken mother and I couldn't watch it suffer anymore, so I let him do it.

Colby, who was famous for having rather long hair for the longest time, and would give me grief every time I made him get a haircut, now has asked me to give him haircuts. He's asked me like 3 times in the last month. He's wanted it shorter each time, and it looks great! Maybe he's growing up a little?

Well, that's all the news I can think of right now, maybe I'll be able to post some pictures one of these days. In the meantime, I enjoy seeing all the pictures you guys post - keep it up!