Chicken updates.

Update: Chickens still alive, Friday still insanely interested.
If it's been a while since you've seen them, here is a little montage of their progress so far:
Gobbling aphids off some greens:

Garden Sucess!

Yay!
I've never been able to grow carrots before, and originally thought this year was another total bust. I took the carrots pretty seriously this season, amending the soil with washed sand and peat moss, everything I had read about. I also planted some radishes near the carrots, which made nice greens, but never any radishes. I figured the carrots were doing the same thing, sprouting nice healthy tall greens but not actually producing anything under the soil. So I decided just to dig them up and put the containers away. When I dug them up, lo and behold, I found carrots! My first real carrots!
Look at them so orange and tender!

Let's look at them with some perspective.


That's right. The longest was roughly 1.5 inches long. Like a barbie carrot. I guess not a total bust, but seriously?! It's like they are just teasing me.

The start of updates....

So, long time no blog, huh? Yeah. Well, as usual, I'd love to say that there is a good reason for the lack of updates, but there isn't. I've been reminded several times that I have a backlog and it's gotten to the point where there have been offers of babysitting in hopes that I would use the time wisely and UPDATE THE FREAKING BLOG. Ok... here it goes.

Think back a couple of months... back to say, easter. This was Miss M's first easter complete with an easter egg hunt so of course it was a well attended event. All the major sacramento players (grandpartents) were there, and Meeshmellow and Sir Buffington were also good enough to play along.
For the couple of weeks prior, we had been practicing egg hunting with Miss M, so she was pretty much a pro by the big day. (We didn't want her to freeze under the watchful gaze of all her spectators.)
Meeshmellow and I hid a couple dozen plastic eggs that had been dutifully filled with popcorn and other non-candy snacks. When I handed her the basket, I was pretty sure she would look and find a couple and then give up.... but oh, no.















She was very thorough! She kept going until her basket was full, and then some. After every egg was accounted for she started opening them up, finding all the yummy goodies and... wait for it... feeding them to the dogs.

Besides giving the dogs snacks she occupied herself trying to kiss Pebbles, who wised up pretty quick:

At least the finding part was a success!

Rebellion

I doubt that I am what anyone would call..... rebellious.
But lately I've found it oddly entertaining to sit in the coffee shop with my little laptop, sipping my overpriced frilly coffee, grading papers with my little red pen, acting all teacher-y ... but secretly I'm listening to gangsta rap very loudly on my headphones.
Caffine and Jay-Z is my new breakfast of champions.

That "Thing" we've got going

Recently, when I mentioned to someone that we had added chickens to the family, they said "well, that makes sense, considering the whole thing you've got going on."
It left me kind of wondering, what does she mean by thing?
Did she mean the circus we've started that combines dancing chickens with a fork yielding toddler? No?

Did she mean the research lab that examines how long you can survive on popcorn alone and if the duration is the same for chickens? No?
So I'm not exactly sure what she meant, but I bet it's cool.
And by cool I mean totally sweet.

Bird is the word

Now Everybody's heard about the word, bird, bird, bird, bird is the word.
It's official, we've made a couple of additions to our family. After multiple chick crisisies (or is that crisis's...crisisi...what is the plural for crisis? Answer: If you are having more than one crisis at a time, you are to busy to care about correct plurals. The end.)... ok, after a series of crisisies....M, Grandma Nancy, Kathy and I were able to finally procure 2 chicks.
At the store there were all kinds of breeds but most breeds only had roosters left. We still had a few choices though, and after consulting Mr. Zimny via phone, we chose a Silver Lace Wyandotte and a Danish Brown Leghorn.
When they are grown, they will hopefully look like these:

(Silver lace Wyandotte) (Danish Brown Leghorn)

But right now, they just look like this:












See the resemblance?














The dogs didn't notice them until we pointed them out and Miss M just wants to kiss them (and poke at their eyes). Mostly they just peep around do chicken stuff like peck at things. They are as yet unnamed. Suggestions have been made, and right now it stands between the Omlet and Over-easy camp and the Terry Hatcher and Deborah Winger camp, although I like BZ's Captian Cluckles..... we'll see.

Spring Break 2009

Miss M and I spent last week at the cabin with Grandpa R.L. and great-grandpa Porter. The whole week was nice and relaxing, filled with rain, popcorn, fires, and long walks.
M liked all the attention and getting hauled around town on grandpa R.L.'s shoulders. We also took a couple of morning walks in Armstrong woods. M got to hear a real cow moo for the first time and made friends with all the town cats. She also fell a couple of times and got a goose egg and a shiner... but um, er, did I mention that she got to eat her weight in popcorn and that she met some cats? 'Cause she did, and it was way cute and way more important than those bruises....really, it was.

We went to the beach where M got to try out her sandcastle skills. Let's just say she is much better at the "take a whack at the tower and then stomp on it when it falls over" skill than she is at the "build a tower" skill. We were able to see Grandpa R.L. surfing and he tried to explain some techniques to M.




















It was a great week and something that we all decided should happen more often. But