Look

Can you tell what this is?

Yes it is Z's first tooth poking through!

Epic Nerf Day

Over the past year, we have acquired several Nerf guns.  First, O got one for his birthday, then R, T and L got them for Christmas.  We had great fun having Nerf battles.  It has escalated to the point that we now have 11 Nerf guns in the family.

J can shoot them all by himself.

Every month my family gets together for food and fun, we call it FAT, this month we had an epic Nerf battle.  Little kids, big kids, adults all running around laughing and having a great time.  My sister even picked some up at a garage sale that morning.

(This is my sister's awesome chicken coop in the background)

Later that day, we had a birthday party for O.  And we had another nerf battle.  (T had to get a gun with more capacity before the second battle, have to keep up with the kids you know.)

This time they played capture the flag and again they had people from 2 years old to adult playing.   They had so much fun.

Target practice before hand

Don't Limit Yourself

The other day someone told T that I was amazing.  I have heard that before and I have thought the same thing about other people, especially my mother, and it gets me to thinking, "What makes us amazing?"  

Well obviously it is because we do amazing things, but how can we do amazing things?  Were we just amazing to start with and so we can do amazing things or do we become amazing by doing amazing things.  I think that we have the potential to start with, but it is the amazing things that we take on, that develops us into amazing people.  I will call them challenges.  (Some times they are trials, but not all challenges are trials).

My mother is one of the most amazing people I know.

(Here she is pregnant with my youngest brother, she was 46)

She bore and raised 11 kids.  She still takes care of me and my family when she comes to visit and does the same for my siblings.  She is loving, unselfish and Christ like.  I love her.  But as I experience my life, I see that I am much more amazing now than I was 10 years ago.  My capacity to do amazing things has grown as I have met the challenges in my life and worked through them, rather than limit myself.  When I had 2 kids I was completely overwhelmed and wondered how anyone did it with more than two.  Now, I have 7 and I can do it.  My capacity has grown.  

When T was unemployed several years ago, I had a drive to put a hair salon in our house.  As I pursued it, I came across one obstacle after another.  I would get discouraged, but I would think, "If I stop, then I will never have a salon.  If I plug away at it, eventually, I will."  So, I persisted and after about a year and a half, I had my salon.

There is a woman I know who's daughter was diagnosed with leukemia.  In a talk at church, she told how she prayed about this, really struggling to know why, etc. and the answer that she got was, to the effect that, it would be for the growth and benefit of her family.  She prayed how that could be and the answer came that it only would be if she made it that way (or something to that effect).  Basically, it was up to her how she met her challenge.  Did she let is crush her, or did she meet her challenge, with the strength of the Lord, and in the process, become stronger and more capable?

I hear comments from people that they could never do what I do, but they could.  They short change themselves and don't try, therefore limiting their ability.  They forget the words of their Savior in Mark 9:23-24  The Lord was talking with the father of a child with a dumb spirit, that the disciples had tried to cast out, but couldn't. 

"Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.  And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief."  If we come to God, our Lord who loves us, with our challenges, he will help us.  In fact it is promised to us in Mormon 9:21

"Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth."

So, my take away from all this is, it is by rising to the occasion, meeting our challenges in the strength of the Lord and not giving up that we become amazing.

(It really is just God's way of helping us to become who he already knows that we are.)

Bunny Was Aptly Named.

Bunny has been jumping over the fence. This morning D was going to look for peas on the pea plant and saw Bunny crouching by the car outside the fence so D  brought her in the fence.

Guest post by Daphne

Don't Smile

O trying not to smile for the camera.

How To Become The Favorite Child

T and I went on a date tonight and when we came home, the house was clean!  The table was clear and wiped, the toys were all put away, the floors were swept, the stove was clean.  D had worked her magic.
I love that girl.

Fun with Pillows

Yesterday my kids stuffed pillows in their clothes and ran into each other.   What is it about this activity that is so fun?  

Even Z was stuffed.

I remember doing this as a kid.  We called it playing fat people, but T informed me that is not longer PC.

I couldn't find the picture of me (I know is out there, I can see it in my mind), but I found these of my older siblings and friends

and my younger siblings.

Code Names

Since starting to blog, T and I have debated on the level of privacy to maintain.  We could just have private blogs where only our invited friends and family can access, or we could go anonymous and anyone can read our posts, or we could just put it all out there and have everyone know everything about us.  Since we have children the last one didn't seem to be a good option.  

We decided to go for the anonymous.  We talked to the kids about it at Family Home Evening and we all came up with code names. I will introduce you now.

Lily and Trip

Rez

Ocean

Daphne 

Mo the MM

Harvey

Julius and Zelda

If you would like to refer to us, please use our code names or initials.  When we named our kids, that was one constraint, we each had to have our own initial.  It is so handy.

In case you are curious, our kids were all born every other year.  Rez figured that out when Harvey was 1. He told me, "So pretty much, you have to have a baby next year."  Well, that isn't exactly how it works, but we did and then we did again.

Chickens

I love my chickens.  I have wanted them ever since we lived in Fremont 

and I found out you could keep chickens in Seattle.  But, it wasn't until my sister got some, that I decided I could handle them along with all my kids.  

Last year we got 3 chicks.

We named them Black Rose (black australorp), Fancy Pants (ameraucana) and Sunflower (buff orpington).

They were adorable little puff balls and grew quickly.

Black Rose is a week younger than the other two.

They love raspberry leaves.  Even now they love to be in the raspberry patch.  It is a good thing they are short, or they would eat everything in it.  Yesterday, I saw Sunflower (who is now much bigger) jump up to try to pick a berry.

 We soon had to build them a coop, 

since they were out growing the box in the garage.

The kids helped paint it.

They also love to perch in our rhododendron by the front door. 

 The day Z was born, we got our first egg.  With in a couple of weeks they were all laying eggs!

The big one is Sunflower's double yolker.  When she first started laying, she would give us one about once a week.  The dark one is Black Rose's and the cream one is Fancy Pants' (she was supposed to lay blue eggs, but didn't, in fact, she stopped laying after 2 months).  They started laying when they were about 6 months old and Travis put a light in their coop, since it was November/December.

I never knew before that chickens just lay eggs.  There doesn't have to be a Rooster around at all and if there wasn't anyone to eat the eggs, they would still just lay them.  They are the perfect food.

 Black Rose is our best flyer, as far as chicken's fly (which isn't much).  But she can perch on anything she wants and can fly from one side of the driveway to the other.

 They love to take dust baths and I have a hard time keeping any small plants growing because they get dug up and layed on.  They are as bad as a dog that way.

 Fancy Pants is very sweet and friendly.

 Sunflower is the boss chicken.  She turned out to be the biggest and now I know what they mean by "hen pecked" and "pecking order".  But, she knows that I am really the boss and she will let us sit and hold her.

Most days we let them out of their coop to free range in the yard.  It is really fun to watch them when they get out.  They run and flap their wings, sometimes getting a few feet off the ground.  Sometimes they jump on each other (usually when they were younger).  One time, I was herding them back to the coop (don't try to catch them, it is a lot harder) and Sunflower and Fancy Pants were in the above mentioned rhodedendron.  Sunflower jumped down first and when Fancy jumped down she landed on Sunflower's back and rode her for a few feet before she got down.  It was really funny.

 They are such great chickens, we decided to get more.

This year, instead of getting them at DeYoung's, we ordered them on the internet from www.mypetchicken.com.  After going to the fair and seeing all the chicken breeds, it was fun to get to pick out just which breeds we wanted and order them.  In March they came in the mail in a box.  We went to the post office to pick them up.  

Here they are in the brooder.

 They are Summer (welsummer), Lacey (barnvelder), Ginger (red star), Bunny (easter egger).

They grow so fast that they change almost daily.  

Ginger

 Lacey

Summer

 Bunny

I love watching the new feathers sprout.

These little girls also grew fast.  Soon, they were out foraging in the yard too.  They have very good camouflage.  Below are Bunny, Lacey and Ginger behind Summer.

We added an addition on to the coop that was separated from the big chickens, but later can be opened up for free access through out.  

The big girls did not take to well to these little ones and Sunflower would hunt them in the yard, following them around and pecking them, to let them know that this is her yard and she is the boss.  

I usually would only let the little ones out when one of us was out to watch them, since they were so little and helpless.  Once they were a little bigger (2 months), I let the little ones out unsupervised for a while.  But they were not big enough and when I came out Lacey was being attacked by a crow. 

 I scared the crow away and Lacey ran into the open coop.  Then I noticed that Summer was laying unnaturally on the ground and not moving. 

 I couldn't see any of the other chickens at all.  I eventually found Sunflower in the nest box.  Ginger hiding in the other nest box and Black Rose and Fancy Pants had found an opening in the fence and were in the lilacs on the other side.  I couldn't find Bunny anywhere.  I looked all around the yard, but couldn't find her.   I was so upset that I called T at work.  I then had to explain to H what had happened (the little kids were sleeping and the big ones were at school).  I told him that I didn't know where she was and that maybe a bird carried her away or she had gotten out of the fence somehow.  I was so sad to have lost 2 of our chicks.  We said a prayer and then looked around the yard again.  We found her in the corner, in the compost pile, under an old pizza box.  She had been hiding and still and silent for over an hour.  Chickens are not usually silent.  They were all nervous for a few days after that, but seem to have recovered.  Bunny is still very skittery.  I don't know if it is her nature or if it is from the trauma.

We waited for about another month before letting them out unsupervised again.  Then they were much bigger than a crow.  They are now 4 months old and almost as big as the big girls.  Fancy Pants has accepted them, she was the lowest of the pecking order before.  I opened the door between the coops wide enough for the little girls to get through, but small enough the the big girls can't.  Sometimes when the big girls were out, the little ones would explore the whole coop.  

 I knew that Ginger is a hybrid and bred for laying. 

 She probably would start laying at about 4 months.  So I needed to figure out if the two flocks would become one, or if I needed to make another nest box and put it in their side.  Since Ginger is maturing, she is less cowed by the big chickens.  She doesn't stand up to them outright, but she doesn't run away like she used to and she will go into the big girls side of the coop and look around, the others follow her.  All of the chickens are getting along better.  They occasionally will all be in the same area of the yard at the same time.  And sometimes they will be in the same areas of the coop together. The other day I heard Ginger making the "I layed an egg" bock, but I couldn't find the egg anywhere.  I looked all around the coop and yard.  A couple of days later I found two eggs.  They both were on the floor under the perch, like they had just fallen out while she was sitting on the perch.  Both of them had shells that weren't fully developed and were more like papery sacks.  After 6 days of no more eggs, this is what I found in the nest box.  Ginger's is the small one.  

 

I am glad she figured out where to lay it.

 Ginger, Lacey and Bunny

Black Rose and Sunflower

Fancy Pants