Snapshots of the day

We had nice weather today for December, it was sunny and I don't know how warm but the girls and I spent quite a bit of time outside playing with the dog and cleaning up the yard and chicken house. I set the baby on a sheet and she happily scooted about (she doesn't crawl, she scoots) while I moved chicken litter from the hen house to the garden beds and raked leaves into the pen. I think I'll do fine this winter if we have lots of this kind of weather!

At one point I overheard Ellie calling Julia "Baby Chestnut" as part of some game they were playing. Sophie told her that was a weird name, to which Ellie replied "what else do you want me to call her, Baby Chester? Now THAT would be a weird name!"
Ah, the impeccable logic of the 6-year-old.

Anna now has an imaginary sister named Daisy that rides in her flower car and follows us as we drive around town. Anna has taken to shouting to me at regular intervals as I'm driving, "I see her, Mom, look, it's my sister right beside us in her car!" If I don't acknowledge Daisy, she'll just keep screaming at me until I do, which can be pretty distracting in heavy traffic. She (Anna) also refused to get into the van today until I pretended to take Daisy's hand and help her into her car. Just add that to my list of things to do.

The day was pleasant considering we started the morning with a fire in the living room. Tony got up early, and went into the living room, and screamed "Fire!!" which woke us up pretty fast. It was a mess. I guess I left a candle burning and it ignited the plastic tray of Julia's high chair which was for some reason sitting on top of the bookcase next to the candle and some papers. I could have burned down the whole house had it all ignited sometime earlier in the night, or had Tony not decided to get up early. It has made me painfully aware of our lack of emergency planning, so we're making a fire safety plan right away. I'm also going to get a fire extinguisher and replace batteries in the smoke detectors.

I leave you with a several months old but really cute photo of Julia.

It's been a bad blogging year

I've been meaning to get back to the blog for some time, but for some reason I just don't feel like talking too much these days. Several months have gone by with no posting, but a lot has been happening...

Eleanor became a 5 year old girl. :)

We discovered that same week that we are expecting a number 5 Jacobs baby. (Preemptive answers to the standard questions are...no, we aren't trying for a boy, no, we don't know if it's a boy or girl, and no one was more surprised about the baby than we were.)

The garden started out great, but suffered severe neglect when I began to experience the 24 hour a day nausea that has been my new friend for the past 6 months. I am anxious to start again this spring.

Tony became a licensed architect (way to go Tony!) and has managed to at least stay employed through layoffs and pay cuts at his office... we are very thankful for his job.

We said goodbye to Maggie the bear dog finally, it was a very sad time, and we still miss her daily.

Our lovely easter eggers began laying lovely blue eggs, before all of the chickens started molting for the season and stopped laying. We're really missing the backyard eggs!

The shrinking income and uncertain economic future would have us down, but we still have these:





And someone gave us this:



I will post more about that later. ;)
And then there's always Christmas around the corner



Life is good.

New Baby Chicks

We ordered four new chicks for this year. They are "easter eggers" which means they will lay very pretty blue-green eggs. As an added bonus, they have very cute puffy cheek feathers. They came in the mail four weeks ago, so this is a bit late, but here they are:

This is what they looked like when they came out of the box


This was last Wednesday, when they were 3.5 weeks old, and we took them outside for the first time


they aren't little puff balls anymore, but they're still really cute


they let the girls handle them


the girls named this one Turtle, she's the sweetest


this one is Sunshine, we think she will be white


and this is Bean


and Ivy


Anna with Turtle on her lap


The big chickens are spending most of their time in the pen we built them these days because they like to tear up the garden beds and we have seedlings in them now. :)


We are busy working on plans for a new improved coop so they will be more comfortable when they are all outside full-time.

Eggs!!!!

Well, Tony was looking out of the window this afternoon and noticed that there were only three chickens pecking around, so he went outside to locate the 4th and discovered Hyacinth was hanging out in the chicken hutch by herself. So, we opened up the side and found eggs! There were 4 in all, and it's been about a week since we've had it open, so we're not sure if she layed them all or if more than one of the chickens is laying, but either way, we have eggs. It was so much fun finding them. I didn't expect the cheeps to start laying until spring, but there you have it. Here are photos:

Hyacinth looking very pleased with herself:

The eggs in the hutch:

After we washed them off:

When I hooked the camera up to upload the photos I took of the eggs I also found this:

It appears that sometime since the last time I looked on the camera there have been chickens in the kitchen. I'll have to ask the kids about that...

Chicken on the Roof!

I've been wondering if the chickens were able to fly high enough to escape our 6' fence, and I guess we got our answer. Yes, after spending all day yesterday in their hutch hiding from the cold wind and snow, the chickens came out to stretch their wings this morning and Rosalind flew up onto the garage roof. We convinced her to fly back down, but I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. I think we might need to clip their flight feathers to make sure they stay put.

Here they are checking out the wood pile


And Margaret loving on Daisy

Shoe Update and Pest Control

We have a problem with shoes, mostly stemming from the fact that the three littles won't keep their shoes on when we go out. This is actually how we lost one of Anna's boots at church a few weeks ago. So, yesterday we were at church and sitting in the pew where we normally sit and Sophia had her shoes off as usual, and one of them got kicked under the pew. She got down and climbed under the pew to retrieve it and found a little pink furry boot under there with her shoe. It was patiently waiting there for the past few weeks for one of the girls to climb under there and find it, I guess. I'm pretty happy that Anna has both of her boots now!

Margaret found a rather big spider in the kitchen this morning and it wasn't anything poisonous (if it had been we would have just squashed it) so we did the usual and caught it in a jar to take it outside. Margaret took the jar out to the breezeway, where the chickens like to hang out on cold days (you can see it coming, I know) and she released the spider, which scuttled away into the midst of the chickens where it was instantly gobbled up by Celia. It was pretty funny. Chickens really are great pest control.

Thursday Update

Ill. Most of us are, anyway. It started with Sophia and has worked it's way through Eleanor and Anna and as of this morning, me.

The cough and runny nose did not keep the middle girls down, though. Yesterday afternoon in fact they strapped on parachutes (that is, pillows tied to their backs with scarves) and literally screaming all of the way down they jumped from a plane (the sofa) and landed face down in the middle of nowhere (the living room floor). It was so much fun that they did this about 12 times.

I've prompted Margaret to give an update to her play try-outs but since she hasn't I'll just say she got a part that isn't big, but I'm sure she's going to have a lot of fun with it anyway.

To get inspired for the Christmas shopping season, we watched a documentary called What Would Jesus Buy?
The Jacobs family review of it is that it was quite funny in places, a bit depressing in others, gives a lot to think about, and is (for those wondering) not necessarily coming from a Christian viewpoint. Having a simple and traditional Christmas shouldn't seem like such a challenge, but we need inspiration at times to ignore the pressure around us to buy, and just stay home and bake cookies.

Here are a few pics and then I'm going back to bed.

A beautiful pink unicorn, part of a series of animal drawings Sophia did this week, based on this book.


Our chickens have been spending the chilly days pecking about the leaf-scattered backyard and digging up what remains of the garden. Margaret's favorite afternoon past-time is going outside to chase the chickens around. They are surprisingly fast, and outrageously funny to watch!


Edited to Add:
I almost forgot, I actually gave myself my first black eye this week! In a surprising feat of clumsiness, as I was sweeping around the table and leaned over to quickly rescue a teacup that Anna was about to grab, I stuck the end of the broom handle in my eye. It really hurts, and it's pretty embarrassing, and I can't wait for it to go away. I'll skip the photo. :)

Chickens

They are now 2 months old. This was taken this morning, and the little voice in the background is Anna saying good morning to the cheeps.

Some More Backyard Photography (by Margaret)

Anna practices for the circus:

Another lovely sunflower shot:

The chickens are getting HUGE:

Just look at how this one towers over the house!


:)

Our Girls

The chicks (starting to look more like chickens):



Anna, hanging out:

Margaret, looking smug:

Eleanor and her flora collection:

Sophia found some honeysuckle:


Everyone is fine, Anna had roseola but she is fully recovered, we're busy and it's hot. Pretty much sums it up. :)

Another Lovely Morning

The garden is definitely a success. My goal was to grow something this year, and in that at least I have succeeded! Sophia fell off of some playground equipment yesterday and hurt her arm, I still haven't decided if we should have it x-rayed or not.

This sunflower was a volunteer, from some birdseed that fell around the sidewalk. It makes me very happy.

The cheeps are spending most of the daytime in their hutch in the backyard this week. I think they'll move out there fulltime next week. The one in the doorway is Daisy, she's so friendly!


Here is a shot of the hutch we (well, mostly Tony) built out of leftover fence wood. It still needs some finishing touches and then I'll do a post about it, showing all of the amazing features!

Mediocre Chick Video

Here is a youtube video we took earlier today. Daisy and Hyacinth both like to sit on the back of Margaret's hand. The quality is not so good, but you can at least hear their cute little cheeping.

More Chicken News and a Tooth Update

The chicks are doing great, they are now over 1 week old. They spent a bit of time out in the grass today, scratching and pecking. They pretty much have names now, the two most outgoing are Hyacinth (she's the singer) and Daisy. Sophie and Ellie have named the other two Rosalind and Celia. Celia is the little one that was very wobbly the first few days, but seems to be coming along fine. They all have some wing feathers now and a few tail feathers. We can still tell them apart by their markings, but their personalities are easier to tell apart all the time.

Here they are outside earlier today:




Anna's tooth is still hanging in there, hanging being the operative word :(. It does not appear to be reattaching at all, and I expect it will fall out the next time she bumps it. It really was almost completely knocked out when she fell, so we're not surprised. I'm trying not to worry about it and just be thankful she wasn't really hurt. I am sad at the thought of her little smile changing. Oh well.

Chicken Update

The baby chicks are doing well. We have them in the house right now, in a makeshift brooder which is a metal washtub with two lamps on top to keep them warm. They aren't very much work right now, but they can be pretty loud with the chirping sometimes. One of them in particular seems to like to sing really loud. The singer is the most active and jittery, while another is the most friendly.

Edited to add: We are a bit nervous that the singer might turn out to be a rooster. It's very hard to tell at this point, but she/he is definitely the most aggressive and vocal of the lot. :)

One of them is also obviously smaller and less active than the others, but she still seems to be doing ok.







The girls really like the shakespeare names the best, so we're leaning towards them (since there was no clear winner in the poll.)

Baby chicks

After the loss of Blaise, we decided that we needed to find some other sort of pet to keep and take a break from dog ownership for a while.

We do still have Maggie, but having Maggie isn't really that much like having a dog anymore. She has arthritis so she doesn't really run around, she can't jump up anymore, she doesn't chase her beloved frisby anymore, she doesn't come when we call her (we think she's mostly deaf), and she can't go for walks unless they are very short. What she does do is sleep, eat, drink, and hang out looking confused. Don't get me wrong, her funny old lady ways are very endearing. The reason we call her the bear dog is that she doesn't really shed anymore and because of all her hair she looks like she's part bear. Unfortunately, since she's nearly 15 we are assuming that she won't be with us too many more years.

So, while researching alternative pets, Margaret came up with the idea of keeping pet chickens. After a bit of consideration (and looking at our city ordinances) we decided this could be quite fun and also a bit productive since we can get eggs. We ordered 4 baby chicks (silver-laced wyandottes) from a hatchery and they are being shipped today. We expect to receive them Wed. or Thurs. and then the adventure will begin. We are complete poultry novices so we've been reading a lot about keeping chickens and we'll be learning a lot as we go, I'm sure.

Provided the hatchery has followed our instructions, the babies will be all girls because we can't keep a rooster in the city limits. Please vote in our name poll, and we'll post pictures and names as soon as we have them.