Wonderland

So there really isn't a winter here. My poor cousins in TN and NY have had the nastiest weather recently and we are just hanging out outside everyday..... It has been the best winter! I know we need the rain but I am not going to feel guilty as that doesn't make the rain come.

We have spent more time on the prop this winter than ever before. Ara doesn't really nap, she can run all over the acreage, and we have added some fun activities to the yard. It really is a wonderland for kids and adults alike!

Mossy beauty

 miners lettuce and fungus

 My besties on the tire swing

 What a weirdo. Totally posing inappropriately AND putting a stick in her mouth. She is something!

 Asparagus looking tasty

 Pow Pow Power wheels

 Mud mountain

 Dirt for dayssssss

 Dumping dirt for daysssssss

 A pose of my sweet boy

 Almond tree getting some blooms

 puddle jumping

 She would wade in then jump

 This guy was soaked...

 She wants to do whatever O is doing

 THESE BABES!

 Lots of protest when we need to go back up to the house.

 For kids, even playing on an empty trailer is fun!

 Feeding fudgy

 Worm digging

 EWWW. Dipping a figurine into mud and then licking it... Fondue style. I had my camera out so I did capture this and simultaneously slap the man from her hand, and wipe her mouth out with my sleeve. She has probably eaten a lot of dirt. I did read a very convincing study that kids raised on farms had a healthier gut microbiome than city kids and this is exactly why. I think it was referring to accidental ingestion and exposure, not blatantly including dirt as a food group.

I think this balances out all the hand washing and sanitizer, right/??

 Stomp rocket!

 Mud mountain

 Yep the kid is on a dirt bike! Chris's friend has a son a few years older than Owen and we are getting his old toys. (the power wheels was his as well). It has been really great to see his confidence boost on the bike. Now we gotta get him pedaling on a real bike, he still prefers the tricycle....

 Why not include a property shot of myself? My best gal pal gave me the headwrap for Christmas and I wear it all the time on the prop.

 Nature lovers

 She likes it better when it's turned off.

 Safety first

yup. We love the country life. and we pray for rain but enjoy the sun and preserve water where we can.

Chicken Update

I've been wanting to update about a few things..I've been wanting to blog about our chickens! We have had some turnover around here. Peepers as you may recall... Was a chick we were given by the Aubin family. Peepers had a hard time adjusting with our hens and rooster, as the pecking order is a real thing. Oh it could not be more real! We kept them separate, then when Peepers was big enough (size wise) I introduced her to the flock. She would escape every day from the fenced yard as she was getting pestered. I would catch her every day, and hope that she at least had some nice time on the other side of the fence. This was a total pain in my behind as I always had the kids with me. Owen would be over on one side of the property, and Ara would be over at the hay, doing who knows what! And then I would be running around trying to catch little Peepers.

When we returned from Glamis after 9 days, Peepers had changed drastically. SHE had beautifully filled out, and seemed to have additional feathers... SHE wasn't looking so much like a SHE anymore...

 SHE was fighting now, fighting back to our other rooster Dzintar. And SHE had something to say, that sounded just like COCK A DOODLE DOOOOOOOOOO!

SHE was a beautiful ROOSTER... And had been all along... Which made sense as to why "she" had such a rough time fitting in. This was our second accidental rooster, our first was Pat, which was not a nice rooster. We let Pat fend for himself for a while and then nature took care of him for us...

 Arabelle intent on feeding the animals.

 I had been pretty interested in getting rid of Peepers for a while, and this just sealed the deal! I posted this photo on a local website and within thirteen minutes someone replied
"I will take him! And I know your husband!"
My reply was: "So awesome! I have to load up kids, catch a rooster, but I will meet you in half an hour!"

And that was exactly what I did! Peepers was used to me chasing and catching him but I have never put him in a box before. Good thing we just upgraded Ara's carseat and had a large box to house a large critter. As I was closing the box I realized I didn't have any tape....DARN! If you've visited our property you know the barn is not in close proximity to the house. And I wanted to get this rooster off my back quickly!

I had been researching ways to recycle hay ties recently as each bale of hay comes with three plastic strings. They are very heavy duty, but I am pretty anti plastic in general and I feel like it is such a waste. The information I had gathered was just ok, mostly recommending using it to repair fences temporarily (done that!), close gates (that too!), and weave with it. I like to sew but I don't know if I am going to take up weaving plastic rugs anytime soon....

On that note, I used a hay tie to jimmy rig the box "closed". The whole (thankfully quick) ride to the meeting spot I was a lot worried that Peepers was going to jump straight through the top of the box and into the car, onto one of the kids, and cause a huge accident. This did not happen. But we were close.

I met with the new owner who lived a bit away on 20 acres. She had another rooster already but had two separate yards. 2 roosters isn't always a problem if there are enough hens for them each to have their own. We just didn't have that many.

The most recent update I had was that she found her two roosters snuggled up next to each other, and that she had never heard of Gay Roo's! It made me chuckle and glad that Peepers was happy!

I was also very happy to not have to chase a chicken around twice a day while also chasing around my children in the field, one of which STILL thinks that sheep poop is black beans..............

 This was our most haggard looking chicken before her feathers grew in for the winter... She was looking so frail and creepy we started calling her Zombie Grandma as she looked like the oldest boniest one out there. I will have to get an after photo, but this one below is a little better.

 Beautiful Dzintar on the left, ZG in the middle, and my favorite Grey on the bottom.

 Another chicken has left us recently. In all the fighting going on around Christmas one of the brown chickens broke her leg. We re-habbed her in the barn, where she got stronger and would start standing up in her 5 minutes of Chelsea PT daily. I felt like she was ready to rejoin the crew as she must be getting lonely. I let her back in with the others, and she hopped around pretty well. She made it really far one day and then just laid down. I picked her back up and put her in the coop.

Another day she made it out and then she just started laying down all the time. She must have been in pain, or re-injured her self. I was giving her water as often as I could, but again, the chicken area isn't super easy to get to. She would drink on her own but wanted to be helped as well. We separated her again, into the barn, and she just deteriorated. She wasn't able to move off of one side, so I would rotate her once a day. Her quality of life was just poor. Chris ended her misery 2 weeks ago. It was sad but we have learned a lot through keeping animals. The kids have learned a lot about responsibility, feeding and caring for others, as well as the circle of life. RIP Sweet Pea.

Something the Lord Made

We have been enjoying the springy winter we are having so much that I haven't sat at the big computer in almost a week. It has also been a dry week or two for work so I am enjoying my break from typing at times.

We have spent more time in the field this winter than ever before! I think it is Chris's mission to make our property the destination kid yard... Or grown kid (Chris) yard. More on that later, and many many photos to follow.

Chris and I watch series of shows on netflix or amazon more than half of our nights together. We just finished up True Blood, which had horrible acting but great suspenseful writing and episode cliffhangers that just wouldn't do if we were watching the episodes real time. Luckily we could select another episode quickly if time allowed. Through most of this show we were all sleeping poorly. I was burning sage every other day and praying to all the gods to give us a break in the sleep department. Ara has improved slowly. For the last 2 weeks she has skipped the middle of the night wake up (between 11-2) more than she has woke. THIS IS BIG, people!

So in the evenings when we decide to watch something we are exploring other options, movies, etc.

Last night we watched a movie that I have been wanting to see for years and ironically we even own and I haven't opened it yet. It was called "Something the Lord Made" and it was filmed in 2004. It stars Alan Rickman and Mos Def. We identified with it so much as it was about the history of cardiac surgery. The particular surgery that the whole movie was about was Owen's first heart surgery!! (The BTT shunt). I can say with certainty that you will enjoy it and learn something new. WOW! I was balling at the end.

I would really like to summarize it for you but I think it may be better going into it with less information. But it is about cardiac surgery, racial discrimination, friendship, and living the good life! What more could you ask for? Watch it, please! Let me know if you do. Any person who has had cardiac surgery needs to see this.

End of tangent. Off to relax...

CHD awareness week

Well February is here and love really is all around! There are hearts everywhere (if you go into any store!) but hearts are always on our brain around here. Owen just had a holter monitor a few weeks ago. It is supposed to be 24 hours of monitoring but he always breaks out in a rash/reaction a few hours into it. This time I treated him with benedryl before bedtime, and Chris removed the monitors when he got home from work. It is supposed to obtain data from play, rest, and sleep. He did about 9 hours I think this time. And still has the rash... Cream being applied twice a day!

This winter/spring is so so so so so so different from last spring. Last winter/spring we didn't even have a date yet for Owen's surgery. (It has been feeling like spring hence my winter/spring terminology!). We were a bundle of nerves all the time, worried about everything, plus a semi newborn to boot. This spring life is a bit calmer, a bit more relaxed, as our worries are calmed. They are never gone, but they are a little quieter than last year, that is for sure. I was talking to my sister the other day, so grateful that Ara was as young as she was when O had his surgery. It was very tricky with both of them, but if it were this spring, that girl wouldn't last 5 minutes in the hospital! She makes it around our 2.5 acres in no time, so being confined to a hospital room would be torture for her!

The crazy thing that still gets me to this day is that all of the heart stuff with Owen actually happened. I dabble back and forth between extreme reality of the now being so awesome and then looking back at what he (and we) have gone through. It is truly astonishing. I was so stoked today, talking to a mom at preschool, who told me she "had no idea" about Owen's heart...And then preceded to tell me that her brother had a repair as an infant. I guess the stats are real, it really is 1/100 (or 1/110 depending on your source) of congenital heart defects.

There are so many I'm thankfuls, I'm gratefuls.... It was so sweet for O to be our first. We stopped everything and could stop everything to be there for him and only him. That was a true blessing for us! He is also doing so well that people don't even know he has "half a heart" now! How cool is that! It really makes my day when people hear his story and are amazed by him...You can only imagine as his mom how that makes me feel.

Welp I'm gonna go take my shower I've been looking forward to all day! Thursdays are our busy day, preschool, errands (traders, target, joanns, and 4 mile jog), then home for lunch, then speech therapy at another school... and we had Becca and her mom over today for our field playtime. So I've been in my workout clothes all day. Ew.

I chat with adults all day at work about eating for wellness, longevity, and health...I really would love it if people lived like they only get one body...We all feel like we have more time, we can procrastinate taking care of ourselves.. (I'm guilty at times too!) But with our nutrition, fitness, and mental health there really is no better time. Baby steps count, and should be taken as opposed to nothing at all! Taking care of myself via eating well and exercising comes naturally, as that is how I was raised. If you're a raiser, then remember that! And if you're already raised, change is still very possible and will be successful via either baby steps or extreme drastic overnight changes! It's up to you! So, what do you want to do?????

I upped my darn "steps goal" on the fitbit 2 weeks ago... From 10,000 to 12,000. And I feel so dumb for not doing this sooner. I was meeting or exceeding my goal 5/7 days per week, finding I would really exceed it a few days and then be really under the other days... In the 2 weeks since I've upped it, I haven't met it one day, and all the other days have been thousands of steps above it. Why didn't I just push it sooner!?

One more thing, I'm doing a virtual half marathon next week! Actually it is 2/7-2/14, you have 7 days to complete the entire half, it is an honor system distance event. I did it last year and had a total blast. The best part is that Mended Little Hearts sponsors it and the money raised goes towards welcome bags for new parents of babies with heart defects.

So... goals? What are your fitness goals? Anything new you're trying?
I'm hitting the showers!