Video of Quinn

I found this unpublished video on my blog as a draft.  I had to publish it, so I could view it.  It's from 2008.  The playback speed is a little choppy, but you get the gist of it.  

Color Blind?

Last night I asked Dom to hand me the green pillow that belongs on our bed. He looks at me puzzled and says, "You mean this black pillow." I say, "Yes, but that's not black, it's dark green." "Nuhhh uhhh," he says. Then begins the "yes, it is," "no, it isn't" game. Dom then calls in Alex and asks him, "What color is this pillow?" Alex says, "Dark green." "Nuhhh uhhh," says Dom. Next he calls in Quinn and asks him the same question. Quinn says, "Dark green." Truly getting frustrated now, Dom calls in Ethan. Upon hearing the question, Ethan says, "Dark green." None of them have heard what the previous one has said. Dom can't believe his ears, or his eyes at this point. Dom calls Anna. "Anna," he says, "What color is this pillow?" Anna says, "Black." Ahhh, Dom has been vindicated by a 4 year old who isn't always sure of her colors!!

This pillow matches our bedspread. I can not believe that Dom has thought these past couple of years, that we've had a black bedspread on our bed. I do remember ordering "GREEN" from JCPenney a few years ago. It's a funny thing to realize you might be color blind at the ripe old age of 38!

Kid Follies, Again

Yesterday, we all loaded up in Dom's truck on our way to do an apartment. When I got in the truck, Dom asked me if I had "such & such" which I just had in my hand prior to walking out the door. I said, "No, I must have laid it down on the table so I could blow my nose," then walked out the door without it. (I've been sick by the way, reason for blowing nose...) So I hopped out of the truck and ran back in the house to retrieve the "such & such." That is when Alex turned to Dom and said, "Now, I know where I get my memory!"

Yesterday, when we were in the truck driving back home, Quinn asked me, "Mom, do they have water beds that have fish inside them?"

Some More Kid Follies

Look at that, two posts in a row! Wahoo! I'm on a roll. Before I lose these two things I have floating around on a piece of paper, here they are.

Ethan was talking to me one day and he said, "When I'm a mom..." I explained to him that he won't be a mom, he will be a dad. He then said, "I don't know how to have kids. I don't know where to go?"

The other day, I came out of my bedroom after having showered and blown dry my hair. Quinn looked at me and said, "Mom, are you going somewhere?" I replied, "No." He then said, "Then why is your hair poofed out?"

I'm a Facebook Junkie!

Hey, it's me! Do you remember who I am? I don't blame you if you don't. I haven't posted in almost two months. I can't even say that all that time has been productive. I've been on the computer, just not in Bloggy Land. No, I've been in Facebook Land. And I have to say, "Hi, my name is Kara, and I'm addicted to Facebook." There really needs to be an FA class to take for this. That would be "Facebook Anonymous!"

It has been easier to write a quick one line status of what I am up to on Facebook, rather than take an hour to write something here with photos. Because, you know, a good blog post must have photos! But that takes time and I try not to waste large chunks of it. I am now just wasting smaller chunks of it on Facebook instead. Which of course could be added up to one big chunk, but somehow I don't think about that!

So, I must apologize to any of you who are not on Facebook and have been sorely disappointed in not knowing what is going on in my life. I really can't imagine who that would be, but if you exist, "I'm sorry." And I will try to blog about something more exciting in the near future!

Our Christmas

Here are pictures from our Christmas in a nice little movie for your enjoyment! ;) We had a nice Christmas at home. The kids were up bright and early as evidenced in the pictures by their bed heads! I actually took all the pictures while still in my night gown, although you will NOT see a picture of me from Christmas morn! Dom gave me a new camera, which I was not expecting, since we weren't supposed to get each other anything. When we have "lots" of money, we buy each other gifts. When money is tight we don't and just plan to eat our favorite foods on Christmas, which means seafood!! But he has "owed" me a new camera since last Christmas when he took my camera to work with him and dropped it. I've been able to still use it, but the LCD is broken. So I was pleasantly surprised with a new camera. A very nice one that I'm not sure I will every truly understand how to work, because it is a little complicated.

Dom and I enjoyed our seafood dinner of peel & eat shrimp, crab legs, & lobster. Always look forward to gaining a few pounds from all that butter! The kids had their little smokey hot dogs, summer sausage and by request from Alex, mac & cheese. I usually make cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Christmas morn, but Alex had requested bagels which he doesn't get to eat on a regular basis, so it was an easy breakfast for me to make. After all the dozens and dozens of cookies I made the week prior, I was glad not to have to bake another thing.

I decided to make lots of cookies this year, more than ever before. I invited a few friends over to exchange cookies with and also for all of our kids to ice cut-out sugar cookies. The kids had fun and created a nice little mess, but my friend Tammy's oldest two daughters cleaned up for me. That was nice! I made way too much, as I still have tons of cookies after giving some to three of my friends, the mail carrier (who always gives things to my kids on holidays and lollipops on a regular basis), the nursing home where we went to sing Christmas carols, and I sent some to work with Dom for his co-workers to enjoy. I doubled every recipe and tripled a few things. There were buckeyes (tripled), PB cookies with a Hershey kiss on top (that some child keeps eating just the kiss off of and leaving the cookie behind), orange cookies (my sister's recipe), a chocolate cookie with PB in the middle, snickerdoodles, brownies with white chocolate drizzled on top of and then sprinkled with crushed candy canes, two-toned brownie with the chocolate part on bottom and a light brown brownie (minus the cocoa) on top with M&M's, this delicious chocolate/caramel candy thing that tastes just like a snickers bar, & peanut brittle (triple). I think that's it!!! Oh, and don't forget the sugar cookies with icing!!! Whew, was I tuckered out after all that baking!

The kids and I enjoyed singing carols in our neighborhood and going to a local nursing home to sing to the residences there. The neighborhood caroling was kind of a bust, since it was rescheduled to another night due to rain and then the night we did it, it was freezing!! Think 30's, burr. My neighbor put hay bales in the back of a trailer that we towed behind my car. So she and I plus my kids and her son rode around in the trailer. We only hit two houses for a couple of reasons, one it was freezing, two we got a late start because the song sheets she had printed were missed placed and we had to figure out which songs we were going to sing. The kids were a little disappointed that they didn't get to sing at more houses but we still had the nursing home to do. The day we were to do that, all the kids woke up coughing. Alex had already been sick and had been to the doctor, but then all the kids came down with it. But we went anyway, in hopes that I could at least deliver the cookies, but wasn't sure if I should go in with the sick kids. I met two other friends there and they went in ahead of me, while I stayed outside with the kids waiting for them to came back out and tell me whether the staff thought we should stay outside or not. They told us to come on in, just keep our distance. So the kids were able to sing, and were glad of that. I'm glad we were able to hopefully spread a little joy there.

I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas as well! Here are those pictures set to music from Micheal W. Smith's Christmastime CD, a medley of I Saw Three Ships-Joy To The World. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas

May the blessings of our beautiful Savior be yours throughout the season and in the coming year.

Domenick the Christmas Donkey

Here is a song that Domenick found on the internet a few years ago. We got a laugh out of it then and continue to get one each Christmas when we hear it again. I wanted to share. I set the music to photos of the kids from the past few Christmases. Enjoy!

Jinginy Jing....

Happy Thanksgiving

From our family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving.

Here are the pies I made yesterday, pumpkin, apple, and butterscotch. Quinn helped me cut out leaves to decorate the apple pie with the left over pie dough. The butterscotch pie is my grandmother's recipe that she used to make for the holidays. It has been years since I have had it and thought it was about time I made it! The pumpkin come from my friend Tammy who grew the pumpkins, processed it and gave me enough to make this pie. She also gave me a whole pumpkin that I will process later. We tried growing pumpkins, Seminole pumpkins which are good for this area, that Tammy also gave me the seeds for. But we planted them a little too late in the year, and although they were growing great and producing beautiful pumpkins, our last frost killed the plant and my pumpkins weren't ripe yet. :(

We are spending a quiet thanksgiving at home. It would be nice to spend it with family, but that's not happening this year, maybe next. (Hint, Hint)

So, I hope all of you are enjoying this day of thanks. We have much to be thankful for, health, family, friends, and I am sure there is more if I let my mind ponder longer, but its' time to start rattling some pans. Wishing you all the best.

The Bellavigna Family.

Cute Kittens

This is what greeted me this morning. Three adorable little kittens in my hamper. I had to go grab my camera.


Here is those same three adorable little kittens snoozing on my chair. If you remember another post way back in the beginning of CasaBellaBella when I introduced our critters these kittens look identical to those kittens. They are little "minnie me's".

Here is the mama cat. Notice what she is looking at, the gerbil cage. I have been chasing her away from this every morning lately. Now those adorable little kittens are not always so adorable. Remember my last post where I said I couldn't turn my back for a moment. That's right, there's a story there. I left my post in the kitchen to take a potty break, a girl's gotta go, I returned to a screaming little Anna girl in the kitchen and next to her feet on the floor was a piece of the gerbil cage. Ahh! I frantically started looking for the gerbils who were not in their cage. And we had three adorable little kittens running around. Quinn found the first kitten with a gerbil in it's mouth. I was hoping that we were quick enough to get the gerbil out of it's mouth before any damage was done. Not so lucky. Onto finding the other gerbil. Again, Quinn found that one and again we were not lucky enough. Alex had to bury his gerbils. :(

A few days ago, Dom brought two new replacement gerbils home. One is black and one is gray. I then had to research how to tell the sex of a gerbil, because Dom didn't ask at the pet store. And I was hoping we did not have one male and one female. The kids of course where hoping that we did. I think, after much research and much fondling of the gerbils, that we have two males. Whooo! New names for the new gerbils, Zack & Cody. We had to stay in the same theme as the last two gerbils.

Children Are A Blessing

From the Lord, right? That's what the bible tells me in Ephesians. "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward", Eph 127:3-5. I have to remind myself of that when something like this occurs.

Anna took a dry erase maker and colored all over my kitchen floor, walls, and doors. I can't turn my back for a moment. But do you want to know what I was thanking God for as I was cleaning up this mess? Mr. Clean Magic Erasers!

I Voted

Now all I can do is pray.

Quick Update

Yea, I know, there are still no "catch-up" posts. We've had a house full of sicky germs. The boys came down with a nasty cold last week and now Anna & I have it. But I have still been busy cleaning out my kitchen cupboards. It has only taking me three, going on four days to finish. I don't know why it has taken me so long, other than I haven't felt good and my children are major distractions. I have wiped them all inside and out and re-organized. It was overdue. I cleaned out the fridge yesterday, wiping it all down. I have one more cupboard to go, then I need to oil the outside of the cupboards with orange oil. I cleaned out my oven, which is easy since it is self cleaning, but when I was wiping down the door inside and out, a piece of a sponge fell into a vent hole on the top of the door and I could see it through the window. I tried to bang on the door hoping to dislodge it out of sight, but no luck. This thing was going to drive me crazy every time I looked at the door. I had no choice but to take the door off, which took awhile to figure out how to do, directions and all. Then I had to remove the screws holding the door together so I could get to that sponge. That accomplished, I put the screws back in and had trouble doing that. Although all the screws appeared to look alike, they weren't and I of course put the wrong screws in the wrong holes and couldn't get the last screws to go in. So I had to unscrew them all and redo that. This all took way more time than I had expected it to. But my kitchen is feeling good now. I should say, I am feeling good in my kitchen. I can ignore dirt for awhile until I can't stand it anymore and I don't feel "good" in a room with all that dirt that I know is lurking. Dom has this same problem although he can not ignore it as long as I can. I'm good at procrastinating, like right now, I should be emptying the dishwasher and wiping out that last cupboard, but I'm writing in my blog and drinking coffee instead.

The kids are so excited about today being Halloween. They have been counting down the days and can not wait to go trick-or-treating tonight. I hope Anna and I are feeling up to walking around. Hopefully it won't be too cold. We've had a cold snap this week with it getting down to freezing at night. It's nice to have a change of season compared to living down in Melbourne where you don't notice the change quite as much as up here in North Florida.

Dom's parents are coming for a visit and will be here next week. It is a nice motivator for me to clean those things I like to ignore, like kitchen cupboards. They will be here for Ethan's 5th birthday. Dom will be having surgery while they are here, so it will be nice to have babysitters available for me to go visit him in the hospital. I don't know if he really wants me to broadcast his surgery, but prayers for his well being are appreciated and if I didn't tell you about it, then you wouldn't know to pray. ;)

Well, I guess that is all for now. My cupboards are calling. Until next time.....

Momentary Insanity

Did that title get your attention?


I'm doing better, it's only been 4 days since my last post. I know that I need to do "catch-up" posts, but this isn't one of them.


This one is about my momentary insanity. You see, I have this cute little 7 year old boy. Pictured here.

If you notice he has a butterfly (a real actual living butterfly) on his head.

Well, he loves animals, all shapes and sizes, even the butterfly variety. He has been wanting a bird now for a couple of years and we have this wonderful porch on the front of our house, that for some reason attracts birds. A week or so ago, a bird flew onto it and got trapped as usual, and of course my sweet little boy wanted to keep it. He even called his dad at work to ask him to bring home bird seed for his new found pet. Well this poor little wren didn't last long, only a couple of hours. Unlike the times Quinn has caught hummingbirds in the same manner, trapped on the porch, whom lasted a least a day.

Here is one he caught. He made this elaborate "cage" for it from a sheet attached to his bedroom ceiling.

So, after this little wren died, I told Dom that I think we need to let him have a bird so that he will quit harassing the wildlife. Dom then told me that someone offered him a couple of gerbils that day at work, cage and all. I was thinking, "hmmm, maybe that would sustain his love for creatures for a little while and, better yet, they're free." So I said to Quinn and the other kids, "how about some gerbils, instead." Alex was all excited about the gerbils, he definitely wanted those. Quinn wasn't so sure. He still really wanted a bird. So, being the clone that he is of his father, he came up with this idea. "How about I get the gerbils, keep them for 10 days, then sell them and get a bird," he says. Anyone who knows Dom, knows that sounds awfully familiar and at the same age, no doubt. (Dom & I have this running joke where everything he did as a child, he was 8 years old. Because when he would tell stories about his childhood, he would always say that he was 8 years old, and I would say "oh, come on, you couldn't have always been 8." So now, it is a joke between us.) Anyway, Quinn still really wanted a bird, and now Alex really wanted the gerbils. So what are we, as parents, to do?

We let them have both. See my moment of insanity! I had a bird as a child and I always told Quinn, "no, you can't have a bird." Not because I don't like birds, but because I don't like the mess that they cause. But I just doubled my mess. Two cages, two sets of messes to clean up. What was I thinking? I know, I was thinking that I love my children and I want to give them some pleasure and memories in their childhood. I guess I will survive the mess.

BTW, the two gerbils have been named London & Maddie (think Disney's Zack & Cody show) and the birds are Bella & Bud.

I'm Baaaacccckkk!

Did you miss me, again? It wasn't my "fault" this time for not posting for so long. I have been without internet for about three weeks now. I really missed my web during that time. It is amazing how we get so used to something that is not a necessity of life, but seems like it is when it's not around. How many times did I think, "I'll google that," but I couldn't. I survived though and I wanted to send out a post letting you know that when I said that "I would do better about posting," I meant it.

It all began when our phone company decided to turn off our long distance. We had unlimited long distance, but they said we could not use it for our dial-up internet. Well, we didn't think we were dialing a long distance number for our internet. They said it was a "local" long distant number. HUH?! You see, Ethan loves to download games on the internet, but with dial-up, it takes forever. So we were connected for long segments of time and it must have flagged our account with the phone company, because all of a sudden, we couldn't dial-up anymore. What other options do we have for dial-up? None. There is no "local" number to call and we are not about to pay long distance charges to google something. So, we went back to our satellite service.

In some ways that is nice, but our satellite provider has the worst customer service, ever! Dom was on the phone with them practically every day for a week or two, before they finally reactivated our account and sent someone out to re-point our dish (it must have moved in the year it was turned off). The guy who came out to our house to reconnect us, was at our house for about four hours. He left and said we were up and running. Great, but when I went to the computer to check my email, it wasn't working. Not great! So back on the phone Dom went to talk to someone who could "help" us. Hah! Nothing they had Dom do was working and they said they would have to send a technician out again. Well, we knew how long that would take, forever. In the meantime, Dom kept fiddling with things trying to figure out why it was working, only to stop. My Knight in Shining Armour came to my rescue yesterday, and got me reconnected with my 915 emails. Isn't he smart? Yes, he is. He figured it out, and when I asked him how he did it, he said, "I can't explain it to you." And that is fine with me, as long as I have my internet. It had something to do with polarity? Enough said. So, you mothers out there, if you have children who want to take things apart to see how they work, let them. That is what Dom did as a kid, and it paid off, he can fix things, a great asset.

Stay tuned for "catch-up" posts.

I'm Still Here!

Have ya missed me? I have been busy. Sorry for no recent posts! Meg in Tally finally prodded me into, at least, sending a short post to let you all know I'm still with ya. Thanks Meg, for showing that you care! I was waiting for someone to poke me and say, "hey, where ya been?" I don't know what is with me today with all the "ya's."

I truly haven't meant to let almost three weeks go by with no post. I can't believe it has been that long. I won't have time to write all that has been floating in my head during all this time, but I wanted to write a short post. Now, if I could telepathically write my blog posts, we would be in business. I can draft a post in my head, while in the shower, but can't find the time to physically sit at the computer and regurgitate it back out of my head. (I think I watch too many sci-fi shows, Dom's favorite.)

Last post, I mentioned my goals of getting things done with homeschooling. Well, I have been working very hard on that and I don't get much spare time after everything is said and done. I haven't even been reading my friend's blogs and there is some sort of "blogging contest" going on, so they are writing a lot. Good thing I didn't join that contest, although no one asked me too. :( No, I'm really not sad over that. Who has the time? Not me!

Our tenant finally moved out of our rental property, so any "spare" days that I've had, I was cleaning and painting over there. Cleaning someone else's dirt, really isn't any fun. Good thing I'm not a maid by profession. But wait, I am, but it's my own dirt and that of my family's. That's a little different, plus, I really do clean behind my refrigerator more than once a year. Oh, you wouldn't believe what was behind the tenant's fridge. Ick!

With Dom's furniture leasing business, we went to Panama City Wednesday. I think that is the only time since I last wrote. So there is another "spare" day swallowed up.

I have been meaning to post pictures from a "field day" that the Monticello homeschoolers had a week or so ago. But those pics are still on my camera. Hopefully, I will get those pics to you soon with Alex and Quinn coming in first and second in the potato (or really feed) sack race. They had fun.

We have more babies at our house. My mama cat had kittens again, making it twice this year. Which is a first, she usually only has them once a year and that is in the spring. She's been busy. We have three look-a-likes under the house (where kittens have always been born here). They look just like our current Tiger, Princess, and Friskie (which isn't a stretch since we have three solid gray cats. Make that four). The kids have been under the house to see them, I haven't. I really don't want to belly crawl under there, not a pleasant thought. But maybe, I'll get the kids to take my camera under there for pictures. See, another exciting blog post in your future.

Well, that is a quick wrap up for you. I really will try and do better! I just haven't figured out where to pencil that time slot into my day yet, but I will work on it.

Disappointment

I was so excited about having a brooding chicken. I put books on reserve at the library to read to the kids about the developing baby chick inside the egg. I went online to find out how long a chick needs to be inside the egg, 21 days, and marked the calender accordingly. I cleaned an old chicken water container and food dispenser, in anticipation for the chicks arrival. I "made" the brooding chicken safer by putting her inside a dog carrier, or so I thought.

She made her nest in the barn, not inside the chicken coop. It was open to any would be predator and I was worried something might come and get her. I even lost sleep one night with that worry (a little bit of sleep, I still slept but did wake up on occasion and thought about her). So one night, the kids and I went to her spot and moved her and her eggs inside a dog carrier. We placed the carrier into the same spot she had already chosen. By day, the door could be opened and left open for her to venture outside. By night, it could be closed to keep her safe.

Yesterday was an exhausting day for me. Let me back up, last week was an exhausting week for me. It was "back to school" week. I decided I would get up every morning by the alarm clock!!! I know, that is a novel concept! Being a homeschooling, stay-at-home-mom, has some advantages like not having to get up at a specific time each day. But that can lead to laziness and I have been prone to just that. So I decided to get up everyday at 7:30, get in the shower and actually get dressed before noon!!! I had the kids start setting their alarms also, so that they would be up and dressed to eat breakfast all at the same time and not staggered through out the morning. I decided to start treating my homeschooling like it is my job, so that maybe, just maybe, I will feel like we are actually accomplishing something this year. You see, I have all this guilt that I'm not doing enough with them. After Anna was born, I had this whole health issue with my thyroid, and it has been a struggle for me to get back on my feet. This just happens to coincide with our first few years of homeschooling. Anyway, back to my point. Getting up early everyday, and setting goals (I have never been a goal setter) that we would get certain things done each day, and then actually meeting those goals, well, it exhausted me. So after doing our school work each day, and making three meals a day (why do we need to eat so much) there really wasn't much time for housework. I managed to get a load or two of laundry done each day, but not much else. So I decided Saturday would be the day we clean the house. I had the kids help me (hard for the perfectionist in me, but I'm trying). At about 3:30 we were done with the house, and I knew I needed to go out and clean a spot in my car that had started to mildew. So outside I went with our small steam cleaner to clean the carpet in my car. I thought it was just one spot, but on closer examination, it was several spots. I ended up cleaning the entire car, even removing the back seat and a plastic strip that was under that seat, so I could clean the mildew that was growing under that. I wiped down all the seats, etc,. etc., etc. During all this, I kept running back into the house to finish making a batch of bread, and to start dinner. I had Alex and Quinn stir the Sloppy Joes I was making for dinner, while I went out to finish the car. I was truly exhausted by dinner time when we finally sat down to eat. I told Quinn to go outside and lock our hen in for the night, along with a few other requests. I just didn't have the energy to do it. And I don't think I will allow kids to eat in my car ever again (famous last words).

This morning, Quinn comes in with all these broken eggs, saying, "you are going to be so mad." Yes, I was very disappointed to learn that my hen's house had been broken into last night and she and her "babies" were gone. I was very upset. I'm not sure Quinn managed last night to close the door to her carrier securely and I think a raccoon got her. So my attempt to keep her safe might have been the exact thing that got her killed. I had such high hopes for those baby chicks and their brooding mama. I was surprised at how upset I actually was about losing them. I have told my friend Tammy, who is new to chicken raising, not to get too attached to them, because they are easy prey and many get eaten by wild critters. But here I was, all upset over my hen. I had to remind myself, that it was just a chicken. My children are all well, my husband is all well, I'm all well. It's just a chicken.

This afternoon, I saw a raccoon on the back porch eating the cat food. I hollered "there's a raccoon on the back porch" for anyone who was in the house to hear. Alex said, "why did you say that so loud?" I hadn't realized that I had said it any louder than usual, but I replied, "because I could spit nails at it if it's the one that got my hen." Then Alex said, "Mom, there are three babies." And as I turned to look, not really all that interested, we've seen raccoon babies before, there was one that was tinier than we've ever seen before. It was so cute and adorable. I tried to get a picture, but they ran off before I could. How can something so darn cute, be such a nuisance when it comes to my chickens? I guess that is the cycle of life.

Birds, Birds, Birds

Today, was for the birds. Turkeys, humming birds, and chickens, that is. This morning, I looked out the kitchen window, because that is where I'm at most of the time, and I saw turkeys. I counted about seven of them. I, of course, called everyone over to the window to see them, Dom included. We all ohh'ed and ahh'ed, then Dom walked into the family room and said, "there's more out front." So we all moved to the family room window to see more. The ones from the back had met up with the ones in the front. I then counted about 19. As I was watching them, and Quinn was wishing he had a net to be able to catch one (which he does have, but I did not remind him about it), I remember my loyal readers (that's you) and went to grab my camera to snap a picture. By then they had made it over to the gazebo, as you can see here.


Not long after all that excitement, Quinn gets all excited again and runs out to the front porch. We now had another hummingbird trapped there.


Yes, we still have Christmas lights up. I'm not sure why, but Dom will take down all the lights from outside and store them until next Christmas, but has left the ones that border along our front porch, up. They have been there for about two years now. I guess we are not trying to impress the "Jone's" anymore since moving to the woods.

Of course, Quinn grabbed the first empty ice cream bucket he could get his hands on, and caught the little bird. I reminded him about what happened last time he caught and kept a hummingbird (see Joy of Living in the Woods) and Dom has told him, by the end of today, he will be letting the bird go.

Then to add even more excitement to the day (how can we contain our ourselves?) Alex tells me that he found the nest to my favorite laying hen. Since adding the chicken run to our coop, we have some chickens that fly the coop. Sometimes they go back in the coop on their own, some we catch and put back in, and some stay out most or all of the time. One of my best laying hens has decided to stay out. I knew she had to be laying eggs somewhere, but we hadn't found where yet. Until today. And not only did we find the eggs, but she has decided to brood.Here she is on her eggs inside the barn. Maybe we will have some baby chicks running around here soon. I'm glad God has provided my science for this homeschooling year! For a little while, anyway.

A Few Kid Follies

The other day, we were all gathered around the table eating dinner, when I commented about how our older two children both have dark hair and our two younger children both have light colored hair. Alex looked at Dom and said, "Yea, and Dad has Dottie Dog hair." LOL! (Black and WHITE like Dottie the Dalmatian)

Today, I had the kids sitting at the table doing some "schoolwork" (we haven't officially started back up this year. Next Week) and I was acting a little silly goofing off. I was just trying to have some fun getting the kids to laugh. ;) Quinn looked at me and said, "what did you do with my mom?" I guess that tells me something, like I haven't been silly enough lately!

I thought this was such an adorable picture with Quinn and his kitty. There's nothing funny about this picture, I have just been waiting for the "right" post to include it in. But I'm tired of waiting. I thought you all could enjoy it now!

Streams, Birthdays, and Snowcones

Yesterday, we started drying out, somewhat. There is still much standing water in places and some poor people have evacuated their houses because of flood water. We are fortunate not to have experienced any major flooding at our house. Official count for rain in our area was 19-20 inches.
This is a picture from yesterday. You can see our driveway again, as it was covered with water, as shown in Fay, Fay, Go Away . Dom and the boys spent yesterday doing yard work. Lots of sticks and leaves everywhere. They did a great job cleaning up.

Our footbridge now has an actual stream under it. :) It is normally dry, so this kind of nice. I did not help with the clean up, being my birthday, I didn't do much of anything. I talked on the phone a lot to family (Mom & Alisha) and friends (Jenny & Tammy) calling to wish me a happy birthday.

Here is Dom slaving away at making me dinner. A week or so ago, he asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I said, "do I have a choice," knowing that money was tight. He said, "no, but I thought it sounded good." LOL! So I told him just to make me dinner. And breakfast in bed. And lunch. And.....

So he did make me breakfast in bed. I was already awake and waiting for it, so there was no surprise. But it was still nice. The kids came in and gave me their lovely home-made cards. Later Dom ran into town to buy me a cake. By the time he came back, he asked me what I wanted for lunch, but I had already eaten.

And here is me with my very special birthday dinner. Dom had the kids set the table and I sat down to an empty round plate. Dom whisked that one away and sat down this platter full of food. This is what I had on my plate: a t-bone steak (my favorite cut); kabobs with scallops, potatoes, onions; bacon wrapped scallops; corn on the cob; sauteed asparagus; crab legs and cold shrimp. I was the only one with a t-bone and crab legs which made it special just for me. You'll be happy to know that I could not eat all that food in one sitting. Leftovers always make me happy, because then I get to enjoy a good meal twice.

Dom bought a chocolate ice cream cake. He put the candles on with one on the side, you may be able to see it. I thought that would be tricky to blow out with one breath, but I did it. The only thing is that I forgot to make a wish before I blew out my candles! ;(

Today was the scheduled play date for Fun With Water at my house. I shouldn't have titled it that because I think Fay got the wrong idea! I wasn't sure if anyone would come today, but I welcomed anyone who wanted to get out, to come on by. We had one family come. They are new to this area, so it was nice to get some one on one time getting to know them. The sun actually came out and the kids were able to go swimming (we are still getting occasional showers from Fay). I forgot to take any pictures and I forgot to offer them snowcones, until it was too late and they were leaving. :(

But here is a picture of Alex, Anna, Ethan and Quinn enjoying snowcones after lunch. This snowcone machine is the one piece of equipment we have left from our concession stand/restaurant days. Dom loves his snowcones, so we couldn't get rid of this! You don't even want to know the recipe to make snowcone syrup. Not that it's bad, as in nasty, you just wouldn't believe the amount of sugar in it!!!!! It's what keeps dentists in business.