nameless

(after 10 minutes of trying to come up with a title for this - I've got nothin' ~ so I went with it)

~

A few months ago,

when Alabama Chanin had a 20% off sale, 

I ordered a color card.

My Aurifil color chart proved the value of color cards to me

and I wanted to be ready the next time AC ran a sale.

Alabama Chanin's jersey is crazy expensive,

but I've also read that it's fabulous.

I recently made (most of) a shirt using my tried and true pattern

and some sage colored jersey that I purchased on clearance from either fabric.com or Girl Charlee fabrics.

A hand-stitched shirt - lightly embellished with random ruffle ruffles, also handsewn, of course,

before garment construction even began.

I'd drafted a little cap sleeve to go on it, so after I sewed one sleeve in, I tried on the shirt, to check the sleeve.

The shirt was too tight! 

(You may remember that this isn't the first time this has happened.)

At first I thought, "Crap! I've gained weight!"

But then I remembered that I had worn one of my AC tops just a few days before and it fit just fine.

The problem clearly lied with my fabric.

I e-mailed my Alabama Chanin mentor, Anna, to get her thoughts on the matter.

She said she'd had the same trouble before,

and that differing jerseys have different fits,

but it didn't really seem to be an issue of stretch.

She didn't have any wisdom to share on how to know how it would fit before sewing it up.

But she'd never had any problems with Alabama's jersey.

I figured it might just be time to splurge.

 

Inspired by my recent quilt magnificence 

(Not only did I finish the one-hour-'til-done purple quilt on Sunday, 

just a few hours ago, I put the final stitches in the colorful chevron quilt!)

I decided to pull out my AC fabric that I'd ordered during their Memorial Day sale, and cut out a shirt.

And then I remembered that 

seeing as I hadn't even taken the fabric out of the box yet,

I hadn't pre-washed my fabric.

Pooh!

For a brief second, I considered breaking my 'always pre-wash fabrics for clothing' rule.

Then quickly told myself that $20 a yard fabric was not the fabric to go breaking my rule on.

So I turned the washer on and went to grab some more clothes to throw in with the fabric.

As I untied the bow, the card flipped over.

Happy Day!

(except  - now I've spent all of my cutting out time typing up this post...)

amazement

The fact that 3 days ago,

this mammoth 4 inch seedling was housed inside of a half inch pumpkin seed

is nothing short of amazing.

The fact

 that 

in 4 months,

this seedling will (could...) become multiple pumpkins, containing hundreds of seeds

is mindbogglingly miraculous.

Crazy, huh?!

quilt makin' machine

I

am a quilt makin'

machine,

I tell ya.

Never mind the fact that I still haven't finished T's (April) birthday quilt.

(but he doesn't care if he gets it 'til it turns cool, so I'm ok)

Or the quilt I thought I may just manage to finish by Easter.

(working on the binding, so it's almost finished)

Ignore also

that I haven't even cut into Tyler's stack of fabric.

(it is a gorgeous stack, if I do say so myself)

Nor have I started on the summer vintage sheets quilt I am making for our bed.

(It could happen...)

I up and decided on Tuesday that I was making a new quilt, and I was making it fast.

with Lily and Lexi's help, I proceeded to finish acquiring the fabrics for it that evening.

(I had started a stack quite some time ago, but it hadn't grown very tall yet)

At 3:00 on Thursday

I set up a little station in the kitchen with a 2x4 folding table set up about 1 1/2 - 2 ft away from the ironing board,

so I could starch and iron my fabric, then without going to the other room, as is my usual system,

or even taking a full step,

I could cut my fabric.

It worked amazingly well, and I think I will do this from now on.

After the fabric was cut, I walked around the house,

hoping to find a section of wall big enough to hang the batting.

Using the window in the LEM works ok, but the fabric is much less likely to fall off of my design wall

if the batting is actually against the wall.

Therefore, when I labeled pieces, a step which I hate dislike, but is quite necessary,

I would only need to label every other one, and not every single one.

At this point, I should mention that everyone was gone 

(Daddy took them camping ~ me and my bum knee stayed home with the critters. And the sewing machine ;-)

The only wall that would work was the one behind the couch,

so I pushed the chair over,

pulled the couch out a foot and a half

(very thankful that I had just cleaned out behind it)

took the picture off the wall, 

then ran a swiffer over the top 2 feet of wall that I neglected to clean when I did the great living room clean up a few weeks ago,

and proceeded to hang the batting I'd cut just a few minutes earlier.

It turns out (and I knew this, of course, being that I live here and every thing...)

that the wall is leaning,

so that when I hung the batting, it wasn't actually flush against the wall....

but it was better than being hung in a window, so I just used some masking tape and went with it.

Seeing that I didn't have my Lexi help,

laying out the pieces took quite some time,

plus I fixed dinner (Tyler bought me filet mignon to have for dinner every night while they were gone!)

and ate it,

and it was 10:47 when I finished, so I was going to head to bed.
Heading to bed, mind you, means actually going to bed, about an hour later...

Only I couldn't get to sleep, so somewhere around 1

I got up and labeled the blocks, then took them all down, 

preparing them to be sewn as I did.

Then I had a blank design wall again, so I set to work on the back.

When I cut the 6" squares, 

I also 'squared up' the leftover pieces, planning to use them for the back.

(I started out with anywhere from 1/6 of a yard to 1/2 yard fabric cuts and I cut  them out differently - meaning some I'd cut from a long skinny strip, and some I'd cut out using more width of the fabric. I wanted my leftover pieces to be all different sizes for a more attractive backing)

I had a couple of larger pieces that I had collected, but not used in the front, plus I had bought a half yard extra of one fabric, knowing it would be great on the back - so I stuck those on the wall first.

And, like a puzzle, I kept adding pieces in until I had the batting covered.

I actually enjoyed it very much.

Then

Since sleep was still elusive, I took 2 pieces off,

sewed em together, pressed the seams, trimmed them up, and stuck 'em back on the wall.

(Figuring out which order to sew thing together in was a puzzle, too, and I had to do some partial seaming sometimes to make it work.)

I kept doing that 'til I had about a third of the back sewn

and thought maybe I could finally get to sleep.

It was 3:00.

I drug my butt out of bed at 8:00

and, missing Jeremiah, who usually does the task, 

schlepped blurry-eyed back to the coop, and let out and fed the chickens and cooed to the babies (who are barely babies anymore!)

It was almost 10 before I felt alive enough to get back to work.

What can I say? I am a slow waker-upper.

The back was completed in a few hours, and I was pretty tickled with it.

Time to sew the top.

(why is it a quilt top, and a quilt back?!)

To make it fun, I timed myself making rows.

I had the extension table on the machine. It's fabulous!

I usually only used it for quilting and sewing bindings on 

(which is why it was on in the first place - I'd sewn the binding on Penny's quilt before got I started on this one.)

After 6 rows (which was my knee's limit for sitting at the machine, even though I was 'driving' with my left foot)

I had averaged four minute rows.

I sewed 6 10 block rows (the 11 blocks became their own vertical row) in 24 minutes!

Impressed with my speediness, 

I carried a quilt and a pillow outside and laid in the sun for some vitamin D therapy.

I am quickly bored by laying out in the sun

(how did I do that as a teen?!)

so I cooled off in the pool

 then came back in the house to resume sewing.

Twenty four minutes continued to be my limit for sitting,

so I'd sew

then visit my chickens.

Sew 

then press.

Sew then sunbathe.

(My plans for turning into a bronzed goddess while my family was away

were not as successful as my plan to become a quilt making machine.)

Sew

then check blogs.

Sew

then talk to my family on the phone

(which was really nice, 'cuz even though I was sewing, and I love sewing, I was lonely. 

And the house was too quite. But I was tired of listening to Pandora. Yes, kids, I can work the Pandora all by myself! :-)

Sew

then press...

And a little bit before the sun went down,

lo and behold, I had a lovely starched 60 x 77 inch purple quilt top.

This is getting ridiculously long.

I'll tell the rest in Reader's Digest version:

I basted it.

Love (LOVE) basting spray.

Took care of critters.

Fixed and ate dinner (more steak. with salad this time. Scrumptious.)

And started quilting it.

Talked to my biggest boy for awhile.

Quilted more.

Went to bed even later than I'd gone to bed Thursday night.

Saturday

I quilted and took care of critters and finally washed all the dishes that had been in the sink (and accumulating) since Thursday and sunbathed and quilted, ate an avocado, and talked to my Marine for an hour. 

I finished quilting around 4.

Made the binding  (which I'd already cut when I cut the rest of the fabric)

sewed it on,

ate a peach,

and at 5:00, I settled into the chair in my room, more reclined than I'd prefer (for the sake of my knee)

put my legs up up the bed, flipped on my light, found a Netflix movie (Lincoln Lawyer ~ I liked it)

and started hand sewing the binding down.

Multiple critter care trips, a leisurely walk around the property looking at wildflowers, dinner,

cleanup of all my creative mess,

and 3 movies 

(Licoln Lawyer, plus 2 more)

and four some Oreos and a cup of milk later,

at 1:11 am, I went to bed with very sore hands and only an hour left on the binding until I have a completed quilt.

I

am a quilt making

machine.

double donuts

The kids started asking a few months ago, "When's National Donut Day?"

About the fifth time somebody asked,

I pulled up the blog and searched for it.

Then I double checked the date of the post.

"June 1st," I told them.

Nobody needed to be told twice ~ they all had it down.

And after consulting a calendar, they were happy that June 1st was a Saturday,

'cause Daddy'd be able to celebrate with us.

I was happy, cause that meant I didn't have to drive.

It was wet last Saturday, so we wouldn't be able to re-create our first celebration.

The kids were okay with that,

because, really.

The picnic and park was fun and all,

but it was all about the donuts.

So Saturday,

Tyler and the kids ran errands, and brought home a dozen donuts.

And you know what?

That was good enough.

The kids all got 2 donuts each, and Tyler and I each got one.

Everyone was happy.

Happy National Donut Day.

Celebrated.

But then 

yesterday,

one of my friends posted a picture of a donut on facebook.

And said it was National Donut Day.

And I was so confused!

National Donut Day was last week; we'd already celebrated it...

I'd checked my blog;

I knew that I'd posted that post on NDD!

It turns out, I should have googled it.

National Donut Day is not the 1st of June,

it's the 1st Friday in June.

So Tyler had to grab another dozen donuts.

:-)

The kids are hopeful I'll make the same mistake next year.

Doubtful.

But with my brain, you just never know ;-)

snapshots

I always assume that people know this,

but maybe they don't.

Blogs are just a snapshot. A close-up snapshot.

They aren't the whole picture.

Anyone who knows me in real life,

knows I am far (far!!) from perfect.

I assume that anyone reading here, who doesn't actually know me,  knows that as well,

simply because, they, also, aren't perfect.

I don't choose to share much of the ugly stuff here.

It's not because I want people to think I'm so great.

Trust me ~ I'm no one to envy!

It's because that's not the stuff I choose to focus on and remember;

it's not the stuff I want photos of, if you will.

The tagline, after all, is 'finding joy in the little things'....

I needed to remind myself of this.

Blogs are just snapshots.

how you'll find Jeremiah most days

worse than a c-section

At first,

I thought I'd just indulged a little too much on Easter.

But when my knee was still hurting in mid April

and I hadn't had any wheat or sweets in several days

and my knee was still being a nuisance, 

I started thinking maybe it wasn't diet-related.

By the beginning of May, it was no longer a nuisance, it was downright painful,

and we decided on Thursday, that I probably needed to go to the doctor.

But Friday was Josiah's birthday, plus Tyler was gone (learning to dive...) so I didn't want to go then.

Saturday, we'd be celebrating birthdays, so couldn't go then either,

so we decided I'd go to the walk-in clinic on Sunday.

Dr Alexander was there, so I asked for him.

(he's the one who did some adjustments on my back when my SI joint was hurting so bad)

He found that my hips were out of alignment, but he couldn't see anything else wrong.

He put things back in place, wrote me a prescription for painkillers and muscle relaxers 

and suggested giving it a week or so to see if it got better. 

It was actually worse for the next few days, but then, with lots of rest

(I was dealing with another (non-physical) painful situation and spent a good bit of time in the hammock

and out with my chickens)

it started getting a little better.

Then Sunny died, and things got busy, and I could no longer afford the luxury of lying around a portion of the day.

I had calculated that Dr Alexander would be at the clinic (he works a week on, a week off...)

and decided I really should go back before we left for the funeral.

Sitting is way worse than standing or walking, so I anticipated all the car time increasing my pain and was hoping to preempt that.

But when I drove by after finishing errands on Friday, the parking lot was full,

and I'd already been gone 2 hours longer than I'd intended to be,

and didn't feel like I should be away from the kids much longer,

so I just went home.

After the funeral, life didn't slow down and I never managed to find time to rest in the hammock

and my knee just continued to be a bother.

And as time went on, it became a bigger and bigger bother until

last Thursday

when I was writhing in pain driving the boys to TKD.

I couldn't move my foot from gas to brake without using my hand to help lift my knee.

I sent Tyler a text that I was heading to Pro-Med.

But once again, he couldn't find anything wrong with the knee from his examination.

He said my hips were a tiny bit off, which was to be expected with all my knee-favoring, but that didn't seem to be the trouble.

He did a little adjustment and said they'd make an appointment with an orthopedic Dr and give me some more medication.

I told him I'd only taken the pain medicine a couple of nights when the pain was really bad, 

but it didn't really do much pain relieving.

(taking narcotics during the day is out of the question ~ I have to be able to tend to my family...)

He wrote me a prescription for more meds, stronger this time.

I'm still in tremendous pain for a good portion of the day,

although some days, I have little moments here and there (that I am immensely grateful for!) where it doesn't hurt much.

Annoyingly, even with the help of Dr Google, I haven't been able to self-diagnose.

My appointment with Dr Bolyard isn't until the 18th

(originally it was scheduled for the 20th, and Tyler called and asked if I could get in any sooner, or get on a list to be called if there's a cancellation)

I could possibly get in a little sooner if I went with a different doctor, but I don't want to, as I feel like perhaps Lexi's broken arm was to introduce me to this Christian doctor who likes to let the body do what God designed it to do with as little intervention as possible. (maybe?)

Meanwhile,

I try to take it easy,

don't sit for longer than 8-12 minutes (unless I'm driving, of course),

let out involuntary moans and groans and ARGHs,

cry,

and apply heat and castor oil often (supposed to be good for joints. I'm not really feelin' it, but it can't hurt anything...)

In order to sleep at night

(I still wake up with pain several times, though)

I take a muscle relaxer, a higher dose of hydrocodone

and a fuzzy navel.

Tyler bought a bottle of peach schnapps tonight and told the guy at the liquor store that meds alone weren't enough to help me sleep, and wine didn't really help, but fuzzy navels seem to...

The man looked at him and said, "I can't condone what you're doing, but I understand."
(He found it humorous that he was being chastised by this rough looking liquor store man 

for buying alcohol for his lush of a wife ;-)

To understand the level of pain I am experiencing (so you can feel properly sorry for me ;-)

you should know 

that I recover from C-sections with nothing more than ibuprofen.

This is way worse. It's like active labor pains

- in my knee -

since Easters.

finding treasure

(as usual, you can click on any photo to see it larger)

I bought several field guides at the book sale, along with a few curriculum type books that we'll need,

and a handful of inexpensive books just for pleasure reading.

I was flipping through one of the wildflower books

and recognized a flower that Brandon had picked just two days earlier.

He was mowing the grass

and there were some flowers that had really long stems, about 3 ft or so, ferny leaves, and a few little heads of tiny white flowers.

He found them interesting, so he broke off a few flower heads,

continued mowing,

and brought the flowers in to me (very wilted) a few hours later.

We stuck 'em in some cold water and they perked right up.

As soon as I saw the picture in the book, 

I perked right up, too.

The flowers Brandon picked for me were yarrow.

Yarrow is one of the ingredients in my cold care!

I wondered if perhaps we had any more on our property, as Brandon had mowed down the ones in the shooting field.

Tyler was quick to assure me that we had some in other fields, too.

When he was mowing today,

(9+ acres takes a lot of time to mow, and except for the areas around the house,

most of the property hadn't been mowed yet all year)

he mowed around several patches of yarrow so we could harvest it.

We now have organic wild yarrow drying in the LEM.

This just tickles me to no end.

I'm excited to discover what other goodies we have growing here :-)

(if you have a favorite field guide type book - especially one for our region - care to divulge??)

ah, Kiddo, you don't know the half of it

So.

the other day, as I was neatening the library baskets,

Lily leaned over and whispered,

"I think being a Mom seems kinda hard.

I mean, it might be the greatest job and all, but it looks like a lot of work."

1,111 and more

This is my one thousand, one hundred eleventh post!

Don't worry ~ I'm not going to write 1,111 things ;-)

I just happened to notice and thought it was cool.

~

Our Papa comes home tonight!!!

He's been in Cozumel with his brother ~ but he's quick to point out,

it wasn't for vay-cation, it was for certifi-cation. ;-)

Yep ~ my man is now a certified scuba diver.

(Not sure exactly what he'll do with this certification ~ but he's got it!)

I imagine he was able to get in bit of vay-cationing, too.

~

Around 10 o'clock Friday morning,

I decided that I needed to clean up the shoe area by the front door,

which led to pulling out the couch and cleaning behind that,

which led to touching up the paint on the wall.

Which led to dusting (oh, the dust!) and sorting through the books, and neatening up the white shelves....

I sent my girlfriend a text around 7 that night, asking why it takes me so long to sort and clean ALL THE THINGS.

Basically,

the whole time Tyler's been gone vacationing getting his diving certification,

I've been tearing up the house cleaning it.

And currently,

besides the boys' bedroom 

(which is cleaner and neater than it's ever been

 (but sadly still looks gross 

because - well, the whole house is gross..))

the rest of the house

 is in that 'this is a worse mess than when I started!" state.

But - there are no dust bunnies under my bed.

All of this (badly needed!) sorting and cleaning leaves me thinking about all the sayings

that encourage you to put off cleaning

and just enjoy your children

yada, yada, yada.

At some point ~ the cleaning has to happen!

And when you have lots of people - it needs to happen a lot.

~

Ton' graduates from Combat Training today

and then he's on to his job schools in 29 Palms.

It is looking like Kacy will be able to join him ~ yay!!!

~

I am hoping 

that if/when Jeremiah and Josiah remember all my (heat-induced) fits of the past few days ~ they also remember 

that their momma spent hours (hours!!) helping them clean up mess that she didn't have a bit of a hand in making.

~

I signed up to do a book sale this Friday with our homeschool group.

I waffled back and forth - I really don't feel like doing it,

but I do have a good-sized stack of books that the thought of just donating to the Salvation Army or Abilities makes me cringe. 

I waste spend a lot of money on books, and it'd be nice to get a little of that back.

(to buy more books... ;-)

We can sell other educational type things, too.

Since I'm already going to be there (ugh - not looking forward to it!) I really do need to have everything sorted through, so I can make it worth going...

~

Even though I sort through our crap a couple of times a year,

and feel like I am fairly ruthless when it comes to getting rid of stuff (and buying in the first place)

we can never be 'minimalist' people.

Large family + homeschooling + crafty + cooking from scratch

just does not = minimal.

It just doesn't.

~

Last night, after we went to the National Cemetary (which, of course, choked me up...) I took the kids to Goodys

(an expensive frozen yogurt place where you serve yourself from a variety of frozen yogurt and stale toppings dispensers)

Lexi just sorta had at it, without getting any help or guidance.

Her concoction was nasty

(she had more topping than yogurt)

so I wasn't a bit surprised when, after a few bites, she asked if she could get some more yogurt. Without any toppings.

(Pretty impressive that she recognized that that was the problem, I thought)

Tony called when we were on our way home (Tony called ~ yay!!!) and I was telling him about it.

"That sounds familiar," he said with a chuckle.

When he was little and we went for snow cones, he would always pick Ninja Turtle. Always.

And after a few bites, he'd want to trade me, because the ninja turtle snow cone was always nasty.

I would always trade him.

I didn't trade Lexi though.

(Her yogurt was even worse than Ton's ninja turtle snow cones)

I ran back in and bought her what I was eating.

~

I'm sure I could sit here much longer, recounting tales of our days,

but stuff has exploded all over the house,

and I need to get it put away,

'cause our Papa's coming home today :-)

sisters

One evening last week,

I was washing up some dinner prep mess and saw the girls playing so sweetly. 

I stopped my cleaning and just watched.

One would climb the pole, while the other cheered her on,

then they'd hug,

and the other would have a turn climbing...

They have been less than kind to each other lately. often.

So it was especially nice to see them having so much fun loving each other.

poultry update

Chester, the lame rooster, died a week or so ago.

Honestly, the poor thing was not living a good life, and more than once, I told Tyler I thought we'd be kind to put him out of his misery. 

But I didn't want to go killing chickens right after we'd been given them. Somehow that didn't seem very grateful, 

even though Gayle herself had admitted she should have let him die after the dog got 'im.

 Tuesday night, we only locked up 23 chickens, instead of 24.

Then, last night, while Tyler and I were out shopping, Brandon sent a text asking how many chickens we should have.

There were only 22.

Now.

Loss is part of life in the country,

and part of why we got baby chicks - to replenish the flock,

but this was getting ridiculous.

Both nights, we locked the coop, but left the gate open, in case the rogue hen returned.

I was in the kitchen around 2 this morning (why, is another story for another time...)

and thought I heard a chicken talking.

I decided it must be frogs.

I went on with my work, and heard it again.

I was pretty sure it wasn't frogs.

but it wasn't a nervous sound, more of a friendly chattering.

I hopped up, grabbed a flashlight (yay ~ I could find a flashlight - amazingly, right where it belonged!)

and went outside.

There,

walking around in the light coming from the kitchen window, was a bedraggled hen.

I was so happy to see her!

She didn't want me to pick her up,

but she wasn't too keen to follow me either,

so I set down the flashlight and snatched her up anyways.

I picked up the light

and we walked through the mist to the chicken coop, me talking to her the whole way.

~

Here she is all dried out, and giving me an egg :-)  (and a stink-eye)

And here are the babies, already getting bigger!

   

red and black

The boys earned their red/black belts Saturday.

With Memorial Day right around the corner (which means they don't have to wear their uniform jacket until Labor Day) 

it was time for new TKD shirts.

(Apparently, I never took pictures of their brown ones. 

Which is too bad. 

I thought they looked like we bought them at Old Navy :-)

Once again,

Brandon and the boys designed their own shirts,

Bran fiddled with sizing, then printed off the designs onto bits of freezer paper taped to regular paper,

and I cut out the designs, then ironed the freezer paper to the shirt, and filled in the stencil with paint.

Josiah likes his fairly thin - 2 coats, with the 2nd coat applied before the first one dries thoroughly.

Jeremiah likes his thick - 3 coats, thoroughly dried in between,

and Brandon prefers 2 coats, thoroughly dried.

We had some leakage around a few of the letters, and on one of the guy's feet on Jeremiah's shirt.

Not sure what was up with that, but we're just going with it. 

It's not really noticeable at a normal distance anyways.

We ran out a few minutes before it was time to leave for TKD (Thanks for taking' em, Eva!!) to snap a few (blurry) shots.

They got silly....

I love my boys! And I love making them stuff they love!

Sunny.

Out of all my sister in laws, I always felt the most comfortable with Sunny.

She taught me to make Bulgogi (Korean grilled beef);

I think I'm the only one in the family (except prob'ly her kids and Kyle) who can make it.

She doted on our kids when we went to visit,

buying them exotic novelties and treats from the Korean store,

and she was the epitome of love to Tyler while he was growing up.

Several years ago, she made doilies. Dozens and dozens of delicate doilies, crocheted with string, and a teeny tiny hook.

She told me I could pick one out,

and was tickled that I had a hard time choosing.

At first she'd thought I was just being nice ~ but I really was amazed at her talent, and couldn't pick just one.

I went on enough that she told me I could take as many as I wanted.

So I did :-)

I still keep one on my dresser, all these years later.

Sunny died this morning.

She's been sick and in tremendous pain for years, but still, it was unexpected.

I'm glad she isn't in pain anymore, 

but

I'm sad for Tyler.

I'm sad for her husband.

And for her kids, and her kids' kids.

 

Goodbye, Sunny. 

I love you.

caught up (almost)

It's probably been at least six months since I noticed that the dryer was taking an awfully long time

to dry.

But I did not want to have to get a new dryer!

For the past 3 months, it's been kinda hit and miss on whether or not there would be heat.

And if there was heat - would it be normal, or super hot.

Or would the timer advance properly, or speed through the cycle.

Or would it even start at all.

Brandon and I have tried various things to fix it,

mostly spending hours trying to figure out the right combination of words,

so Google could tell us what to do.

Best we could figure, we had multiple issues going on.

Even so, I've managed to stay on top of the laundry for the most part.

Until the dryer pretty consistently didn't heat for days

(except for the 10 minutes that it did heat, and it was scary hot)

and 

then I cleaned the girls' room

and wound up with four extra loads of laundry.

(which explains why we could never find anything for them to wear...)

I finally gave up the fight and admitted defeat, 

so last night,

 Tyler bought me a fancy new dryer.

So now, I am caught up on laundry again.

Except that Lex' peed on our sheets at naptime.

And 

I'm out of laundry soap.

adding to the flock

We went to Atwoods after TKD testing (the boys all have red/black belts now) to price fencing (we still need to enlarge the chicken run)
We didn't buy any fencing, but we did get
14 baby chicks!

Everyone is tickled, but especially Jeremiah and Momma.

I picked out 3 clearance priced straight run chicks (which means I may have picked 3 roosters...)

Tyler choose 3 clearance banded chicks (which means they should be hens)

Brandon didn't want to choose any

and the 4 younger kids

(I'm trying to quit calling them 'little kids' - 'cause they really aren't little anymore...)

each got to choose 2.

They all chose full priced mostly banded chicks.

This little one is Josiah's (he's leaning towards Oreo, but hasn't decided for sure on the name)

(Crap. I've completely forgotten what he named this one. Maybe Sweet Thing??)

This is one of Lily's ~ hers are both unnamed still, but she calls them all sorts of sweetness and tried to give them equal attention.

I had Jeremiah bring a cinder block into the little area Tyler blocked off for the chicks, so I'd have something to sit on. 

From it, I could watch the babies (inside) and the big ones (outside).

If all I ever had to do was watch chickens ~ I'd be a happy girl. I love to sit out with my chickens!

 Like Lily, Jeremiah got a yellow and a black chick (I forget the breeds)

And Lexi got a light yellow and a golden one.

She was afraid she wouldn't be able to tell which yellow was hers, 

so the gal helping us put a little line on her head with permanent marker.

Lex's little chick is a smartie ~ she was the first one to figure out how to use the waterer,

and for the next 20 minutes - that was the happening place.

Tyler had to work around us ~ tweaking things to get them just right.

(thanks, Love!)

I can't  help it ~ another 'looking out' shot

One of the ladies wandered in and laid an egg for us :-)

(these girls don't feel the need to announce their accomplishment; they just lay it and leave, nice and quiet like)

That egg was toasty!

Meanwhile, Lemon Drop fell asleep in Jeremiah's hands.

awwww

Lily found some rolly pollies for the chicks.

They liked 'em, but not as much as Josiah's chick enjoyed the little worm she tossed in.

(Speaking of ~ you know how chickens run around trying to keep the other chickens from getting whatever treasure they found? 

I always thought that was a learned behavior  - from one too many times of getting some yumminess stolen.
Nope ~ as soon as that chick had the worm in her mouth, she started running in circles. 

None of the other chicks tried to take it from her - or even noticed she had anything special. 

It would appear that that is just the way God wired chickens.)

I best git to bed ~ I've got to get up extra early to check on baby chicks