Quinn's Birthday!!! (belated pics)

Ooops, I just realized I forgot to post pics of Quinn's birthday (which wasn't today). Her birthday was directly followed by the arrival of relatives (which required the complete cleaning of a very VERY dirty trailer) and Easter (more relatives, haircuts, new clothes, house cleaning and dinner prepared at my house). And all this between bottle feeding the lambs and caring for their eye infections.....oh and did I mention the chickens? LOL Yea, I've been busy. But anyway, here are some pictures from her birthday. The cake is pretty goofy looking, I realize, but it's homemade. She liked it, that's all that matters. Her favorite present was a toss between the wooden foods that can be cut and the real kid-sized garden tools. She actually squealed wiht delight at that one. We had to go outside in the dark and dig RIGHT THEN! LOL She had such a wonderful day. She was in such a great mood. It was wonderful.
(Note: the product placement was unintentional......please disregard unless you are an executive with the marketing department of Scott bathroom tissue, in which case please contact me ;-)

A Wonderful Reunion

Just a few months before my 10th birthday, my family moved to Mexico. We lived in Guadalajara for just over a year. We quickly made friends with a lovely family across the street. The family had one daughter a year older than my brother (so 5 years older than me) and three boys (each of which, or maybe all of which, were the objects of my juvenile adoration at various times). I really really loved this family (and still do :o) I idolized the daughter, Carmelita (-ita is a diminutive use to make a nickname for the name Carmen...She was so nicknamed because she and her mother share the name Carmen). I loved hanging out with her and I played with her or her brothers almost daily. We moved to Mexico City but we kept in touch. Carmelita always said she wanted to marry an American and move to the U.S. She is a very bright and determined person. She had a plan, and it started with her learning English by, at first, listening to American music...Specifically, Barry Manilow. Yes, she is a fanilow. And since I idolized her, so was I by default. It's amazing that with as many places as I have lived and with as many people as I have known, and with as many people as I have lost track of, this family and mine are forever joined in some wonderful way.

I remember her youngest brother, Jesus, was an artist. I keep forgetting to ask if he still draws and paints. But he was a gifted artist at a very young age. I regret that I don't have one of his drawings. But life is funny and as proof that the world is indeed a very small place, various members of this family call from time to time to say they are passing through and we bend space and time to make sure we get together. I really owe a debt of gratitude to my Uncle Bill and Aunt Suzie, who have lived in the same house all of my life, because they are also very close to this family and have helped us keep in contact.

Carmelita got her wish...or maybe fulfilled her plan to marry an American. She attended my wedding and she and her husband lived in a town close to here for several years. When her first child was born, a son, I was one of the first to visit her at home. My own firstborn is just about 7 months older than her son. That was the last time I saw her, 12 years ago.

A few years ago Jesus called out of the blue a day or two before Thanksgiving. He was in Oregon on business and Dad talked him into coming to our wild Turkey Day celebration. It was FABULOUS to see him and I will always cherish it. I got Carmelita's email from him and we corresponded for a while but I suffered multiple computer crashes and lost all my email addresses, then I had to change my email address, so we lost contact.

Most recently, on Monday at 8:30 am, to be precise, my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number but I answered it in a moment of curiosity (I routinely screen numbers I don't recognize). I am so glad I did. It was Carmelita! She now goes by Carmen or Meli, but she is still Carmelita to me. I again owe my uncle a debt of gratitude for keeping great records and never moving because he gave her my new phone number (which is also unlisted). So we set up a time to meet on Tuesday.

We did meet. I took Quinn. Connor was at school and Dylan and Jonah were with Grandpa Don and Grandma. Carmelita and clan were gracious enough to make a stop so we could visit a bit. As these things go, it was was glorious and achingly short. Her children are deliciously beautiful and charming and darling. I wish we lived closer. I think they are wonderful young people whom I would very much enjoy knowing better and watching grow. I had never met her daughter (now age 10). Both children look so much like their uncles. And how impressive, to Carmelita's credit, both children are bilingual! Wonderful!

My sincerest thanks to her wonderful husband, Jeff, for taking a large chunk of potential driving time on a beautiful day, with a very long drive ahead, and allowing us to share a short while together. Thank you!

Chickens

Our chickens are growing! They are around 5 weeks old now and getting the last of their feathers under their wings. I can't believe how much they have changed in just 3 weeks!
Here is a picture of a barred rock chick at about 3 weeks of age. He was getting his feathers on his wings. I'm pretty sure this is a cockerel because we have one cock that likes to perch here, on top of the feeding bin.

And here he is now

Here are some more chicken pictures.
Chicky goodness (the reds are Rhode Island Reds. Each boy picked one out. These are Dylan's in front and Connor's in back)
And here's Connor's Rhode Island Red now


Here's another picture of some more pullets (minus the cockerel on the bottom of the pic). I think the RIR is Dylan's but his and Jonah's are very hard to tell apart.

Grandpa Don and John are almost done fixing up the coop so these little birdies should be in their new home by the end of the week.

Easter

We had a fabulous Easter celebration on Sunday! John's parents are here visiting so we all drove about an hour north to attend church together with my parents. Then we came back to our house and had a big Easter dinner. It was a perfect day and the only downside was that it was over way too quickly. It was so wonderful to have both sets of grandparents here.

Kiss for Grammy
Easter Bunny
Kiss for Pop Pop

Easter Dinner Grandpa Don and Jonah

The Return of the Tom

You will all be glad to know we saw the tom turkey and several hens in the orchard yesterday. Don't know if it's the same flock or not but it was nice to see them. They are such magnificent birds.

The Lone Ranger

A few days ago we heard gun shots south of our property. It was the same day we last saw the flock of turkeys. Since then we have only seen one turkey hen wandering about. She's passed through our property three times that we've noticed. Only one hen. Alone.

Tonight as I was coming in from my nightly chores of tending to the animals, I heard one lone turkey calling out. And dogs barking back. I assume it was the hen. She sounded like she was calling out to her flock. It makes me sad that only one hen is left. I am not a vegetarian. I like turkey meat. I don't have a problem with people hunting turkey (in season, which it's not now). But to see and hear that one lone hen without her flock, that makes me sad.

Baby Lambs!

A friend of ours had some lambs whose mama isn't caring for them so he asked if we would like to bottle feed them for a while until they are weaned. Of course!!! They are two days old. The bigger one is John and the littler one is Kevin. :o) hee hee

Lost Puppy

As I was headed in to town last Friday, I found this little guy wandering along the culvert by my drive, about 3 feet away from 55 mph traffic.

What a cutie! All that chocolatey goodness! He had a collar but no tag. He looked to be only about 2 months old or so. He was obviously well cared for and I knew he had just snuck out from somewhere and he would surely be missed soon if he wasn't already. Since we live in the country, there aren't a lot of neighbors nearby. I packed him up in the van and started to make the rounds.

My first stop was the house behind us. As I drove up the drive I saw dog agility training equipment in the yard and I thought "BINGO!" I parked and wandered up to the deck but couldn't figure out which door was the front door.....maybe I was at the back of the house, I couldn't tell. I hollered, "Hello?" A man answered back. And so I met George and Gayle. Turns out they have 3 female Australian Shepherds! Gayle teaches dog agility training and they are building an arena! I was so excited because I had been wanting to take Lily for agility training. They were very very nice. I opened the door and showed them the puppy and introduced them to Lily. They cooed all over her (and dodged the excited shouting boys). But the puppy was not theirs. So away I went.

I visited every house within a half mile and no one knew where he belonged. So I came home, gave him some water, took his picture (well, I took about 6 pictures of him running around our feet before I got this one), made a poster, printed several copies and headed to town to post them. I wondered if he might have a microchip so I stopped by a vet and had him scanned. No chip (I also had Lily scanned and she was found to be chip free as well, which is really good because I was afraid she might be chipped to some former owner whom I could not find or whom would not agree to the info change). But anyway, this poor little guy was out cavorting sans proper identification and I was having a heckuva time trying to find his home.

Of course, I would have had no trouble finding a home for him. Everyone in town wanted him. But I knew someone somewhere was missing this little cutie and I didn't really want to keep him even overnight.

I tacked up some posters around town and then went home. I went in the house to check the machine before I got the kids out of the car, in case we had to deliver him somewhere, and I had been in the house maybe 3 minutes (after I had had this little puppy for about 3 hours) and lo and behold an unidentified truck comes rolling up the drive. They pulled in and parked and I wandered out to meet them. A middle aged couple slunk out of their car, tails between their legs and embarrassingly asked if I had found their puppy. YEP!

They thanked me for taking care of him and I reciprocated by informing them that the whole town was jockeying for first rights on this pup if his owner didn't show. They'd better please get a chip in him and/or a collar on him ASAP. Oh yes, of course, they'd do that right away. And off drove the very lucky couple and very cute little puppy. I hope they realize how lucky they are and make sure this doesn't happen again.

The Downside of Country Living

Two words. Poison Oak.

I have only ever seen Poison Oak as a little bush on the ground. John always told me it was a vine but I didn't really understand because it never looked like a vine, but a small bush. So when we had these huge vines climbing up the oak trees in the front, I thought, "Hmmmm.....That can't be good for the trees, let's cut them down!" Luckily for me, the trunks of the vine were too thick for me to cut. Unluckily for John, he got enlisted in the task. He mentioned once that it was probably poison oak. I thought he was joking and laughed. He wasn't. And it was.

Two days later his eyes are almost swollen shut, his throat is swollen so it's hard to breathe, and his entire body is broken out in a weeping rash. So it's a day off of work and to town we go en masse to see the good doc and get some steroids. It's been over a week now and he's getting much better, but now Dylan has it.

Apparently "kids stay completely away from that part of the yard and especially those vines" means "hey, why don't you go play in those mysterious vines!" First he had one spot on either cheek. I was thinking mosquito bites. That's what they looked like. Then he had a stripe down each forearm. I figured it out. Now this morning he woke up with it all over his FACE! *sigh* Must be on his sheets. It looks terrible but blessedly he's hyposensitive (yeah autism!) so it's not bothering him a bit. Just looks bad. We need to stop it from spreading then I think we'll be set.

I'm itchy just thinking about it, but so far the rest of us are rash free. Let's hope it stays that way.

Deer

I tried to upload pictures of the deer we saw a couple weeks ago but they wouldn't upload for some reason and then I forgot about it.
Here are the pictures.

Gobble Gobble

The wildlife never ends!!!
That is one of the reasons why I love this property so much. I was out tending to the chickens this morning and when I was walking back to the house, Dylan and Jonah were running back up the drive excitedly. They told me they had been chasing some big wild birds. The "grown up" ones. At first I thought they were talking about the quail. We had two coveys of quail when we moved in last fall. The babies should be all grown up now but we rarely see the quail anymore now that we have cats and a dog. I think they moved on. I have also seen pheasant near our property but not actually in our yard. But I did remember John saying he had seen wild turkeys here, but I had never seen them. I asked the boys a bunch of questions and began to wonder if they they had in fact seen the wild turkeys.

Jonah said he was trying to chase one down and was going to jump on it and catch it for dinner. Good thing his plan failed because later on I saw a flock of turkeys consisting of one very large tom and 5 hens in the orchard! I snuck out and got a few pictures of them. The tom heard me coming because he fluffed all up. He looked so regal!

I made sure Jonah understood that he should never under any circumstances try to jump on a wild turkey or any other large bird or wild animal! He then requested that I buy him a gun so he could shoot it. Uh, yeah. Right. Logical reasoning but that's not going to happen any time soon.

The Apprentice

So since Roscoe is 8 and technically a senior, we thought he should have a hunting apprentice. This darling little 6 week old kitten was on freecycle so we scooped her up. She was born on February 13th as one in a litter of 4. She doesn't have a name yet. Connor wants to name her Belle (because she's beautiful, he says). I was told she was a grey cat w/ a longer coat. She ended up being brown with black stripes. At first look I didn't think she was very cute ... I was expecting something else, I guess ... but now I think she's very pretty. She had black paw pads and black eyeliner and a very pretty head. Lily is very interested in her. She won't look at the kitten if I hold the kitten up to her nose but the second I put her down, Lily wants to sniff her and seems to want to take care of her. The kitten is so funny because she will fluff all up and hiss at Lily. I was a little nervous how Roscoe would react to her but he loves her! He came right up, sniffed her just for a second then immediately started grooming her. he laid down next to her and nuzzled her and continued to groom her. It was so sweet! Now if we can just settle on a name.....

Ratter Extraordinaire

Check out the gift we woke up to on yesterday morning!
We have been very thankful that Roscoe is such a fantastic mouser but I never thought he would catch a RAT! For one thing, I am okay with the knowledge that there are mice here. It's a farm. But I hadn't considered rats. Ewwwww!!!!!!
I have an all new respect for Roscoe.