Category: Uncategorized

Molly was the first one to deliver!  I found her already finished with labor on Monday morning.  She had twins but unfortunately the boy was stillborn.  I found him cold with the membranes still covering his nose so I’m sure he never took a breath.  The little girl was all cleaned off and curled up in the straw.  Mama and baby are settled in to their own little pen now so they can bond during the first few days.  So far, so good, baby is nursing and Molly is doing pretty good for a first time Mom.

For those of you looking for a sunrise panorama or something else stunning, you’re going to be disappointed… This, my friends, is truly a beautiful sight to me.  Why, you might ask.  Because… don’t you see that nice new outlet that both the toaster AND the coffee pot are plugged in to?  I used to have the coffee pot on one end of the counter and the toaster on the other.  The TV that sits on top of the fridge had to plug in there by the coffee pot which meant the toaster had to move.  Now the TV has isn’t own outlet, conveniently placed right up behind the fridge.  My counter looks so much tidier and nice!   Having the house rewired was definitely a safety issue but it sure came with some nice perks. To make your visit worth it I’ll throw in some cute pics. 🙂 Hope you have a great weekend!

This is something I’ve been considering for a few days so I thought I’d throw it out there and see what you guys think.  I’m thinking about starting another blog about my relationship with God and my quest to become a better Christian.  Normally, I’m not a big fan of having multiple blogs.  I don’t like having to jump around to follow along.  I definitely don’t need anything else to suck up my time.  Between this blog, many forums, and now Facebook I really feel like the internet already takes up enough of my time. I really want to write about it though.  And I don’t think I want to do it here.  Let’s get one thing straight, I’m not ashamed to put it out there that I’m a Christian.  The thing is, I wasn’t always.  I know what it’s like to be an atheist and I know how I felt about religious mumbo jumbo back then.  And I know that the way to be a good witness is not to scare people away.  I want my normal readers to be able to enjoy the content here without feeling at all uncomfortable. I want to be completely comfortable too.  For

I’m not sure I can handle five… …if you say I can I’ll try but I’m really not sure.

You should check your credit report.  It is now free to view your credit report one time each year.  There are three different credit bureaus that report on everyone.  You’ll want to view all three reports, or you should.  Since we can only view the reports one time per year I print ours’ and keep them on file.  That’s probably not necessary but it makes me feel better.  Brian pointed out that it was probably a waste of a lot of paper since each report is 10-20 pages. The official site to check all 3 reports is www.annualcreditreport.com. The main thing you’re looking for is any activity that is not accurate.  Everything on ours’ looked good.  I did catch a JCPenney card that Brian opened to get a deal on clothes before we were together.  I remembered exactly what he bought with it because on one of our first dates he told me he went shopping and bought some new clothes.  I even remember the shirt he was wearing that day and that I thought it was so cute that he wore something new to take me out.  Of course he didn’t know what I was talking about.  I guess

Dave Ramsey fans are familiar with the saying, “The borrower is slave to the lender”.  To me that paints a picture of a man hunched over pulling on chains and heavy weights.  I don’t often feel like that. I’m not lying when I say I love my life.  Sure, a lot of days I’m frazzled or frustrated about the latest bout of dog nausea or unexpected bills.  Still, the fact that I have a comfortable home and a loving husband is not lost on me.  I’m the first to say I love where we live and treasure the memories we’re making. If I whine about one thing very often it’s having to go to work.  Now, let me put up a disclaimer here, and not just because my co-workers might stop in: my job is pretty darn good.  I work with girls that are my friends and we actually have quite a bit of fun together.  I only have a 10-15 minutes drive and I only work about 35 hours each week.  For the most part our clients are great to work with.  I get to educate people, most of whom actually want to hear what I have to say

You know something works when your husband asks you to do it, i.e. Brian has been saying all week, “Will you plllleassee make a menu plan!?”  He likes it because he gets home first and it helps to get dinner going.  So here goes… this time I made up the plan for part of next week too.  Brian will be gone the end of next week so the plan stops when he leaves.  I can totally slip into cereal for dinner if it’s just me. 🙂 Monday: Baked Tilapia w/ fried rice (something like this tilapia recipe) Tuesday: Chicken Fingers w/ homemade mac n’ cheese Wednesday: Cowboy Calzones Thursday: Garlic Chicken in the crockpot w/ noodles Friday: Pizza w/ breadsticks (using leftover calzone dough) Saturday: Chicken Sandwiches w/ chips Sunday: Tilapia in crockpot w/ mashed potatoes Monday: Porcupines (I change up the recipe but that gives you the idea) Tuesday: Ham slices w/ potato balls Alot of my recipes this week came from Tiffany’s Eat at Home.  She’s always full of good ideas.  Also visit Menu Plan Monday for more inspiration!

The chicks are doing great.  I moved them to the brooder after about 38 hours in the bator (for the oldest ones).  They are super vigorous and healthy, I am thrilled! I don’t know if you can see it in the pics at all but they are already getting some little feather on the tips of their wings.  One had a little poop stuck to it’s butt so I soaked it with a warm, wet wash cloth and pulled most of that off.  All six are healthy, eating and drinking, and sleeping a lot.  I raised their heat lamp a little bit because they were crowded at the far end and obviously too hot.  Now they are moving around comfortably although a thermometer right under the lamp is only reading just over 90 degrees F.  I usually start them at 99 and go down gradually but if they’re happy, I’m happy. I set 24 more eggs in the bator tonight!  This could definitely be addicting.  I’m hoping for a better hatch rate this time since I stored all the eggs at room temperature, in egg cartons, and tipped them a couple times each day by putting a canning jar ring

I’m sorry the picture quality is so poor – it’s hard to get good pictures inside the incubator.  Yesterday 4 eggs had pipped before I went to bed.  Pipping is when they peck at the inside of the shell a bit and you can see a crack in that spot.  Brian got called in to work at 4:30 this morning and woke me up to tell me that we had 2 chicks!  When I got up again at 7 there were 3!  Then, when I came home from work tonight we had a total of 5.  Now I’m sitting next to the incubator typing this and watching #6 hatch.  So far I don’t see any pips from the remaining 4 eggs so this might be it. If you’re serious about wanting to hatch chicks I suggest you check out the BYC forum (it’s on my sidebar).  That’s were I learned everything I know about the topic, and only in the last month or so.  Right now I can see a logistics problem.  This time I didn’t have many hatch out of the original 24.  I’m hoping that’s because so many of the eggs came out of the refrigerator.  However, if

They’re not really excuses I guess,  just the truth about what’s been taking up all my time lately! 🙂 My routine is all messed up. I usually get up a little before 7, clean the house  and do my general housework until about 8:30 or so, eat breakfast while blogging, then do chores and go to work.  This is the second week now that the builder and the electrician have both been here.  The builder shows up about 8 so I’ve been trying to do chores early – I don’t mind the builder but I miss my alone time in the barn.  It is a nice way to start the day.  Then the electrician shows up at 8:30 ish so I lose my privacy in the house and usually my power too, i.e. my ability to make breakfast and blog.  Plus, I’ve spent a good chunk of each morning rearranging whatever room they are going to wire next so they can get to the walls.  That leads me too… I decided to paint. Our office is the only room downstairs that I haven’t painted and it was pretty drab.  Since I had all the furniture pulled to the middle of