Tag: family

10 things i’ve learned about roosters

by Karen, posted in family, raising chickens

It all started off innocently enough; 26 chicks in a small cardboard box arrived in the spring…we learned some things from books and friends in advance, but some things are learned by doing, through “on the job training”.  1.when ordering new chicks from vendors, you often will not receive all female chicks . this is not good for several reasons, which leads us to …. 2. boy chickens often do not play nice with each other.  3. boy chickens grow up and start crowing pretty darn fast. 4.The dollar store earplugs don’t work. 5.Putting a pillow over your head does work some, but it interferes w/breathing, so can’t be a long term solution. 6. no one in the family hears the crowing at 3:07am except me.  (DAWN I  could handle; but 3:07AM?)  7. “free to a good home” is not an effective advertising strategy for this purpose; you can’t GIVE away a rooster. Nobody wants them, or certainly nobody wants more than one. 8. Except some people do; they will take all you have, as long as you don’t mind if they eat them. 9.. A friend with  a farm may offer to take them, so they can “free range”, which is a euphemism for “being eaten by hawks”.  10. the bottom line? we would do it all again. in fact, we have, several years in a row now. it has become one of our spring rituals. 🙂

here are some resources to get you started if you are interested in learning more:

1. http://www.idealpoultry.com/

2. http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/index.html

 

the terrible 10’s?

by Karen, posted in family, tweens

my thoughts are harkening back to my 10 year old daughter’s toddler years this morning…they are not warm and fuzzy thoughts.  after her 5th “No! Don’t talk to me! I don’t want to talk about it!”, all before breakfast, i was having deja vu…haven’t we been here/done this before? seems like we’ve come full circle in her first decade of life; i remember similar behavior from her (and her older brother, come to think  of it) when they were in their “terrible 2’s”, that lasted until they were nearly 4 yrs old…hope the terrible 10’s don’t last quite so long. it would be nice to have a breather before the teenage angst sets in. any other parents of 10 year olds experiencing this? how do you manage it?

here is a website with some advice about how to manage some types of close encounters with your children:

http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/talk/temper.html

bowling

by Karen, posted in family, fitness, tweens

recently i went bowling for the first time in more than a decade. i took my daughter and was immediately presented with a bowling dilemma: to add bumpers, or NOT to add bumpers? that is the question. with bumpers, will they ever learn to throw the ball properly so that they can one day bowl without them? without bumpers, will they become so demoralized by their gutter ball induced lack of measurable scores that they will not want to play ever again? hmmmm.

how do you other parents out there solve the bowling bumpers dilemma?

the worst thing about bowling? the SHOES (ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww).

the best thing about bowling? spending time having fun with my family doing something other than eating.

bottom line: bowling is fun.  here’s a link to find a place to bowl near you:

http://www.bowlcandlepin.com/bowlzip/index.htm

oh, the rain!

by Karen, posted in family

gather the animals! build the ark!~actually, we have to (re)build the retaining wall that collapsed last night,  sending wildlife (mice, night crawlers, grubs as big as your head…) out into the night. also the one that held UP the back stairs, and the one that held BACK the water that had collected over the past several weeks of heavy rains that comprised the winter and first part of spring here this year, the water that  immediately found its way  into the basement, which is also my son’s room. you know, with the new furniture (to paraphrase billy costa from the  “matty in the morning” radio show on 107.1 (http://www.kiss108.com/pages/Matty.html): nothing stops the water). after work, i had to put on my swimmies and go to Lowe’s to buy a wet vac then go home to help husband (re: try hard to stay out of his way)  try to get ahead of the water that was coming through the basement wall and floor. at one point, he sent me to boil water and rip sheets…which i set off to do…finally! something i could do to be helpful! i was feeling pretty good until i recalled that this is the way that women traditionally got rid of their men during childbirth…give them some useless task to do to make them feel useful but the purpose of which was really just to get them out from underfoot until the baby was born! sigh. and to think i fell for this. ultimately i did feel a bit better when i realized that after i delivered (a wet vac, not a baby), my getting out of the way really WAS a big help.

any basement water horror stories out there?