Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Molting Chickens

The other day I came out to let the chickens out and Lilia was looking ROUGH! The coop was covered in random feathers and she had a few bald spots. Her chest and butt were completely naked. I didn't get a good photo but you can tell how thinned out her feathers are and the pokey new feathers coming in. Well turns out all chickens go through a molting period around 16-18 months for the first time, which falls right at about how old they are. Some chickens go completely naked, while others molt more subtle. Bernadette also has a bare neck and both stopped laying eggs a couple weeks ago. We've only been getting about one egg a day. It's common for chickens to stop laying while they molt, but they'll start again when they're finished. It's also common for chickens to slow down laying during the winter when the daylight hours shorten. Last year we put a light in their coop. I put it back up but it's been hard to get it charged because we haven't had much sunlight (it's a solar light). 






 

November Random

I started this on Nov 10th, but looks like never posted it. 

Reading Harry Potter, taking our time getting through book four. It's a long one. 

Costco trip and super excited to have the picnic tables back to eat lunch!


Matching fall masks, Emma and her second grade teacher Ms Fibelkorn.


New workout space with new flooring, interlocking pads to smooth out the space. 


Dessert s'mores on our campfire. 


Precious time with this snuggling cutie! 




Goofball :-) love our time together, treasuring these moments as I know they grow quickly and change. 


 

Friday, November 5, 2021

Halloween 2021

 


Friday the kids had a costume parade at school. It was super hero day so Emma choose to wear her bat girl costume from two years ago, the one I made and yes it still fits, LOL. Mary wore her Herminoie (Harry Potter) costume and Isaac wore his black panther as a super hero also from two years ago. 




Dinner was festive, jack-o-lantern stuffed peppers. 


Saturday was filled with the last football game, the first basketball games for Mary and Isaac. On Sunday (Halloween day) we went to church, ate lunch out and then came home. Thomas went down for a nap and we started to carve the pumpkins. 





Girls drew a design and I helped get it cut out. Isaac did both steps all by himself. He based his drawing off a pattern, but free handed it. 




Our finished pumpkins: 

Emma choose this design I did in a hurry. 


Emma's: 


Mary's 


the extra since Thomas didn't care to


And Isaac's 




We went for a bike ride around 3ish after Thomas woke up to check out all the decorations in our neighborhood, that was probably the highlight of the whole halloween. Best way tot see them too because we could make it up and down four streets faster than walking. 

This neighborhood has SO many kids come through, we were warned but we're also at the end so figured we wouldn't have too many. I got two boxes of 65 organic gummy bear pouches to hand out and we made it through both boxes before 5:30, lol. We probably should have not started handing out for the very first which was maybe 4:30, they started EARLY! 


We spray painted Emma's hair orange for her Ginny Weasley costume. Mary was Hermionie. 


Isaac was Voldermort (we attempted to get his face white but after trying 7 different make up options it just wasn't working) and I was Professor McGonnagall. 

 


It started to get dark so we closed down our front door and headed out to trick-or-treat all together. Hard to get photos so I"ll see if I can share some of the videos I took. I didn't have my phone with me on the bike ride which would have been the idea time to snap photos of the crazy house. This was one of our favorites so I def snapped a photo. We had just watched beetle juice the night before so the kids understood it!





Nightmare before Christmas footage from a walk a few days earlier:

UFO house in two videos: 



These guys made a huge 'fire chute' to distribute pieces of candy. We saw a few of these chute contraptions. 


With it being just absolutely INSANE the kids only got one piece of candy per house and since the houses were buying 2000+ pieces of candy it wasn't the good stuff either. A little change from Minnesota when they'd get handfuls of good candy at each house and have a full bucket in 30 minutes. We had to wait in line on the crowded sidewalks. But in the end they had fun. They ended up sorting through their candy and take some more to hand out at our door to the swarms of kids. 


Emma really wanted to make these again, we didn't get to until a few days later, better late than never ;-)



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