Progress

Kevin to the rescue again!  Yesterday he and John framed out Sam's new room in the basement.  Nothing like getting a professional on the job!

Holiday Concert

Sniffle Sniffle, my babies are growing up.  Only one kid was in the holiday concert at the high school this year.  Maisie and the second grade were great!  They sang a Hawaiin Christmas, Joyous Hanukkah, and Winter Fun.

Here is Maisie...

Great Day!

Today was a beautiful day!  You could never have guessed that it was the last day of November.  The chickens and dog enjoyed one of the last shiver free days of the year together.  Freckles has trained very well.  We are so pleased with her.  She has proven herself trustworthy with the chickens!  We can leave her out in the yard with the birds and not only does she not eat them, she barks and rounds them up in the coop if the neighbors dogs come sniffing around the fence or she sees people other than us coming.  Besides working independently she is a great partner for any one of us.  When we let the birds out to free range they are sometimes hard to get back in the run.  Well not with Freckles on hand!  We give a few claps and give her the call and she can get those birds in the run in less than a minute.  The new birds are still giving her a hard time but I think that's because THEY aren't trained.  Rather than heading for the door when the dog comes around them they all scatter like an explosion.  It's something we are working on and by spring I am confident we won't have any issues with any of our current birds.  Here are a few pics of Freckles and her charges.  The group behind her is the group that is still giving her a hard time.  It's the Ugly Duckling (the big brown one) who is the worst!

Even more to be happy about!

OK, I know this sounds frivolous and silly.  Maybe even makes me a little bit of a bragger BUT..... I got new floors.  They are beautiful.  They are oak.  We no longer have white wall to wall berber carpeting.  Hurrah.  Life is good.  Now onto other projects.......

Great Wolf Lodge with our cousins

Halloween

Happy Halloween!  Despite the cold weather our kids made the most of their night and hiked for long enough to fill the bottom of their pillow cases.  There will be candy at our house for a month!

New Chickens

The Ugly Duckling - a Cochin

Amelia, Sam's friend and partner in 4H with one of the new chickens.  We aren't sure what kind of chicken she is.

We have done it!  We successfully have integrated six new hens.  We were up to 15 hens but then Daisy one of our leghorns died so we are holding steady at 14 now.  We think Daisy may have swallowed some kind of non-food item that got lodged in her digestive track.  It was a sad day, she is one of the blue ribbons egg layers that helped Sam win at the Dupage County Fair this summer.  Hopefully one of the new hens will take over and we'll have some more blue ribbon layers this summer.  Here are three eggs from the new hens.  They are a bit smaller than the eggs we have been getting from the other chickens but in time they will get larger.  Three of the new hens lay white, two lay blue,and one lays brown.  They are all so pretty!