There is nothing like waking up in the morning to your house smelling like a chicken farm, and having 104 chicks running around the house. Okay, just kidding about the running around part But totally serious about the smelling part. And the 104-chick part. And the in-the-house part.

It all started one day last week…

Ben had returned home after a day at work, and after a few minutes, came to me and said there is something he needed to tell me. I could tell by his expression it wasn’t anything too ghastly, but we usually keep each other up to date on things, so naturally my curiosity was aroused.

“Uhh, well, *sheepish grin* I just ordered us a hundred chickens.”

My jaw couldn’t have sunk any lower to the ground, and I staggered against the kitchen counter. In the deep recesses of my memory, I do recall us having mentioned – just mentioned – that one day it might be nice to have a few laying hens. Maybe 4-5. “A hundred what?”  I stammered weakly, hoping desperately this was all a joke. He likes to tell me things that shock me out of my mind, only to tell me he was just kidding. He seems to enjoy freaking me out like that. And for a purchase of something this big, we normally consult each other first. He’s not the spur-of-the-moment buyer. At least, not normally.

“Uhhh, yeah. A hundred chickens.” He was stuttering around a  bit, but his grin was getting wider. “Now that you mention it, a hundred does sound like a lot.” He started chuckling.

I was completely speechless, staring wide-eyed at my grinning husband, but my mind was going crazy. What in the world are we ever going to do with a hundred chickens?!  We don’t even have a place to keep any chickens! And doing simply math, 100 chickens, laying approximately 100 eggs a day, give or take, would give us about 700 eggs a week. How many eggs does this man think we eat???

“Oh, they’re probably not all hens.” he added.

Oh, perfect. That’s even better. I can just see it now. 25 roosters perched on the rooftop, crowing for all the neighborhood to hear at 4am every morning. Plus the other 75 hens flapping all around the yard, in the trees, on the vehicles, on the house roof,  on the back porch. Why, we probably couldn’t even walk outside the door without stepping into doo-doo everywhere, with that many fowl around.

I finally managed to ask what in the world he was thinking, getting that many chickens. He kept grinning, seemingly enjoying this moment of complete shock for his wife, and mentioned that perhaps he should have told me first. I did tell him that would have been nice, because there was no way I would have let him get that many if he asked, but it was probably good he just went ahead and did it if he wanted them that badly.

As I began to try to wrap my mind around the idea of us living in the very midst of a chicken farm, he told me that he actually wanted to raise them for a few months, then sell them in the spring as more mature roosters/hens, and that we would probably end up keeping only a dozen or so. Kind of like an investment, he said.

Gracious. That’s still a bit overdone in my opinion. A hundred chickens!

They arrived yesterday. Little newly-hatched chicks. All 104 of them. They are rather cute, I have to admit. Zoe’ is tickled out of her mind, and would hardly eat a bite of supper last night out of excitement. I’m afraid she’ll bring about the death of half of them.

And since it was so cold last night, below freezing, we [yes, yes, me too] felt sorry for them outside and allowed them to sleep  peep inside all night. Good thing we had a raging fan making all sorts of noise in our bedrooms, otherwise I don’t know how we would have slept a wink. And waking up to a house smelling like chickens isn’t exactly the most exciting way for a pregnant woman to start her day.

But my husband is just darling with them. He feeds them diligently, waters them, makes sure everything is okay. This mornine he found one that didn’t make it, and another one that somehow got crushed in the mix. For the surviving one, he made a rice pack and heated it up, then stuck that and the chick in a beanie hat, trying to revive it. And just now I got a text from him, saying, “If the chick gets up, could you give it water in a jar lid? Thanks.” I laughed out loud, Sure, Babe, anything you want… thinking the whole chicken epidsode is so funny and so ridiculous at the same time. Thankfully it will just be a few months that we’ll have this many chickens around here…

The chick itself, affectionately named “Charlie” by my loving husband. He thought we needed to name him after his near-death experience. I just hope he’s not planning on continuing with the naming venture. It’s hard enough for me to name a baby, let alone 103 chickens. [Notice the Georgia Bulldogs hat and all. I'm sure all you Georgia fans would say that's the reason for the rapid recovery].

But I’m racking my brain, trying to remember if there’s anything else he’s mentioned in the past that I should be prepared for. You know, in case he gets another brain-storm. And what do you know, but I honestly remember he said it would be nice to have a few goats around here, just to eat out the scruffy parts of the woods around the house…

~CB

It’s high time for me to catch up with the internet world… I know I always harp on us still having dial-up, but I tell you, when it’s me that has it, it definitely makes a difference in how often I frequent going online. But after being away from it the past few weeks, I’ve been feeling a little lonely for my xanga friends, and decided that today is the day of catching up. Whether it takes most of the day or not. There. Now *that* is dedication. So some of you that haven’t heard from me in weeks shall hear from me today.

I’m sipping on a cup of chocolate milk with a generous dallop of whipped cream on top (for the benefit of the baby, of course), and am feeling very virtuous because my soup supper is already in the crock pot. I’m not a crock-pot person at all, I’ve always wished to be but generally never think of it until it’s too late and I have to do a speed bake in the oven. So that explains why I feel very virtuous at this point… Just had to share that.

Ahhhh, the lovely relaxing days of winter… If, that is, you can call 80 degree days “winter.”  Today it feels cold outside, it’s probably 50-60 degrees. Then I talk to my family up north and I hear their temperature is staying in the teens today. I think I’m acclimating to the south more than I realize, thinking 50 degrees is cold!

So Zoe’ and I have been spending lots of time outside. We have a little dog that showed up on our doorstep this summer, and now Zoe’ has taken it upon herself to “feed” the dog every day. By this I mean that she empties the entire contents of the dog food all over the garage floor every day, watching with the greatest delight as Molly actually eats it too. I had a grouchy little girl on my hands yesterday when it was raining most of the day and I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to go out into the rain, and she needed to stay inside instead… She acted like that was the very end of the world itself.

And yes, I do find her with the strangest sort of, well, makeup??

She must have gotten into dirt somewhere, and she often sees me put on my makeup in the morning, and I guess she decided she was going to apply some as well???

Probably only in the South, in January, will you find lovely blossoming bushes such as these. I have no idea what their name is, and the bush itself is quite ugly most of the year, but come January and February, and these little flowers bloom their hearts out. I put away my Christmas decor last week (sniff), and it made the transition back into “normal” a little easier to put these lovely pink flowers all around my house… This is only one such bouquet.

And my sister-in-law, Sonya, informed me that January is the National Organizing Month. I’m not sure if that inspired me, or the fact that I finally have some energy again after feeling so lifeless for the first few months of this pregnancy. Whatever the reason, I decided that this is the month to houseclean. Now, before anyone thinks it’s too early in the year, etc. etc. etc. let me just say that I have never housecleaned my house before. We moved from our first house a year after we first lived there, so that was housecleaned in order to get ready for the new people, I guess. But we’ve lived in this house 2.5 years, and although I think it’s safe to say that every area has been cleaned at some point in our living here, it hasn’t all been done at one time. I try to keep it in a pretty good state of cleanliness, but housecleaning never struck me as something necessary.

Why it struck me now, I have no idea. I did notice that some of the corners were getting a little grungy looking, and I knew if I wait too many more months I’ll either be too big and pregnant, or I’ll have a newborn baby, and anyone who’s been there before knows only minimal cleaning gets done at that point. So, hence the housecleaning. And I’m enjoying it, because the urge may not hit me again until we’ve been married another 3.5 years.

It’s been quite a challenge with a 17-month old following me around everywhere. She wants to help so badly, but doesn’t realize that pulling everything out of drawers and cupboards that have already been cleaned out doesn’t help mommy so very well…

And along with housecleaning, we’ve been working on some other projects. Somehow January seems to be the month to do it. I think it was last January that I did a post on a bunch of projects too!

So I have to show off my husband’s artistic talent with wood… For Christmas, we decided we would give each other very practical, not-spend-much-money gifts. I had told him I would love for him to make a few things for me: a shelf for the closet to put my shoes on, just to keep everything more organized… He’s a master at wood-working, I tell you!

…. and a crown molding shelf for our living room. I’ve had the same picture hanging for 3.5 years, and I was very ready for a change. So this is the welcome change that has come of it:

The biggest picture is a canvas wrap I got made of Zoe’s one year picture… The next biggest one is a P. Graham Dunn picture that was given to me for my birthday by my sister in laws!! I love it!! I’m still playing with the arrangement of picture placing, and had thought about doing everything in black and white prints, but I loved the color on Zoe’s picture so much I wasn’t willing to turn that into black and white. I’m hoping it will all fit together okay… I feel like I need my sisters here to help me with this. Shelf – black or white? Distressed or not?

And this is another project I’m so excited about. Up until this point I’ve just used a [free] changing table in Zoe’s room to hold all of her clothes, except her hanging dresses.

It worked okay for a while, but I just didn’t have enough of space, especially thinking of another baby using this same space in a few months!

Soon after we moved here I noticed an old grunchy dresser in a rickety shed on our rental property. I asked our landlord about it, and he said it must have belonged to previous tenants, because it wasn’t theirs. We could dispose of it as we liked, he said. I never had enough nerve to go all the way back in that creepy shed to see exactly what it was or if it would even be worth re-doing – we’ve had rats and oppossoms and all sorts of critters come out of there. So one Saturday when Ben was home, I asked if he would pleeeeaaaaaasse be brave for me and go back in that creepy shed.

He did, and about a week and lots of sanding and painting and antique-glazing and spray-painting-the-pulls later, this lovely piece of furniture graces the nursery, along with my $3-a-piece frames from Walmart.

Not only was this FREE, and we were able to use left-over paint from the high chair and dinette set from a year ago, but it’s a beautiful old piece, solid wood, with great woodwork detail…

I have so much more space to store Zoe’s clothes, and it looks like there is enough room to keep new Baby Love’s clothes in there as well. I’m thrilled!

And now – I’m off to catch up with the rest of you! And do some scrapbooking too, if time allows for that…

May each one of you experience the Rest of the Lord today!

[This CD I have listed is one of the best I have heard in a long long time!! It's definitely worth your time and money to get it!]