Chickens, Craters, and a Happy Mother's Day

 Last Sunday I was outside and I could hear a familiar sound...the canal is running! Bah! There goes my peace of mind until October. Every day in our family prayers we pray that our kids can be safe and that we parents will be alert and aware. 

I've got five weeks until my "guess date" for baby. I'm having lots of Braxton-Hicks. I can definitely feel more distinct parts of baby this pregnancy compared to my last two. It's weird! I can definitely tell what side of my belly he/she is on. Taking liquid magnesium at night has made my insomnia disappear along with those pregnancy leg cramps. 

Last Monday we had a big day in Idaho Falls. I met Trisha at Cooper's baseball game for lunch and then ran a ton of errands. I bought fabric for curtains for my nesting boxes. I'll have my friend Lacy sew those for me to make my coop that much more cozy for my hens. We met with a tongue tie specialist that afternoon and had Emmett's tie lasered. I was so grateful to get that done and wish I would have known about it earlier. It sure would have made nursing that boy so much easier, along with other speech/dental development things. But we got it done and he will benefit in other ways as his mouth continues to grow/develop. He soldiered through the procedure without nitrous oxide 😭 We got ice cream afterward and he got to have as much as he wanted. He is one brave, tough kid.💓

Tuesday all five hens laid (yay!) so we took a batch of eggs to share with Granny and Gramps. Mom is generous enough to pay the kids too, so this will be a fun enterprise for them. Chelsie had a free pass at Craters of the Moon for a week so she invited us to tag along with them in the afternoon. It was windy but otherwise the kids had a nice time. That night I deemed our chickens' coop confinement period sufficient enough and let them out for the first time to explore their run. Two of the four cats were VERY intrigued... good thing we stuck with the decision to get full grown hens because chicks would have made a lovely snack for them. Justin worked on the grass pulling weeds and fertilizing while I cleared out the last flower bed. The chickens didn't go to bed on their own that night, so I had some extra herding to do to get them safe in the coop.

Logan helping me with my morning watering.

My trees Mom helped us plant last year - all of them made it except for two!

Getting ready to hike the cinder cone.

We fasted and prayed for moisture for our valley - this was a beautiful sight to see happening to our valley/mountains from afar.

Iridescent vesicular basalt - it gets that iridescence from cooling quickly with other minerals present to create the blue/purple/green colors.

Emmett pushing Chelsie's baby was good practice for when he's pushing his new little brother/sister. 

Our happy flock

That's a future feeder next to Logan that Justin later installed inside the coop - thank you youtube for the idea!

We have yet to name all of the hens because I can't tell them apart. I might need to get everyone bracelets or something 😂 We have one named - Bucky - because she's the biggest and it's the name Jon and Laura and the girls wanted to name one of the chickens. I will name one Ada after an ancestor Mom was telling me about. Apparently she loved her chickens, and she would go and chat with her hens when she was feeling flustered about life (lots of frustrations about polygamy for her that she would vent to her chickens about😂).

These two feeders have been awesome! They'll make it really easy to leave the girls when we go on trips.

Wednesday morning while collecting eggs I could hear one of the hens belting her "egg song" as she was finishing up her laying. Sometimes chickens have a special crow for when they're laying/have laid so that was fun to hear. Some days they all lay in the same box and others it's more mixed. I like to leave thyme and rosemary in their nesting boxes so they feel extra pampered while they're laying, and those herbs also help keep pests away. Logan helped me finally plant the final flower bed. We walked to Granny and Gramps in the beautiful evening weather. Mom started 12 more trees for me so I can have shade in my backyard. They walked back with us, hunting for asparagus on the way.

All pansies have been planted - phew!

Putting curtains up in the kitchen to help with the oncoming summer heat.

Thursday morning I saw Trisha's text about the shooting at Brie's school. It upset me all day. I was crying randomly off and on - it was just really upsetting news. That afternoon Mom came by on the four wheeler and took the kids asparagus hunting. They LOVED it. She also came by that night to plant a few more flowers that didn't make it on the garden edge and weeded that for us since we can't always tell what is a flower and what is a weed.😂 Bless her!

We had two bags of bark left over from the flower beds so I made a little path in the run where I walk most often.

It was HOT!

The hens put themselves to bed that night - yay!

We decided to do a picnic on Saturday for Mother's Day. The plan was to pick out some big rocks for the garden edge as well, but once we got to our picnic spot the weather was too dang cold. We quickly ate our lunch and happily got back in the warm truck. We used the afternoon to bake dessert for Sunday dinner with Trisha and Mom. Justin decided to make chocolate cake which turned into baking a cake AND cupcakes. The cake turned into a dinosaur masterpiece that I named the La Brea tar pits😂

Emmett built a puffer fish with his magnets

We had coconut, walnut, raspberry, snickers, kit kat, and chips ahoy toppings

The primary sang "Their Mothers Knew" in sacrament meeting for Mother's Day and it was a bit of a flop. We had maybe 10-15 kids and a bunch weren't even singing, ha! Thankfully one little six year-old carried the group and it wasn't a complete fail. 😂 We managed to have a fun singing time with the theme "April showers bring May flowers." During our missionary song the kids got to put on a missionary get-up I put together and race to the back of the room before the verse was over. They enjoyed it. Trisha joined us for lunch and we enjoyed her family all afternoon. Emmett and Logan idolize McCoy and would follow that boy anywhere! Poor McCoy has to have good boundaries with them to avoid burnout. 😂 

I taped the rain cloud to the chalk board and had magnets on the raindrops for the kids to pick. They flipped the drop over and we made a flower out of it while we sang whatever song went with the (now) flower petal.

Today I have Urban and Sloane for a few hours which is giving me free time to write this! Tomorrow I have my LAST midwife appointment in Idaho Falls and then in two weeks she'll be coming to me 😍 I'm telling you, there is no beating the customer service of a midwife.💓 I hope to be picking up some furniture and more chickens while I'm over there. We'll see! In other news, Teddy is no longer part of the family. After raising two puppies, Justin has decided he is actually not a dog person. Maybe one day when we're done having babies we will adopt a fully grown, already-chilled-out dog that can sit on the porch and do nothing. Until then: cats and chickens it is.