...and all was right with the world.

Our Petunia wants to be a mom. Every 2 months on the dot she starts showing signs of indisputable mommy-ness.  She sits in the egg box all day and night, to the great irritation of the other gals she commandeers their eggs, and all in the name of hatching babies. Each time I notice we're back in 'broody world', I set up the dog crate in the garage and break her of it.  It works, it's fine, I just can't help but wonder what would happen if we did give her a few fertile eggs to set on?

I did it.

I picked up 5 eggs from Jen, who's allowed to have roosters intermingling with her gals. I set up a private little apartment with her own food and water and nesting box and let her settle in. She immediately strode over, cocked her head this way and that eyeing those gorgeous eggs, gobbled up a large amount of food (broody hens rarely feed themselves), took a dust bath, rearranged the eggs, fluffed her feathers and slowly lowered her warm body right down. That was yesterday, and she hasn't moved! We're hoping to have chicks in 3 weeks (which coincidentally lands right on my birthday)! All the other gals are very curious about why she's getting the special treatment, it's quite hilarious to watch them circle her apartment, not sure how to get in. We gave 'em some extra clean straw so they wouldn't feel left out.

Garlic in the Ground, Tree's in the Trailer

Stopped by my neighborhood nursery and found a few things that got me out in the yard for most of the day. Inchelium Red Garlic, a Gravenstein Apple tree and a 4-way Combination Pear (Highland, Red Bartlett, Conference, Bartlett, Anjou). I love replacing useless trees with food trees; we took out a few ornamental's that had either died or were driving me nuts and quickly divided up the heads of garlic and planted for some good eating next year!

Camp Korey 2011

The sun was out this morning as we made our way over to Carnation for the second year in a row. We had a really great time with animal petting, corn maze, marshmallow roast, pumpkin bowling, tractor hay ride, and of course the search for the perfect pumpkins. We had a lovely time last year, but they made it even better for 2011. If you get a chance check it out, they're open every weekend in October for their Fall Festival 10am-4pm. Please support this wonderful organization.

Papier-mâché - chewed paper

Our Art Appreciation and Geography classes were combined today! We started our papier-mâché globes, and had so much fun. As we talk about each of our continents and land features we will be adding them to our globes, but today was up to our elbows in balloons, torn newspaper & flour/water glue.

Roller Skates

We got E a pair of roller skates. Yesterday she spent 2 hours practicing in our garage. It brought back plenty of memories of when my sister and I would tear around the ultra smooth surface in my dad's garage on rainy days...nice to have another indoor/outdoor activity.

This day, 7 years ago

There's not a lot that escapes me when I think back to this day 7 years ago. I woke up with contractions around 7:20. I called the office in Seattle and made plans to board the ferry to deliver my baby. Our friend Ben accompanied D and I as I paced the aisles on the boat, and then later on the bright sunny sidewalks in Ballard. D kept a hawks eye on our stopwatch as we marked the intervals my body was readying itself for it's most exhaustive work; welcoming our E. When it finally came time to officially check in to the labor and delivery wing Jen was there to help me through those first eye-opening moments when my water broke. And my mom was there when she was born. We called everyone we knew and the nurses shook their heads at us for having so many welcomed visitors. I cried out to an exhausted husband to retrieve our baby from the nurses because I couldn't remember what she looked like: that 8 pound 15 ounce baby that was finally ours to hold.

 I love you so, my dear daughter.

Girl Fest 2011

We went down to Girl Fest 2011 this morning for a great time with loads of stuff that girls are interested in! She rolled pretzel dough, competed in an obstacle course (and won by the way), climbed around on a fire truck (a few of the guys knew our uncle Jason), learned the correct form for crunches, petted a horse, chatted with the people from School of Rock, was interviewed by a King 5 News anchor, and all sorts of stuff!

Art Appreciation - Day 1

Today was my first co-op class here at our house. It was completely exhausting but so rewarding! I decided to take it down to the real basic level of color for our first class. We spoke about primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. I had the girls mix balls of red, yellow, and blue play dough and tell me what they got. We then made up color wheels, it was so much fun to see the light bulbs going off above their little heads. E and Kaela were so proud that they had mixed all 9 (secondary and tertiary) colors independently.