Busy Nutty Mom

Summer time used to mean relaxing and doing nothing.  Then I had kids.  Now it's just as bad as the rest of the year. With no school to do you would think the kids have ample time to clean up after themselves.  All the extra free time did was give them extra time to make even more creative messes.
I could provide the confetti for a parade with all the tiny scraps of paper they have created.
No one will admit how paint got on the couch pillow.  It's red paint so it looks like they were sacrificing things over summer break.  I'm ready to throw the pillow away after many attempts to clean it have failed, but then they would just move on to kill the remaining pillows.  Plus if you visit my house you will know I have kids or a tribe of feral savages. (depends on their moods)

Summer camp for the oldest two was only a week long but they are stereotypical girls so they packed for closer to two weeks.  We almost had the youngest fully potty trained while they were away. Then his sisters came back from camp and it's back to refusals and accidents. I'm almost ready to ship them off again so we can be done with diapers FINALLY.

My husband was out of work with a broken wrist. Only reason he was out of work was because his work does not allow him to do light duty for his job.  It's full work or nothing.  Luckily we were covered by AFLAC for the accident and he had plenty of sick leave and vacation time saved up. With our 5 kids and mini backyard zoo we never go on vacation anyway.  I spent the 5 weeks helping him with everything. A few times I got cranky at his helplessness. Any normal human would after watching him play video games for hours then say he couldn't make his own sandwich.  I ended up telling him he was starting to abuse the in sickness and in health portion of our vows. I didn't begrudge having to help him shower even though he always waited until I was ready to go to bed to choose to shower.  Even though there was times he drove me crazy with his extra chattiness while I tried to steal some quiet time to read, I miss him now that he is back at work.

I choose summer time to deep clean the house, because I'm nutty like that.  Old school books are packed up and shipped back. I have the kids clean out their closets and dressers to shed any clothing they don't fit into.  It seems insane while in the middle of it all, but once it's done it helps the school year start off easily.

Our chickens have kept me on my toes this summer. With heat waves threatening to kill them if they went broody, so I had to keep a small swimming pool ready for them to wade for cooling off.  The girls have all suddenly decided they are explorers and have taken to escaping their run and walking throughout the yard. They harvested a few of my tomatoes before I had a chance to get to them and before the summer heat scorched my whole garden.  

Recently one of our girls was discovered to have a hidden clutch of eggs.  We didn't even know she was laying yet.  My oldest found her hidden behind the duck house, sitting on 5 eggs! The little feathered stinker has been laying for almost a week with that big of a clutch hidden.  They were rotten as she wants nothing to do with our rooster.

Speaking of the Rooster.  The one we aren't technically supposed to have. (I hate legislation on my backyard due to jerks that pay to watch roosters fight)  Bubo recently learned how to crow.  Our guy seemed to think he was Chantecler from Rock-A-Doodle.  He was doing his best to crow up the sun every 5 minutes from 5am to 10am plus anytime the sun went behind a cloud.  He was quickly fitted with a homemade rooster collar to prevent his call from being so excessive. He can still eat and do all other rooster business, it just prevents him from crowing when fitted correctly.  The law around here state you can't have a crowing rooster, so technically he not a crowing rooster.  He's just a rooster.  This guy is much sweeter than our last one and so pretty with his white coloring. I'll try to get a picture of him. My husband is afraid to share his picture too much as he doesn't want any trouble for having him.

Our Easter Egger Chickens and Eggs!

They have only been here a short time but we already love our Easter Egger chickens.

Wary of us on their first day

It took them a day or two to get used to us.
These chickens have surprised me with their intellegence and curiousity.

Checking what I dropped for them.

These bearded ladies have individual personalities.  

Their feather patterns are gorgeous.  We say they look like they are wearing chainmail. 

Two of our Chainmail Chickens!

Smallest yet bravest chicken

Bossiest chicken

The colorful eggs they have provided for us have been a fun rediscovery every day. Sure our 4 hens will never provide enough eggs for our family of 7 on a daily basis.  They are a good start though.  Plus they are a better pet than aother dog.  Atleast the chickens will provide us with a meal once a week.

3 Shades of Green Eggs from our chickens.

Eggs in their storage container.

We are saving up the eggs to make Eggs in a Basket for breakfast for everyone.  Should only take 3 days for our very young chickens to lay enough eggs. Some of our earlier eggs went into making cookies. 

This is how I take pictures of my eggs. In natural light outside on top of artist white paper.  I love how on the white paper shows the best variations of the coloring.  

Big Feathered News!

As if my nutty life wasn't crazy enough we are adding some new additions to the family soon.  With 5 boisterous children, 2 energetic dogs, 2 curious bunnies, a noisy African Grey Parrot and a couple of startlingly large feeder goldfish you would think our urban family was complete.  You would be wrong.

We got Chickens!

This is another step in my family having a more sustainable kitchen.  After many months of research it was an easy decision to make.   The bunnies have been a huge help in cutting down our waste by eating kitchen vegetable scraps.  This will be a huge improvement as the chickens can break down the bunny waste faster than nature can as well as kitchen scraps.

3 different green eggs from our hens

We started with a small backyard flock containing only 4 lovely ladies.  Sorry, no roosters allowed in city limits.  I had hoped to go down to our local feed store and pick out some local chickens, but did not like the look of the chickens. (balding from plucking and or fights)  Instead we ordered our started pullets from a very old and reputable Hatchery. The Murray McMurray Hatchery with almost 100 years in business was an easy choice to make with it's years of glowing reviews.

6 of our eggs from our Easter Egger Chickens

We ended up picking 18-22 week old pullets to start with, as the frail chicks frighten me. (not going to have the kid's first experience raising chickens end in an early death.)  We also have 5 kids very anxious to find their first eggs.  The breed we ended up choosing was the Easter Egger. It is not a recognized show breed, but perfect for our family's needs as an egg production bird not meat.  This breed of bird has a huge variation in feather color/pattern as well as egg color, so it's like the surprise chicken. Who knows what color the chicken will be?  What color egg will they lay? Easter Eggers can lay varying tints of blue, green and even pink eggs.

They were wary of us at first.

Sadly since we live in Las Vegas we are forced to keep them in a coop/run at all times, but my husband has plans for a small track-like enclosed run to go around the outer edge of our yard.  It will give them more area to explore while staying protected from our surprisingly many predators in the city.  To think I was excited to see that Hawk chasing the pigeons through the skies of our neighborhood last year.  There are many other improvements we would like to make to the coop/run in the future, but it works for our current smaller flock of hens.

We sprouted seeds in mason jars for a tasty treat for the chickens.  We purchased the Wheat berries from Bountiful Basket food co-op to sprout for the chickens as well as try to make some baked goods.









One day I hope to have 2 chickens for every family member in the house. Just like this old poster suggests.   We will have to move before then, beause our backyard cannot support a little over a dozen chickens. The girls we do have are a nice start.