my hen’s near death experience

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Shanda

Can you see the turkey???

Yesterday afternoon I felt that I must get out of the house and outdoors. I “made” David, Caleb, Seth, and Sarah come with me. David was the most unwilling, for some reason walks make him impatient, perhaps because we don’t just walk, we stop constantly to look at things. “Walk” is probably not the best word to describe our walks.

At the top of the dam trail I found a turkey feather. When we got up to the field the turkeys were there. In great excitement, the boys and I tried herding them toward us but as I ran Sarah began to sob “I can’t run fast! I can’t run fast!” so I stopped and went back to her, she was losing her breath in her sadness and crying so I sat down and held her, comforting her by saying I would never leave her alone. How terrifying to watch your mother run fast AWAY FROM YOU! “What IS a turkey?” she asked. Oh, dear Sarah. She hadn’t even seen them in the distance, she didn’t know what a turkey was, perhaps it was monster-like! No wonder she was so very upset. We sat and had a conversation about turkeys and the boys came back to join us.

At this point our “walk” had lasted all of 1o minutes and David said he was going home. “NO YOU’RE NOT” I cried. There were complaints from the children. “Wait a minute! You can sit in front of the tv, you can play video games, but you can’t sit in the grass?” “It’s too itchy!!” “JUST sit down, boys!” The whole walk-idea wasn’t working. But, as we sat I started talking to them about the praying mantis we found the last time we were up there…..”maybe we can find another one and take it home to put it in a jar”, I offered.

David actually thought that this was as good idea. We all got up and started to peer into the bushes at the edge of the forest.

We found nothing but bumble bees on the beautiful dark yellow goldenrod flowers. The boys kept going, though, and everyone started getting along again. We played by the stream for quite a while.

David studied milkweed. We are both sad because we didn’t see any monarch caterpillars this year. What’s happening to them??

We popped popper plants and sat up on the cement drain thing, which is sort of like a platform. The kids have to climb up to sit on it, the water drains through a pipe and we can look down into it. Sarah felt as if she was on a stage so she did her fighting moves.

Seth was exploring but kept coming back to mama for a quick “hello”.

Caleb was collecting beaver-chewed sticks and David tried catching a small crayfish without success. You can be sure there would be a picture of it if he got one!

Doesn’t the pile of sticks look like the work of beavers? I was watching Seth and had a little panic when I saw him shaking an arm to get something off himself. I immediately thought he had walked over an ant hill, but it was only a slug. “I hate slugs” he explained.

David begrudgingly helped his little sister down, but I could tell that he felt good about it after it was over.

The lighting at the end of the day is so pretty….Caleb had generously given each child a beaver-chewed stick to swing around on the way home.

The lighting at the end of the day is so pretty.

Billy Cat was ready to greet us as we returned, he was very interested in Sarah’s stick.

*****

When we got in the house it was time to go get the other children from school. I hadn’t given anyone dinner at this point so I loaded everyone up and we picked up J, E, G, and Emily. We took Emily home and drove to the grocery store, & everyone was loud. Grace was telling me about a hard part in her day, the little ones were bickering in the back seat (I don’t know what’s going on with them lately, I’m going to blame it on Rich being gone all week), and so on. I needed some quiet so I didn’t let anyone come in the store with me to get stuff for a taco dinner.

By the time we arrived home it was 7:00pm and I was feeling a lot of rush and pressure about getting dinner done so the younger ones could get to bed. They are so tired by the end of the day. In the midst of doing 8 things at once as I prepared dinner, GRACE CAME IN THE HOUSE to tell me I had to come to the chicken coop!! “I can’t, I’m cooking meat!!!” “DAVID CAN WATCH IT, YOU HAVE TO COME, MOM!!” She would give me NO HINTS except the reassurance that the hens were alive and well.

Would you take a look at this? On the upper left you see a bunch of feathers from one of my hens. The dead bird is a Hawk, which most certainly was in the process of KILLING THE HEN when ……….. SOMETHING KILLED IT. I am intrigued because it is a mystery how it could have died. Our dog didn’t kill it, I know, because the chicken coop is behind his electric dog fence. Was it a cat? Was it the rest of the flock (four hens?) defending their sister-hen? Oh how I would love to know the answer to this story!

As for the hen which lost so many feathers……..

She is wounded, but happily eating and drinking in the coop like nothing at all happened to her. She’s thankful to be alive.

All in all, the day yielded eight new feathers for my collection. Five from turkeys and three from the hawk.

I pulled the feathers from his dead body this morning and washed them.

magical kingdom

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Shanda

PERHAPS adventuring gives us a deeper appreciation for the ordinary days.

NO ONE in their right mind would complain about taking their precious children to DISNEYWORLD and I am not about to do so, HOWEVER, I am currently sitting on my own worn out couch, legs under a flannel quilt that I made myself, with a nice cat at my feet, quiet house all around me, a sleeping daughter in her bed upstairs, and the anticipation of children getting home from school soon and I say, isn’t TODAY, the now, the messy beautiful JUST AS precious as a day in the magical kingdom?

Today is NOT an ordinary day, truly, no day is ordinary, it’s a gift. Last night I had a little one sleep with me because my husband was away. At 10 pm I was silently taking pictures of her restful, sleeping face. All night long I was getting kicked and moving sleepily flung arms back to her side of the bed.

Then, just when I was about to sit and blog hours and hours ago, after the children got on the bus at 7:45, I suddenly remembered that GRACIE had a doctor’s appointment and I had to leave in fifteen minutes to go to school, pick her up, and drive to the Doctor’s. It was a yearly check up and I thank God with all my heart for a healthy, beautiful teenage daughter. She gets migraines and sometimes her eyes blank out/she gets dizzy/when she stands up too quick, but she’s talked to the Doctor and has all kinds of encouraging and helpful remedies to cope with those things.

When we got back home, Sarah and I went to the coop to visit the hens. I sat in the grass and read a book while she became motherly with them, filling all the little cups and bowls (just a handful, really) with food, and walking slowly back from the pond with a saucer of water. A hen laid an egg. Sarah sang out, “thank yooooou, chickennnnnnn!” We carried the egg home, she fried it herself with me by her side, she ate it for lunch.

*****

I LOVE blogging about the little things in each day, it’s harder for me to go back in time to blog about something from last month, but it would be a shame not to document our day at Magic Kingdom.

Caleb and Seth are four years apart. Rich and I took them with us on the trip to Disney because we have already taken the older four. We needed some time with just these boys, it was so fun! Rich had to go to Orlando on a business trip, but he took us along and extended his trip for a personal vacation weekend. We were at Magic Kingdom on a Saturday.

I love them. This picture of the three of them makes me stop and gaze. ^^^ those eyes.

Seth was tall enough to ride every ride we wanted to go on, including Thunder Mountain. The lines were long but we managed and the boys were good natured and happy the whole day.

The Country Bear Jamboree is a must-see.

Rich and I are actually sort of sad that we only have Sarah left to take out of all seven children. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world to take your children to Disney on that very first time for them, to see it all fresh through their eyes, knowing and remembering what it was like on your own first visit. “Maybe we can take the grandchildren.” as remarked by myself, was met with a strange look from my husband.

There were amusements to entertain us in the looooong lines…..like this “honey wall” at the Winnie the Pooh ride. The moms thoughtfully took hand sanitizer out of their purses.

Seth had a lollipop. The walkways were wet from an afternoon shower.

“It’s a Small World” ride…..lines (picture taken as we waited).

The boys were dazzled by all the coins in the water. We threw some in, too.

We hugged in the lines.

“Shalom” meant a lot to the boys after a week of Vacation Bible School and the “Shalom Song” they sang every day.

The Swiss Family Robinson treehouse.

really love these words~

Little shoots of water were coming out randomly from a ride and Seth danced around trying to get wet for a few minutes.

So typical.

They are such good boys.

I saw the tower from Tangled.

We were busy all day long walking, riding, waiting, sitting in shows, looking…….fifteen hours, to be exact.

It meant so much to Rich to be able to have this special vacation with the boys and me.

Okay. So. Rich was riding a baby roller coaster with Caleb and Seth and I had to have a break. I went and bought a caramel apple, sat down to eat it and waited for them to return……well…..I had to sneak out my camera and take this picture…..of a mom with her darling daughters…they sat next to me and all three wore pink shoes! The icing on the cake was the baby’s feet! She lost her shoe but her tiny sock was pink, too!

If I remember correctly the fireworks were at about 10pm. We watched them from in back of the park/castle to avoid the masses of people in front.

Just so beautiful.

After the fireworks were over we continued to stay at the park for several more hours. It was nice to walk in the cool of the day and we all got our “second winds”.

We rode the Buzz Lightyear ride twice and the boys got behind bars with Zurg.

We went on more and more rides, the last one being *Space Mountain* which was quite intense, and very odd to be having such thrills at MIDNIGHT. I spent the entire ride worried that Seth (who was behind me) would fly out of his seat. But all was well.

The castle is so pretty, I turned around to take one last picture of it as we left.

*****

the clouds are so pretty today

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Shanda

Psalm 19:1

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.

Psalms 36:5
Your lovingkindness, O LORD, extends to the heavens, Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

{this moment} friday, seven a.m.

Image

A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

timmy the mouse…beans…concord grapes

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Shanda

“After a mouse has been studied it should be set free, even though it be one of the quite pestiferous field mice. The moral effect of killing an animal after a child has become thoroughly interested in it and its life is always bad.” ~Anna Botsford Comstock

GOOD morning! How are you today? Did you have a nice Labor Day weekend? We did, too. A little bit of everything…rest, play, work, fun, and so on. The children are back to school today and I just taught little Sarah how to use the vacuum cleaner to clean up her own cookie crumbs. She did a great job. Now she’s going to watch Franklin (the turtle cartoon) until I’m done with my blog-writing, and then we’re going to the library for some new story books to read for the week.

Do you know what I think is fun about life right now? The unpredictable way of it, the way you can take a break on the porch with a stack of cookbooks and be interrupted by a mouse! Or when you host a Bible study at your house and someone’s grandparents bring you a bag of fresh garden beans. Or, when a little one is too sick to go to church and you end up going for a walk and find ripe grapes!

Who would have guessed these little events would happen to us this weekend, just small parts of the whole of course, (we did much more), but these are a few of my favorite things that happened in our family as we moved from August into September……..and enjoyed an extra day in the week-end. *I love my family*

“I SMELL A MOUSE”

I was, like I mentioned, sitting on the porch looking up recipes for green bean side dishes…..when superhero David rescued an adorable deer mouth from the jaws of death. He promptly put it in a bucket and gave it a cheerio. Seth was an onlooker, looking but not touching, but then when big sister arrived on the scene, she promptly named him TIMMY and picked him up!

I had told the boys not to touch it.

David was offended because it was HIS MOUSE. And she wouldn’t give it back! She said she loved Timmy.

She tried to put Timmy back in his bucket but he ran up her arm!

So she kept him longer. She said he loved her, too!

David continued to be annoyed.

Annoyed and stressed out. Grace was bonding with the field mouse. It is my belief that the mouse was in shock and didn’t know what was going on.

They started going into the house to show Dad but I began to yell about how unwise that idea was……what if Timmy got away?

So Grace came back, yelling at her brothers to stop trying to take him away from her…..not sure what Sarah’s doing…..

Grace, Seth, David, and Sarah marched in a line to the woods and released the mouse with blessings for a long and happy life.

I left the porch and set to work on my green bean side dish.

I used a recipe from the old cookbook Kara gave me through the mail (thank you, dear dear friend!!)

The beans were wonderful. I washed them, trimmed them up, and cooked them in a pot of water until they were just right (we like them soft).

Meanwhile, I fried three slices of chopped bacon and then sautéed finely chopped onion (3/4 cup) in the bacon grease.

When the beans were done, I added them to the onions and bacon, and seasoned them with salt, pepper, and paprika.

Rich and I ate them all for dinner (that’s all we ate). Grace tried them, too. They were delicious.

I took this picture while the beans were boiling.

We had a strange little illness go around the family…consisting of a stomach ache and head ache. Sarah threw up one night, but the others just had the aches. Caleb had it in the night before church and said he couldn’t go, he “just couldn’t stand it” if he went to church. Consequently, Rich left with the other children and I stayed home with Caleb…..after resting all morning and giving him Advil, I decided it wouldn’t hurt for us to go on a gentle stroll down the road.

He took a plastic bag in order to collect wild concord grapes. They were sour; our walk was punctuated by the sound of him vigorously spitting them back out…….I politely refused his generous offers of grapes from the bag.

They are abundant this year……and smell so good, much better than they taste. However, Rich also likes eating them. Later on, he was delighted to discover Caleb’s bag of them on the kitchen counter.

I made jam from them last year but we still have a few jars left so I’m not tempted to do anything with them this year.

The neighbor’s cows.

***

I hope you have a wonderful day where ever you are, school, work, home….isn’t it marvelous that God sheds his blessings (big and small) on us no matter what we’re doing? I’m thankful for time to get things done, an opportunity to write to my friends here in blog-land, a trip to the library, a beautiful warm day, with health and energy to do what I need to do for my family. God is good.

You are loved.

“Gentleness towards self and others makes life a little lighter.” Deborah Day