The Great Chicken Slaughtering, part 2

 We have no pics of part 1.  We came home from some events and nine of our chickens had succumbed to too much heat (super sad).  We processed them that night and then let the other fifteen birds develop more meat.  And boy did they!  When we get them out of the freezer, the later ones are about three times as large as the first ones!

Here's some of the blurry bloody pics from that event. Our neighbor, Auntie Loni, stopped by and jumped in--it looked so fun, lol. 

Both times we did the slaughtering, it ended up downpouring...and nice steady summer rain.  We were totally drenched and didn't mind the extra rinsing at all.

It took a LOT to be able to start the butchering process, not to mention handling them, feathering them and eviscerating them.  (Yanking out the guts!)

Piper's bloody legs.

The chopping block where Lily, Piper and Havala were stationed...voluntarily.

Draining...

Quinn would boil them for a little bit to make the feathers come out more easily.

Eli was great at being dramatic about the whole affair.  Maia enjoyed it when we had company, like Loni (and her Aunt Heidi and cousins the first time).

The rain had already begun.

Mission Calls and Farm Animal Additions

 It's crazy to look at the picture at the top of the page and see how much everyone has changed. I guess this is fresh on my mind because Reka sent some old videos from Kel's phone and one had all the kids younger by about 2-3 years, so it's like everyone went back to the next younger person's age...and it was so sweet!  We also received a bunch of digitized videos in the mail and enjoyed watching some movies from when the oldest kids were younger. So fun!

We had some stomach flu last week.  Penelope got the worst and threw up for almost three days off and on....mainly at night.  She was definitely lethargic.

Bigger news, Lily and Drew have been called to serve in the Melbourne Australia and Montreal Quebec French speaking missions respectively!!  So happy for them.  Drew leaves end of June and Lily the end of July.  Pretty much opposite sides of the globe, I believe.  Drew is learning French like mad and Lily is focusing on finishing up her school classes.  Drew is going to sell his car and try and maybe get a job. 

Hyrum and Piper are doing seminary right now. I love having the sounds in the house!

Quinn is up early attacking his appraisals.  I am going to go down and paint after this, my "Family History" for the day.  Then we are going to prep for our cow that is coming tomorrow.  I am excited to give Havala a voice lesson today and play games with Eli and Xai. I might help Maia get her room and wall prepped too!  We are hopefully going to build a climbing wall this week as well.  So many good things!

Piper just got a new baby goat for free from a friend. In return she is going to help at their farm when they tag the herd and do a few other things.  She called it "Hobbes" after the philosopher.  We are going to take the other goats in later this week for processing.  We are also prepping for our 24 meat chickens and 12 egg-laying chicks that are coming in two weeks.  And getting the garden going and the basement finished up.  And the wood shed.  So much to do and so much fun, eh?

I loved snuggling Elijah to sleep last night during scripture reading.

Lily is up and prepping for the day with the three littlest.  Super happy about that! 

Oh, I need to remember to get her money and also pick up $900 for the cow and delivery fee for tomorrow.  So much fun!!

Busy, Books and Bangs

We have been reading and discussing “Dare to Lead” by Brown as a family (older kids and parents) and discussing it. Actually, I bribe them to participate: all those who read it are able to attend a discussion at a local restaurant. We read a section a week. I have really loved it. And I think they are too.

One thing we are focusing on this week is the burden of perfectionism and being kind to ourselves. This has so much application: numbing, anxiety, stress, unrealistic goals and expectations accompanied by negative self-talk when they aren't met, numbing addictive behaviors, etc. I have appreciated the perspective and being able to use it this week. Just yesterday I stopped a lot of impulsive eating and snacking because I thought, “What is really driving my desire for food right now?”

Also, Brown emphasizes that “clarity is kindness.” Not being rude or abrupt. Just clarity in expectations, communication, expression. I have been able to use that in my communication with the kiddos. If something is not worth communicating clearly, it must not be worth saying or expecting. Voila!

I am working like mad to get all the costumes and props ready so that we can start rehearsing with them. It is a HUGE task, especially since I am trying to keep up our C4! Class (which was particularly amazing this week thanks to the unleashing of so many of the kids and their personalities with opportunities to present and share). They are truly inspiring each other and creating that safe and energetic environment of learning that I know can happen when operating on the guiding principles I have always used with groups:

-let the kids lead and teach

-ask lots of questions

-get them involved in different learning styles

-lots of group activities and challenges

-create a safe environment of love, respect and decency.

We have some kind of animal wandering our property making loud banging noises...like on metal. I am not sure what it is!

Quinn is working crazy hard. He is trying to spread out his appointments, but people are coming in with offering $500 rush fees! I trust that he knows what he is doing. He does take time out for us. He came to Piper's track meet with all the rest of us to support her in Alexander (she took 12^th place with about 60 girls!) and went to the youth activity last night. He is a good man. We are both a little crazy with stuff right now. Do we live on a farm? Kind of :D.

Busy month!

 Buchanan Reunion 2021

We had an amazing reunion with the Buchanans here at our place. It was miraculous that my parents moved in next door just in time to host people there as well. The kids and adults drifted back and forth between our two properties when they wanted to. We played games inside, games outside:

-Minute to Win It—noisy and crazy and Aaron and his team of young girls won, lol!

-Field games inspired by my friend Miss Penny

-Emptied out Opa and Oma's garage of all the burnable stuff and had a giant bonfire taller than my 6 foot 6 inch (?I think?) nephew

-Went to a place to play Combat Archery and outdoor Lasar Tag in a little “course” they had set up...so fun!

-Great music and conversations

-Late night fun (when I wasn't a stickler on being quiet so those who were asleep could sleep :D)

-Swimming at a lake and at the local pool

-Adult/1^st and 2^nd generation dinner at the Purple Chopstix (super yummy, fun place!)

-just basically went with the moment, with a few memorable things scheduled in :D.

It was surprising to us all how relaxed we felt at the end, feeling that someone must have been doing all the work to make it happen but somehow we were all getting a lot more rest than usual! (Probably because the kiddos were always busy playing together really well :D.) Sarah made t-shirts for everyone who wanted them—here and not here—and that was a fun unifying aspect as well.

Kittens

We were delighted to have kittens join our family farm during June. Sadly, the last day of the reunion, one was up under a car and was accidentally run over. The Monday after that, one fell off our elevated front porch and didn't survive the trauma. Two days later the last three just disappeared. We had no idea where they had gone! The younger kids and I went climbing at a local rock area behind Wendy's while Hyrum and Lily worked there. We came down from climbing to find the three little darlings playing under the car Hyrum and Lily had used to drive to work!! Miracle!

We brought them home with much rejoicing!

The next morning we woke up and they were gone. And we haven't seen them since.

There has been a lot of heart ache in our family due to this chain of events. We have five little graves...four with nothing in them since something dug up on of the other ones. Fortunately, a friend of ours has two kittens from a litter that she is giving away and we have learned our lesson. These kittens will be staying in an area in our basement until they are old enough to fend for themselves.

Poor little dears!

Visitors!

We have been blessed to have the Shetkas arrive shortly after the Buchanans left! They are super chill and fun to have around and they plan on staying for a month! We have already been climbing, swimming, gaming, playing, chatting, laughing, eating, cooking, biking and pretty much just enjoying being together. They are in the midst of a wandering lifestyle, visiting many beautiful places around the country as they work online and show their kids some great places. We are grateful that they have made us one of their stops :D.

They have even survived the great millipede infestation of 2021. At first they were cute. Then they were a nuisance. Then they got creepy! One night, we went out and there were hundreds of them outside of our back porch door!

Thanks to some research and some diatemaceous earth we have balance restored but yikes! That sure wasn't a pleasant thing to have to go through for a few days.

Fowls

We are down to 34 chickens but haven't lost one in over a week, so we are hopefully getting more stable. We think that it is our dogs, every time we lose a chicken, the dogs have been off the chain unexpectedly.

Our guinea fowl have been successfully transitioned out to the main coop with the hens and are settling down together. Every once in a while they will venture out to the big scary outside world and boy do we hear it! But the little darlings will soon join their chicken compatriots in debugging the immedate vicinity around our house. Yay for natural pest control!

And, we've gotten a few eggs from the deal :D.

General

-Hyrum has given his two weeks notice at Wendy's. He has a full Fall and has saved up a bunch already. He also just finished up his online driving course at last so we can schedule him for his road driving course so he can get his license. However all the “local” places are booked through January so it might be awhile. He's having fun trying to squish in time with friends.

-Lily is still working there and possibly going to start working for Quinn, who is insanely busy trying to transition and get in a new groove here as a independent appraiser with so much work. She is doing more with her dog, Love, who is almost full grown and not as big as we thought she would be so her parenting is probably a little different than we were told. She is saving up for a huge road trip or trip to Europe and is talking about serving a mission.

-Drew has started writing stories again which I see as a huge sign of improved mental health. His wound that he got from parkour (that required three deep stitches and five superficial ones) is finally starting to heal as is his ankle which we are still not sure if it was broken or not. (He dropped a huge dead log on it while helping clear some old debris with the other kids.)

-Tova and Ben are enjoying Texas together...well, they are enjoying being together anyway! Tova just finished up a semester and is loving her break before fall classes start. Ben is almost up for his one year contract renewal and is looking at options. Tova is writing a play “Remarkable” that I hope to put on next spring.

-Piper is running more and more and is running more and more of the animal portion of our farm :D. She loves her goat, helps a lot with Kujo and training and is our “first one out” every morning to water and let the chickens out of their coop. She loves games, reading and is still an amazing helper. She spent some of yesterday climbing trees.

-Havala is still very musical. She doesn't like bugs so doesn't spend a lot of time outside but is super cute working with the younger kids. She is excited about our choirs and plays this fall, as well as seeing her friends.

The little ones miss their Buchanan cousins but are really enjoying having Olivia and Owen around. It is fun hearing them play around all day! We have played a lot of games but I think we will start settling into more of a school routine the next few days. We are also enjoying swimming—the boys especially are making a lot of progress! Elijah actually passed the swim test and went off the diving board a few times, scaring those watching a bit when he swam the wrong way and when he tried to get the water out of his eyes in a deep section. Crazy six year old kid! Love him so much! He's been pretty feisty lately so not sure what to do about that but endure to the end (or enjoy to the end as Quinn puts it!). Liesl is still pretty obsessed with Penelope. Penelope is loving the “hold my hands and walk me”stage. She also is cautious about edges (so grateful) and crazy about stairs (not so happy). Just the other day, she was found at the top of our second landing outside our patio up a huge flight of wooden stairs. She was just sitting at the top, calling out at the top of her lungs happily. Yikes! Fortunately we have kept the downstair's door closed pretty consistently, with only one scare that I can remember...finding her sitting at the top reaching out for the sparkle lights I have on the wall there. We had fun on a bike ride yesterday and enjoyed sitting in the cool of the library afterward, soaking up books. I am grateful that these particular children are a part of my journey here.

We survived a pretty brutal stomach bug that was apparently going around both our family and the local community. Yikes!  I've not been that sick in so long.  Fortunately we recovered in time to get our COVID vaccine yesterday.  Drew and I had an "engaging" discussion about it on the way in. I've conceded that the pros outweigh the cons for me personally, but I detest the shaming, alarmist, coercive rhetoric that many people use on both sides of the "whether to get vaccinated or not" issue.  No place for it, in my mind, and Drew was touting a comparison that was a little extreme for me.  I must confess it almost made me walk out and not get it but I'm trying to reign in my emotional responses a little more lately :D.

I have finished adapting our Les Mis (non-musical) script that I rented from script licensing agency, 30 pages of awesomenesss. I am enjoying reading about Acton School and the Socratic method of teaching to prep for my classes in the fall. It's going to be an awesome year!

The Bad, The Ugly and The Good

 If you've read my blog posts very much at all, you will sense that I love to capture the delightful, funny, sweet and wonderful. I feel that over the years this has helped me to see the magic and beauty that is in my life.  I had something happen this morning that reminded me that sometimes this has had to be a choice.  

It was early, early morning when I heard a cat yeowling.  "Great," I thought.  "Our cat that just had babies is in heat already!  We need to get her fixed." And then I drifted off back to sleep on the couch by my sleeping baby.

What seemed like moments later, there was a loud cat screech followed by what sounded like animals tumbling across our front porch.  There were subsequent screeches and tumblings that moved progressively away from the house and into the neighboring woods.   Both Quinn and I were up and alert and went out (courtesy of Hyrum's powerful flashlight) to see what we could see.  But all that we could see (...but all that we could see...thanks, "Bear Went Over the Mountain" refrain!) was nothing.  And we heard nothing.

As we walked back to the house, checking on various animals to see any possible impact, I remembered our first cat that we adopted.  Xavia.  Perhaps she's gone feral? I wondered, which spurred further thoughts.

What do you do with a feral cat? Maybe I could get the kids to go out an hunt and shoot her.

Perhaps she is the one that killed our rooster and taken away the missing chicken and not our dogs?

Anyway, life is not always as perfect as it seems, I guess :D.

We are down three chickens and one guinea fowl from a month ago.

My three year old has just recently started wetting the bed. We gave her back her binki (that we recently weaned her of') but she still awoke wet this morning.  Now I have two bed wetters.  Fun.

I purchased a bed-wetting kit a few months ago but decided I couldn't get up for a baby at night and for the beeping of a bedwetter.

The aforementioned baby is still not sleeping more than two to three hours at a time until after 4 or 5 am...and sometimes even less.

The garden on our slope is slowly eroding away but hopefully will stay there at least until harvest.  My spontaneously engineered plan apparently should have taken into account our heavy rainfall, lol.

Our dogs were caught "red-handed" riling up our chickens two days ago after being caught with our dead, wingless rooster two days before that.  We're not sure if something else killed the rooster and they were just playing with the carcass or if it was them.  Time for a trail cam?  Just another thing and another expense.  For now, they just take turns roaming free with our chickens, which our hound dog definitely doesn't like.  Kujo feels he should be everywhere with everyone and I get a little tired of the barking.  Trained?  As much as I'm going to do.  For now, at least they sometimes respond to bacon.

Quinn spent 12 hours over three days driving Kel and Réka to the airport three separate times to get them on their way back to Hungary. For various reasons--all including ineptness, lack of training and general culpability on the part of United Airlines--they weren't able to fly out the first two times and Quinn had to head back to pick them up from the airport after almost making it home after the 1 1/2 hour one way drive to the airport.  Incorrectly entered numbers on the boarding pass, falsely saying the COVID test had to be within 3 days and then actually having a 48 hour policy (which only happened because of the first incompetence), and finally not reissuing tickets for all of them the third time caused such grief and delays. And it was over poor Réka's birthday, no less! 

And now our air-conditioning is out.

And our house in Medina still hasn't sold.

But enough of grousing!  There are so many blessings!

We got to have Kel and Réka here with my little grandson for over two weeks thanks to that incompetence and we got to celebrate her birthday together and give the little tyke his first hair trim.

The other chickens are all healthy and hale, running excitedly up to greet me whenever I go out, the little dears.  Our guinea fowl are getting uglier and noisier right on schedule and Drew and Hyrum have taken them on as their responsibility without complaint.

Quinn is now here full-time with no more weekly trips to Medina!  He has also been able to use his expertise to help my parents move into the house next door to us, which has been so wonderful.

Lily and Hyrum had a few weeks off of Wendy's and just started back today. Because of their time there, they have priority in the scheduling, which is wonderful.

Hyrum, Piper, Havala, Maia and I are all performing in "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" which is being presented this weekend in Pomeroy OH with a little theater company named Wolfe Mountain Entertainment.  Maia is a wood nymphy and leopard, Havala the Unicorn, Piper the White Witch and Hyrum is Peter. (Yes, that means Piper and Hyrum get to battle each other and they love it.) Oh, and I'm Father Christmas. I'm the only adult in a children's play.  Tried to beg out of that one but he said he wanted to keep me in because they were running short on parts.  It has been great to be there with them and be involved in a play that I am not in charge of too :D.

The way I got Liesl to stop using the binki was to snuggle her to sleep at night.  Sooooo sweet. 

So while there are definitely things to look at to complain about, I find it doesn't do much good in the long run...and is a lot less fun to write about. My kids love reading this, too, and come away happier, I believe, also being led to see the good that outweighs the bad most of the time.  And only if we really choose to look at it that way.

Funnies, Play "Louis Pasteur" and Work

 Xai came up to Piper this morning and said, out of the blue, "Did you know that you can't grow apri-cados over here?? You have to grow them where there's always sunshine."

Later..."I wish we lived in Florida."

*****

Yesterday Liesl told me, “I missed my dream so I had to go to sleep again.” I love the little phrases and words she uses! I may have already recorded how she uses the word, “Beezer” for “zipper.” She also refers to plays as “the Act”: “are we going to the Act today, mommy?” or “I need to get my special dress on for the Act!” It was adorable to see how much she and Eli picked up on the choir and acting. After the cut-off of one of our songs, we heard someone still singing in the audience, perfectly on pitch and with all their might...it was Liesl. So cute!! She and Eli know the words to many lines and most of the songs for both groups and loved being a part of it. I think it might be also in part because they get to watch movies almost all the time when I am doing my groups, but it is apparent that they also like feeling a part of it.

By the way, the play “Louis Pasteur” was last week...a musical comedy/encyclopedic wealth of information, but also very fun! I put in a lot of staging, nuances, and changed a few words to make it more humorous and enjoyable. They did amazing! I have never had such a perfect performance and all I did backstage was open and close the curtains and turn lights on and off! The kids came on and off themselves, remembered lines and got into character really well! They slowed down, enunciated. The audience was vocal and outgoing in their feedback, which fed the actors and made them have so much fun! We did visualization exercises beforehand to help them calm down. Overall, just awesome!  Hyrum was Louis Pasteur and had a ton of lines.  Piper played many minor roles: young Louis Pasteur, Greta the bread girl, the two sheep that died.  Hava was the reverend.  Maia was Pasteur's daughter.  Xai was the sheep that lived. Right as we were finishing and getting off of the stage, Xai called out loudly from within his sheep costume, “And just so you know, I'm really a person!”  What a ham. 

That Saturday, we had a stake training planned and I just didn't see how I could get to it with having the play that night. True, all the scenery etc was on the stage already but still...wasn't it just too much. Besides, I had so many home projects that felt pressing. Well, I was super glad I went. I shared some deeply felt testimony and experiences. I was uplifted so much by the sharing by others. Lily came with me and I loved having a day with her! Piper watched Penelope (I paid her) and so it was just Lily and I. She also really enjoyed it and had a little break when I went to my leadership meeting, which was also fantastic. The visiting authority was so incredible...I could have listened to his words of spirituality and counsel all day. He was bold and sensitive at the same time, definitely following the Spirit and definitely heartfelt. I was blessed.

Lily, Hyrum and Maia went with Quinn to Medina this week so we are down a few people. It is amazing how few people eight people feels like when you are used to more! I told Piper and Hava to do their own thing and I would take care of the littles. We have also super cleaned the upstairs, main level and will be working on the downstairs today. Poor Hava. Piper and I love to clean!

I finished my book case for my bedroom!  I am super dooper excited.  Wood is crazy expensive so I used scraps from our other projects and five purchased pieces of shelving to make my 8 foot by 6 foot creation.  It will be for scrapbooks and family history stuff which I haven't had out for about 5 years now.  Soooooo excited!

Yesterday Piper and Havala took Xai, Eli and Liesl on an adventure...that apparently involved a lot of spiders. They also found a toad/frog that Eli loved and loved...until it died. And then he mourned. Poor dear.

Xai finally lost two of his four loose teeth that he has right now. Now the first one loose is still to go, but it is close too. He has that adorable “two missing front teeth” scenario, which I love so much! Last night, he prayed that he would be able to improve in how he spoke since he is having a hard time speaking with his front teeth out. I assured him that his speaking was just temporary and that I was completely enjoying it :D.

Piper came up to me yesterday, excitedly talking about how she was studying the scriptures. She is writing down all the various names of Christ. “Isn't it cool how each name refers so specifically to a role that He has in our lives? Ways that He is able to bless us?” Super cool! She is enjoying her new baby goat, Austin. Right now she is also caring for Gus, Maia's goat that she got to be a companion to Austin. We are still deciding if they are going to be meat goats come next spring. We think it might be fun to get new baby goats every spirng (they are super cute), use them to eat down the forage (we have an invasive wild rose that is taking over and goats love roses!) and then eat them the next year. We'll see. The girls are adjusting to that idea—Piper more readily than Maia, no surprise.

Drew has quit Wendy's for this month before he plans on going on his mission and is now full time working our property. He has enjoyed the first two days but it was pretty hard work. We'll see if the arrangement works for all of us :D. I have raised some pretty strong, independent children and so sometimes sharing the same roof as adults can get a little...tricky. It is nice to have someone work on things that I am not choosing to get to out of different time choices, so at least I am liking it for now :D.

COOP!

 It is so hard to believe that it is May already.

The kids are watching The Chosen, a TV series of Christ and his life. One phrase from last week keeps sticking out to me, “Christ chose you as you are right now. What more do you need to know?” I tell myself this phrase when I feel overwhelmed or inadequate.

Hava, Maia, Piper and Lily did an amazing job super cleaning the house yesterday. Lily and Quinn leveled the base for our chicken coop (quite a project!); Xai and I went grocery shopping and picked up cement; the entire gang helped lift the base of the coop from the barn (where we constructed it on a level surface the day before), loaded it up onto our trailer, lifted it off, attached a base strip and then carried it over to our site. What a day! 

 The girls went in to help make tacos for dinner, while Quinn, Hyrum and Eli helped attached the final two posts beneath it while I caged in an area for the quickly growing chickens to be happy in while they wait for their indestructible palace to be completed :D.

Rain and Holidays

 It rained yesterday. Beautiful, down-pouring awesomeness like I used to crave in Utah.  Growing up in a desert has made the sound of the storm magical.

Apparently I am not the only one in my family who finds it so.  We had just finished up a grueling five and a half hours of choir and acting rehearsal and I had called it good for the evening.  We did a quick straighten up while I put the finishing touches on dinner, we ate and then I declared the evening free.  

"Maybe we could watch a movie or something," I mentioned casually, to the delight of the kids.  

During dinner, the rain started coming down even harder, beckoning.  The older kids asked if the little ones needed a bath tonight.

"If so, can we do it outside in the rain? You know, just leave their clothes on but let the rain clean them off?" they queried.

Brilliant.

So that is what we did on our evening off...let the rain pour down.

Piper and Lily both commented yesterday about how it is like everything all of a sudden turned green.  The birds are out in choruses and everything feels alive. The sound of the distant freeway have receded even further, masked by the unfurling of all the leaves in our little woods.

I love to listen to the birds outside my window, particularly this morning when I lay there snuggling with my baby, trying to get her back to sleep in my favorite way possible...nestled up against my body. There is something equally magical about snuggling a sleeping baby so the combination of bird song, rain and sleeping baby has really set a wonderful tone for my day :D.

**********

Lily has started a new tradition of reading off all the holidays for the day.  This week we have celebrated:

-"Minimize Food Waste Day"--leftovers for dinner!

-"Blueberry Pie Day"--particularly delicious.

-"National Kids and Pets Day"--every day, right??

-"National Pretzel Day"--another yummy one with homemade pretzels

-"National Tell a Story Day"

-"National Prime Rib Day"--sadly, missed celebrating this one

-"National Devil Dog Day"--won't mention how applicable this one was

-"National Great Poetry Reading Day"--every day!

-"National Zipper Day"--or as Liesl puts it, "beezer" ("Mommy, will you do my beezer?"

It's been a riot!  Maia was sad that we didn't celebrate "National Hug a Plumber Day" last Sunday until she realized that Quinn had done a lot of plumbing work, so we felt that qualified him.  Oh, and we forgot to get out the shrimp last night for "National Shrimp Scampi" day because we got so caught up in the rain and beauty of the evening.  I am great celebrating that one a day late ;).