Back to school

New coop

You've heard of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, right? At our house it's Charlie and the Chicken Coop.

Work on the New Improved Coop proceeds apace, after a break of about a week to visit with the Mother-In-Law (actually, she helped on some of the building one of the days she was here). We've had three eggs in the past week from the Black Hen (Dorothy). Nothing from the other two Dorothys, yet.

First egg!

This evening I was showing my neighbor what to do to take care of the cats, chickens, and plants while we are away camping, and I was just telling him that we haven't had any eggs, yet, but he'd be welcome to check, here's how you get inside the coop, and voila! There was this little beauty sitting there. It's from the barred rock hen, the black one.

First mother/daughter camping trip

Last weekend, I took NOD on a camping trip for Friday and Saturday nights. She'd been agitating for one for some time, and since the House Bean has gone off for the weekend three times already this summer (once with NOS and NTS, once with just NOS, and once ALL BY HIMSELF) (OK, I did make up for the all by himself one by going off all by myself to a retreat this summer, also), we took the opportunity of a party out at Grammy's house to make a getaway. Well, we missed (most of) the party at Grammy's house, but we had a spectacular time. The first night we camped at Tahkenitch Landing, and then stopped the next day to swim at Tugman State Park.

Here's a picture of our campsite (and my successful campfire, yeah!) our second night, at Cape Blanco State Park:

Sunday was absolutely gorgeous down at the beach at Cape Blanco, so we spent some time down at the beach. That's Humbug Mountain in the background:
We flew our kites:
And visited the Cape Blanco Lighthouse. NOD did indeed climb all the way to the top:

After the lighthouse, we made our way back up north, stopping for lunch and swimming along the way. It was a wonderful time. The daughter is already talking about the next time she gets to steal me away for a weekend.

Why do people bother buying toys for kids, part 8

Another reason to have chickens

"Mommy, I had a nightmare last night, but then I took it outside, and the chickens ate the nightmare."