After waiting since Spring for one of these chickens to lay an egg we found 2 in the yard of the Black Silkies area today! This is a saucer in the picture so it shows how small these are, they're from Bantam chickens which are fairly small. I've got to get that greenhouse ready to put the chickens in! We've been so busy with this huge project of blasting the finish off the house that I haven't had time to work on anything else. The blasting is done and it looks like it won't rain for at least a few days so we'll go ahead and spray the house with the Shell-Guard this weekend.

We're still working on this huge project of blasting the old finish off the house and then we have to spray it with the Shell Guard and then the After-Blast, then we can stain it. I think that will be the fun part although you can sure see the progress while you're blasting so I guess that's been fun too. We were supposed to only need 40 bags of corn media for the blasting but so far have used 78 bags and we're not done. We're supposed to be re-renting the blaster tomorrow for the weekend, if it doesn't rain. I've been using the shop vac to vacuum up all the corn media I can and then I've been sifting it into the empty bags so we can reuse it.

Today is my birthday and Melissa, my son Shane's wife, posted this picture on our myfamily.com site. It's me and Shane when he was about 2, probably 1978 or so. I miss when Shane was that little and I sure wish I was as young now as I was in that picture!

Joey and Aaron on their first day of school in Georgia... such sweet adorable boys!

Here's some of the Silkies. Most look like roosters, at least half anyway.

It's official, these 2 on the left are roosters. I've got at least 3 of the 7 crowing now. They crow back and forth at the Sicilian Buttercup. I really like listening to them crow but I know it would be too hard on the 2 or 3 hens in there. I guess I need to find them a home.

Wow! It took 1 minute to upload this picture onto here. I love this fast internet! I'm so tired, should be sleeping right now but I want to play on the computer. It's after 10 and I need to be out of here in the morning between 7 and 8 at the latest to be in Tacoma by 11 for a drs appt at a pediatric neurologist for Tim. I've waited all summer for this appt so we need to go. After that I have to drive back up to Permachink to get another 30-35 big bags of corn media. On Thursday and Friday I'll do some of the blasting but also need to take Stephen to the dentist Thursday.

We are in the midst of a big project, blasting the old finish off the outside of our log house. Much bigger job than I thought. I know it will be worth it in the end but for now it's a huge pain. I have pictures of the job as it's going along but this slow connection isn't being very cooperative. On Tuesday this guy is coming here to install satellite internet. Cannot wait!!!! It's been 4 long years of the connection problems.

I also have pictures to put on here of the chickens. I have a feeling that soon we will have fewer. At least 2 of the Black Silkies now crow along with the Sicilian Buttercup who's in a different area. I actually only am pretty sure that 2 of the 7 Black Silkies are hens. I really hate to get rid of any of them and I know I couldn't eat them so I'll place an ad at the feed store. There was alot of fighting going on in there today but even the 2 Buttercups were fighting with each other. I think their nerves were all on edge from listening to that huge air compressor going and the corn blaster was going too. I couldn't even go near there without my ear plugs. We picked up 35 bags of the corn media and because we didn't read the manual fully we ended up using way more the first day than we should have so now we have 1 or 2 bags left. Didn't even get started till 5pm on Friday, about the time that Permachink closed until Tuesday morning. Ticked me off because I had asked them if we had problems would we be able to get ahold of someone and they said yes. We haven't been able to contact anyone from there and they are apparently the only place in Washington State where you can get the corn media. I went around to the feed stores yesterday with a sample and finally bought 200lbs of chick scratch but it was much coarser than what we had. I may be grinding a bunch of that in the food processor.

I got Tim in school and on Tuesday there's a picnic to meet the other kids and parents. On Wednesday he has an appt. at a pediatric neurologist in Tacoma and then we'll probably be driving up to Redmond to get more corn media. Much of the house is done but still alot to do and then we spray it with Shell-Guard to protect from insects, etc, spray it with After-Blast, then stain it, etc, then chink it and we will have a much warmer house this winter. There was so much of that corn stuff that came into the house that I realized just how bad it's been needing to be chinked.