Spring flowers, Flying Kites and Easter Eggs - This is what life is made of

Spring at Tulalip

In front of the Tulalip Casino. Taken while I'm driving my car (oops). The tulips and daffodils are blooming so pretty in front of the sign. Spring is finally here!!

Bad Economy

(thanks to Greg for sending me this photo)

New Kids!

We have now increased our animal herd by three!

Our goats, Lili (Angora) and Tootsie (Pygora) kidded over the weekend (seriously, no kidding) and gave us three new baby kids.

Tootsie kidded on Friday afternoon sometime. I just happened to be walking out to the barn to grab another heat lamp for the chicks and here was this little black and white baby, wet as can be, getting cleaned by her mum!


Her name is Cadburi (like my favorite Easter candy, Cadbury Eggs!) and she is very cute.

Then Lili, our second goat, started acting strangely on Saturday and so we were thinking she would be going into labor shortly.

It took another day (Sunday) for her to finally lay down and have her kids, twin white goats; one buck and one doe. The kids got to watch that birth and that was a cool thing.

Their names are Dai (doe) and Tiger (buck) because their mom is Lili and Felix wanted a name that went with lilies.

The buck was born first and so she tends to favor that one over the little doe, which can lend itself to issues such as not enough attention and lack of nursing. So I'm going to have to pay attention to this one a bit more and make sure she gets enough nourishment or it's bottle time. Ugh.

Regular or Extra Crispy??

Well, we did it. We bought chickens .... actually chicks.

Thomas has been wanting chickens since we moved here to Washington. We started a chicken coop (hooked to the pigeon coop) but just couldn't get the run going. I'm home but a lot of the stuff takes two people to build and I only get him home for two days a week and I swear if those two days don't go by in two minutes. NOTHING seems to get done.

He finally just got tired enough of NOT having chickens that we spent last weekend and the weekend before that putting together the run. We still have the fencing to put up but that's okay. The chicks aren't even old enough to go out there yet anyway. We've got at least a month.

Right now however, they are sitting in a storage bin .......... in the spare room. Yeah. Complete with a waterer, feeder, and heating lamp. I hope they don't stink


I remember when I was pregnant with Felix and I found 11 Mallard ducklings on the freeway and took them home (AND to all you bird people out there -- I don't believe in disturbing nature normally however these ducklings would have been Frisbee ducks if I hadn't have moved them; I later took them to a wildlife refuge center and let them go) and put them in a box in our room. Oh my. After a week ... What a smell!! Bad. They were out in a flash.

So I'm hoping I can keep them in there for at least a week or until it warms up a little. Still kind of chilly for Spring.

Felix with a chick. I have no idea what she has in her hands. It might be her Lakenveldar Striped something-or-other. I have yet to tell them apart.

Robee with a Maran. This one I can tell because it's older and has a comb starting on it's head. These lay dark chocolate brown eggs. Too bad they're not chocolate eggs!

Owen is holding a Barred Plymouth Rock. We were going to get him an Ameraucana (which lay blue-green eggs) but they weren't getting those in until Friday and I wanted him to be able to have two with the kids. I don't think he cares anyway; as long as he has some chickens.

Thomas has two Buff Orpingtons so that rounds us out at 10. However, I still want the Ameraucanas so I'm going back for two more on Friday to come out with an even dozen. Why not?

Looking forward to fresh, organic, wonderful eggs!