A little of this, A little of that.....

Good morning!!!!!!! (or afternoon, night, whenever you are right now)

Yes, I am here and all is well.....you can call off the search parties. :) I know it's been over 5 days and I haven't posted. I just got wrapped up in this crazy thing called life and haven't gotten chance to chillax with my keyboard and have my much needed therapy session. Thanks for checking in on me with emails and FB messages. I feel so "shhhhpecial" and loved!

OK, there is no lightening bolt revelation/occurrence that I can share......so I think I will wrap up what went on these past 5 days or so in a my life.......in no particular order of importance or entertainment value.

So I tended to 26 eggs in our incubator for 21 days........tending to would include checking temperature and humidity daily (throw in my OCD and that would be hourly). It included candling them at various times. Candling in our house was basically taking a Dora the Explorer flashlight and putting it behind each egg. If the egg resembled one of those early 90's Glow-worm Toys.....it was a dud. If you saw a slight shadow or dark spot......something was happening. We had a chart that showed what stages of development these little creatures are at for each day. N put stickers on a calendar for the countdown of The Big Day.

Drumroll please.

We hatched ONE egg. I got excited when I heard a little peep coming from the incubator that morning. I thought one had hatched, but she was peeping from inside the egg. Most likely translated to "get me the heck outta here, will ya!" I have to admit, it was an amazing thing to watch. Although it felt like watching paint dry at one point.......it takes a long time for these little guys to break out.....witnessing this little life enter the world was amazing. I think I actually got choked up when the little slimeball finally rolled out.

Not sure what was a more amazing sight......the birth of the little chick.....or watching Josh during the last few minutes. He walked in the house, looking all rugged and manly in his workboots, jeans and Fox Racing tee. When he saw us gathered around the incubator, the softer "daddy" side of Josh came out. There was a flash of light and we entered into a time warp. We were brought back to one of my times in the delivery room.

He is crouched down by the incubator cheering on the chick with random shoutouts like "come on, push.....push.....push".....and....."you can do it!" He even put dibs on "calling the birth time".

I do know that he will be killing me for publicly talking about this.....but hey, I have never held back embarrassing information before......why start now?

So, we now have one little addition......who we decided to call Uno. I would show you a photo of her but my camera took an unexpected bath in the water feeder in the barn this weekend. oooops. So you are gonna have to take my word for it that she is very cute.

Oh, and we were not planning on keeping any of these chicks. Our original plan was to sell them for a mere $2 each. This would be good for the kids to learn a little entry level business sense and put the money back into their farm for feed/grain. So we were counting on at least 20 to hatch and recouping $40 or so.

Hmmmmmm, so what do you think our chances are for selling Uno for $40? Any takers?

So I don't know how to say this without hurting the rooster's feelings, but apparently he was "firing blanks". Which I hope is an acceptable way of saying he wasn't doing his job in the fertilizing department. He doesn't live on our farm and I am pretty sure he doesn't read blogs so I think I am OK to say this without it getting back to him. We "pulled the plug" on the incubator on Day 24. We gave them an extra 3 days and still nothing happened. Josh and I have a "3 day rule" we live/abide by and we had to make the call. (someday I'll share it with ya)

This brings the old "don't count your chickens before they hatch" to a new level of perspective, huh?

OK, onto other tidbits of info.

I have been searching for $22 that I know I had in my pocket on Sat that has now slipped into the Black Hole. $22 to me might as well be $2200, so I am really annoyed that I cannot find it. It was with my debit card when I walked into Tractor Supply......I was determined to keep my total bill under $22, but based on prior trips to this farmer's Wonderland.....I tucked the debit card in my pocket to avoid the embarrassment of asking them to put half my order back. I distinctly remember putting those bills back in my pocket when I saw $47 come up on the cashier's screen.

It is now MIA. If anyone happens to find $22 curled up in a ball, I believe the serial numbers had a 3 and a 6......so that would be mine, thankyouverymuch.

More random stuff:

Last night, I had dreams that involved high school reunions,baby chicks that got trampled by bigger chickens and hot air balloons. I don't think that even Joseph from The Bible could interpret those dreams. Anyone want to take a stab at it?

I guess I shouldn't have eaten those clam cakes so soon before bed last night.

Speaking of clam cakes......we went to the beach last night with E and N. Yeah, we were living life on the crazy edgy side and being the wild bunch that we are, we went at night. We love taking a trip down to hang out on the piers and watch the boats come in. It is only about an hour away although it felt like a 10 hour road trip day trip based on the way the kids complained on how long it was taking. I felt the need to snap them out of whining explain to them that so many people have never even seen the ocean and how lucky we are to have it so close.

(*insert light bulb above my head*)

What did I just say? It was only then, that it occurred to me that I have always taken being so close to the ocean for granted. I guess because I have never traveled west of the East Coast states, I never realized that going to the beach isn't something that most people can just spontaneously do. So I had a gratifying moment as I stuck my toes in the sand and stuffed my face with blobs of fried dough that I *think* might have had a few microscopic pieces of clams in it. I guess it had enough pieces in it to enable them to call it a clamcake. Regardless.....it was worth the hour drive.

I discovered a few things too over the past few days.

One will def. be the demise of my now 60 Day Shred routine. Archer Farms Black Bean & Jalapeno Tortilla Chips with sour cream and black bean/corn salsa from Target. I basically ate about three pounds of it on Friday night. I cannot be held responsible if you try them and then wake up the next day swollen like the Michelin Tire Guy due to the almost fatal levels of sodium in your system. But believe me sooooooo worth it.....and you can always just drink a couple of gallons of the water to flush it all out until your next time.

I also found out that Lowes offers these great Build and Grow Workshops for kids every other Saturday morning. For FREE!! We happened to need to go to Lowes and saw all these cute little kids wearing Lowes aprons and safety goggles banging away on their projects. So we went over and they hooked N up with her own kit and she made a little wooden treasure chest. The funny thing was watching all the dads taking over after a while talking about how they were gonna go home and reinforce it with their own power tools. The kids got to take home the aprons/goggles for future workshops and they also earned a little patch for that project too. So if you have a Lowes near you and you want something fun and free to do with your kids.....check it out.

Another thing that I discovered......well I already knew this but staying on the discovery path....is that you can be funny and not need to swear or add vulgar stuff. Josh surprised me and my older boys with tickets to Jim Gaffigan for the casino's Saturday night show. He was really funny and talked about everything from Hot Pockets to what it would be like if there was reality TV in the Bible Days. He kept it clean and entertaining....and it was fun to go out with my older boys and spend some time with them.

I watched this more-than-amazing person as I was flicking through the channels Sunday morning. I usually try to catch at least one inspirational show/speaker and I was blown away by this guy, Nick Vujicic who was born without arms or legs. He is the ultimate image of the grace of God. If you have a chance.....pop over to his site Life Without Limbs and check him out!

And lastly, I feel blessed to say that I got a clean bill of health with my recent mammogram. So a *high five* for receiving that piece of good news. Praise God! And if you are at the age of getting squished yourself....make sure you make your appointment too.

OK.....this post took me approx 6 hours to complete as I have been popping on and off between 4-H meetings and tackling Mount Rushmore of laundry.....it's time to wrap it up!

I hope you are blessed with a wonderful week ahead. :)

Peace, love and stay barefoot~
*~Michelle~*