BUNNIES!

Today we gained 3 new bunnies. 

Two young babies and one full grown.
One of the babies is in Wd's Easter pics, the other is a dark gray. We acquired these from a friend whose mother showed up with them just before Easter for her kids. Since she was not prepared to raise bunnies, she wanted us to have them. So now Max & Ruby live with us.
The other came from Brooke. She wanted him to be able to live a cage free life, so Snowball lives with us as well.
We fixed the babies a cage in the barn until they get a little bigger, then they will join the others.

Last night I 'flashlighted' or 'candled' the eggs in the incubator. Good news is that I only had 11 that were not fertilized.

When you 'flashlight' them you will either see veins, the air sack and a dark spot or nothing at all. If there is nothing by the 7th day, it was not fertilized and is removed from the incubator.

This is what you're looking for...

Pretty cool, huh?!?  

Easter Weekend

Saturday, Wd and myself hung around the house, and dyed some Easter eggs.

Santana has a fancy Nikon camera and she offered to take some pics of Wd for me. Since my camera is out of commission, I gladly accepted the offer.

[Ronald...Mother's Day is coming up and that would be a GREAT present...hint hint]

Saturday night we went to Chelsey & Hogan's wedding.

Chelsey was absolutely stunning! It reminded me of a wedding you see in the movies. It was awesome.

I had originally planned to wear my bridesmaid dress from Caroline & Ryan's wedding...Well, that did not happen because it is TOO BIG!! wooohooooo!! [Thank you Weight Watchers!!] So, luckily I picked up a cute dress at Belk last weekend that I could wear.

Easter Sunday we went to church then to Ronny's parents house for lunch and an egg hunt. Later that afternoon we went over to my parents. It was such a beautiful day!

Ronny had a load of 'chicken littler' brought in today for the garden the and recently cleared land.
We tilled the garden tonight as well. I hope to get it planted this weekend.

I'll end with some of the pictures that Santana took. A million thanks to her! They are awesome!

Eggs

Wednesday is normally a day home with Wd. So we usually hang around the house, do some laundry and go to Walmart or Ingles.
That being said, it's no surprise that I'm not very crafty...so the most we do is color and play with Playdoh.
Since Easter is coming up I decided to venture out of the box and let Wd paint some eggs for his Easter party at Santana's house on Friday. I found some paper mache eggs at Michael's. I thought it would be more fun for Wd to actually paint them. Rather than dying real eggs...plus I had no white eggs ;)
I told Wd on Tuesday that we were going to do this. The first thing out of his mouth Wednesday morning was that he wanted to paint his eggs. By 9am we were painting eggs.

After egg painting we did do some laundry, watched Dora, then ventured outside to feed the animals.
I had to start the chickens on an antibiotic this week because a few of them are sneezing. Elvis, sadly, seems to be the worse off. I have my fingers crossed that he [and the others] pull through this.
Since everyone is on antibiotic that means we can't eat/sell any of the eggs.
Which is a total bummer because I found this monstrosity of an egg...

I know it's hard to tell in the pic but this thing was HUGE!
I knew it had a double yolk...
And I was right.

We went to pick up the tractor yesterday, too. Which means fence construction will start again and I (Ronny) can till the garden up and start planting.

The pond was also rebuilt on Tuesday. Ronny, Mobley, Eric and a few other guys re-did it all.
They changed the drainage and made the dam about 8ft thick. Ronny & Mobs put some rock down yesterday evening, and we will be putting some big rock on the dam tonight as well.
I will post a picture when it's finished.

I guess that's all for now.

I'll end with a sweet picture of Mobley and Wd walking thorough the area they recently cleared.

Incubating

Last weekend was another fun weekend.

Friday night we went to a wonderful restaurant in Hiawassee called Brother's at Willow Ranch, with Ryan, Caroline, Brooke & Adam. They had some of the best fried pickles that I've ever had.

Now that Caroline has purchased herself a 'Soccer Mom Car' we all got to ride together and had a great time.

Friday also brought some terrible weather. Lots and LOTS of rain.

Unfortunately, the dam couldn't handle all the water. Not only was it catching all the rain but it looks like it caught all the drainage too. It's not completely dry...just way low and running over one side of the dam, rather than flowing down and out the drain pipe. So, the excavator is back and they are going to try and fix it.

Saturday Wd and myself went to the Easter Parade with Santana, Emliy and Coleman. The wind was crazy, but the kids had fun. [Check out Santana's blog here]

After the parade we took Wd to the dragstrip for the first time. When I asked him if he wanted to be a race car driver his reply was: "No Momma, Im just a little boy. I can't drive a race car'

They were having a 'Ford Weekend' type thing. Wd liked it until the louder cars started running, then he wasn't so happy. So, we left early and went to our favorite store...Tractor Supply Company. We got our normal feeds and tractor stuff, but Wd managed to talk Ronny into this...

Once we pried Wd off the swing we we had an authentic Mexican dinner cooked by my Aunt Renee' at my parents house. It was awesome!

Today, I put 4 DOZEN eggs in the incubator! In 7 days I will 'flashlight' them to see if they are making a chick [I will try and post a picture when I do this, it's pretty neat], then wait another 14 days for them to hatch. So, in 21 days, I hope to hatch out at least 20 chicks of the 48 eggs. I have been keeping my eggs this week and my Aunt and Uncle brought me some that they had picked up. Majority of the eggs are Rhode Island & New Hampshire Reds.  I only had about 5 Amerucanna eggs, so I really hope all those guys [and gals] hatch.

Also, wanted to share our beautiful Iris's. Its always a good thing to buy a house from someone who had a green thumb. Lots of beautiful flowers with no labor. :)
There's also alot of Lilly's around, but they haven't bloomed yet.

Also, took the Silver Laced chicks out of the brooder and moved them to a make shift coop until they get alittle bigger so they other guys don't bother them.

I'll end with a cute pic of Bruno and Stella. He wants in the so bad, but little does he know that she would kick his butt!

Pond Diggin'

Well, last weekend was a success. 

We ate at Ribeye's on Friday and went to The Tiger Drive In Theater on Saturday.
Wd loved the drive in. Watching a movie outside was right up his alley. The great thing about the drive in is not worrying if your child wants to talk or act a fool, because you're not ruining anyone's "Movie Experience".
We also went to the lake on Sunday! We went to church and out to eat with Ronny's parents then rushed home to de-winterize the boat. We didn't get out on the lake until almost 5 but it was nice knowing lake weather is here. The water is insanely cold. I spent pretty much all 4 days at the beach in the cold Gulf water. It had nothing on Lake Lanier! Wd was the only one brave enough to jump in [twice]. I sat on the swim deck, but could talk myself in to taking the plunge!


Land clearing was finished as of last night! woohoo!
It looks awesome!
We also dug a pond. In the first round of clearing last year we found a spring head, but we never messed with it for fear of screwing it up. Ronny did alot of research and figured out we had a spring box and that a pond was do-able. I'm super excited about this!

First they started digging and found the lower pipe from the spring box.

Ronny and Mobley started cleaning out the spring box, now that we knew the little stream was from the spring box.
So, Eric removed some more trees, dug out a hole, and attempted a dam.

[Spring Box is on lower left corner of this pic]

First attempt was no good, the dam leaked.
Second attempt was a success!!

Now we are just waiting for it to clear up and the water level to get as high as the pipe, which runs out the bottom of the dam for overflow.
Very exciting.
The tractor had to go in for servicing so fence construction is on hold, yet again. Which is ok because its not like the animals would enjoy the mud hole it is now. So, we'll be planting grass and spreading hay while waiting on the tractor's return.


I also promised a pic of Bella's "Elephant Skin" a few posts back.
This was taken about 2 weeks ago.

Terrible, I know.

Ronny took this the other night, so she has improved a whole lot in 2 weeks.

Catch up

It's crazy how missing one day makes for playing catch up for the rest of the week!
I think the worst part about vacation is getting all the laundry back on track! Not to mention that I despise laundry. Blah.

Anyways...

Fence construction/land clearing is back underway. There's currently a HUGE fire going in the yard from all the brush and trees. Once they get all this stuff out of the way Ronny will be able to finish the fence.

My chickens are much more relaxed since I have been home. Dad took care of them for me while we were gone and 'got rid of' my 2 extra roo's. They were some that I bought as chicks but never had any hens for them and they were just flat out mean. Now everyone is a lot happier in the coop.

Little seems to have an eye infection. Dad helped me clean her up yesterday and gets some meds in it. It looks much better today.

I'm so looking forward to the weekend! We'll be going to have dinner at our new favorite restaurant, Ribeye's. They have the BEST Filet Mignon and Ronny loves their 'Ribeye Burger'. It's extremely yummy!! I'm also hoping to talk Ronald into going to the Tiger Drive In to see 'Rango'! Wd will probably be about to sweet talk him into that.

That's all for today, gotta get dinner out of the oven.

<3

Spring Break 2011

Well, our trip to PCB was great!

We had an awesome condo right on the beach that Wd named 'Our Beach Home'.

We went to the beach everyday and to PierPark at night.

Wd loved the canival rides and didnt want to leave. He did the bungee jump thing and loved that too. We did it twice.

Of course we were there during spring break so we were right in the middle all the excitement that goes on with that...cruising, gigantic trucks, ridiculously loud systems and people everywhere.

All in all it was a wonderful getaway with family! Hated to leave but it was nice coming home.