Happy Birthday Zoe

I cannot believe my baby, my youngest, my little girl, is 18 years old!!! We had two celebration dinners. One, just the two of us, at Bistro East, a favourite restaurant of ours, and one of pizza and cake after work with a friend. There are two more to come still (yes, we love our birthday dinners and take every one we can make an excuse to have!!) The next one will be with her brother when he comes to visit, and the last one will be in September when her grandparents come. It has been wonderful to watch her blossom over the past year since our move here. She has become more confident, stronger, more outgoing, and overall, happier. I am so proud of her and am grateful to have been a part of every one of those 18 years. I look forward to watching what adventures the next 18 years bring her!

Yes, Zoe's brother, my son, our Brandon is flying in to visit for a week! I am sooooo excited! I have not seen him since Christmas. This is the hardest part of having moved so far away. But it makes me incredibly proud to see how he has stepped up to the challenge of being"forced" to move out on his own. He had made decisions for his life and taken responsibility for himself in ways he never would have if he continued living with me. But as proud of him as I am, and as much as I think it was the best decision for him to go out on his own, a momma misses her boy!! I head out to Halifax tomorrow to pick him up from the airport...I bet you'll never guess what the focus of next weeks blog will be?!

Zoe and I decided to go look for more healthy chickens. I have often heard the saying "chicken math" and I think I am starting to understand it. It is like an addiction. We love these little ladies and are so happy to add to our flock. This time we were smarter. We went to a farm and talked to the farmer for an hour. We grilled him on where he got his hens, if he handles them, if he loves them, where they live, how they roam, we walked into and around their coops, inspected the chickens, and generally were very happy with the health and happiness of the chickens on his farm. We came home with fifteen new young pullets. These beautiful girls are 10-12 weeks old and will therefore not start laying for another month or two. They are lovely, and are starting to get used to us handling them.

I had a rather terrifying / hilarious chicken coop experience this week. I went into the coop one afternoon, fed the girls and gathered the eggs. I then picked up the water trough to take it outside, clean it, refill it and return it to the coop but as I picked it up and turned around, I ran into the coop door. I ran into it because it wasn't open, because it had closed and locked from the outside. I was locked in the chicken coop. Luckily Zoe was home so I reached for my phone to call her to get me out only to realize I did not have my phone! Deep breath (not too deep, I am after all in a chicken coop) calm down and figure this out. First thing I did was eye up the chicken hatch and realized there was no way I could even fit my head through that. I have wooden toggles that turn to hold the door closed. One of these had dropped and was the problem, but the top one was still open. I could open the top part of the door half an inch. Looking around the coop I started to panic as I realized there is nothing long, or hard inside to wedge through the slit and press the toggle down. I start looking for a nail in the wall that I can pull out with my bare hands. I find one but it is too short to reach the toggle.  I break the egg basket apart to see if the wicker was strong enough to push the toggle, it is not. I detach a piece of rope to try and loop under the toggle and lift it, it won't. In between all these attempts, I am screaming in hopes Zoe will hear me -no such luck! She did finally, 20 minutes later, wonder where I was and she did come out to find me and did unlock the door and did laugh hysterically at my misfortune! Nice girl. I have now replaced that latch system for one that can not accidentally slip and lock me in. The lessons just keep on coming!



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