The garden

Three plants have entirely disappeared from our garden, except for a few inches of stem sticking out of the ground. One was missing last week, and then today when I went out to check on things, two more. One tomato plant, two pepper plants. I suspect deer, I don't know what else would eat leafy green plants in their entirety. A rabbit couldn't do that, I don't think. Maybe a very large hare? Anyway, we need to figure out a way to protect the 5 or 6 remaining plants. Apparently here in Texas the best time to garden is in the fall, so we will really kick off all the gardening in a few months.

The chickens are doing very well. We've lost quite a few to heat, mostly all in one day when their automatic waterer broke. They were fine at noon, and when we checked on them again at 5pm their water was all dried up and 17 were dead. That's been the worst thing that's happened so far, and honestly that's not so bad considering that we've had a solid week of 103 degree heat. The head index is more like 107-110. I mean it's boiling here. Blah. Anyhoo, this weekend we will be teaching people how to process chickens, and then next weekend will be the big chicken-processing party. Amazingly, there are a lot of people interested who want to know how to do this. You gotta love a church like ours :)

I've had a very miserable pms-y weekend that's unfortunately spilled over into my Monday. I was hoping I would feel all better today but I still have yucky cramps. Not so bad that I'm confined to bed but bad enough that I don't feel like doing much of anything. Oh well. What can you do.

Found, and cake.

Daniel found my keys... in the middle of the kitchen floor. I mean seriously, I looked ALL day long and suffered much anxiety over it all. He walked into the house and found them in less than 20 seconds. Really. Fortunately the chickens were ok.

Today we are headed up to Austin to pick up milk for Ezekiel. I've been transitioning him to cows milk, and he's doing well with that so far. I make his bottles half breast/half cows milk, and I'm so glad he'll drink it because I don't know how much longer we will be able to get breast milk, so I want him to be prepared. He'll eat some solids but he's not a huge fan, he just sort of tolerates it and won't eat too much. I suppose maybe he's just not interested yet, and I don't want to push the issue because I don't want to turn him into a picky eater.

I've been CRAVING chocolate cake for like a solid week straight. Pure PMS, it's true. As a rule we don't keep any junk food in the house, so all week i've been snacking on rasins to try and satisfy my craving for sweet stuff. Finally last night I was going to make a delish cake from scratch, and Daniel requested one without icing because he doesn't like icing. Sooo when I went to buy my cake ingredients I got him a box cake, because my yummy homemade chocolate cake needed to be dripping in chocolate-mint icing. Made the box cake, and then I was too tired/lazy to make my homemade cake, and we were going to watch a movie, so I just had a piece of his cake, and it was kind of gross and not at all what I wanted, and it COMPLETELY ruined my chocolate cake craving. I mean I don't want cake at ALL anymore. I'm so disappointed I ruined my yummy homemade cake expectations with a nasty box cake. But there's no point in making a good cake now because I don't want it. Sigh. Lesson learned, don't buy box cakes. Ever!

Keys

I cannot, cannot, cannot find my keys. I've looked everywhere, all day long. I'm very sad. Plus Daniel has to work late today, and I usually go over around noon to check on our chickens, but wasn't able to do so today, and won't be able to do it until he gets home which will be I don't know when. The chickens really don't do well in the heat (hello 103 degrees!), so if they run out of water, boom, they die in like an hour. I have to admit I'm a little worried about them. But what can I do? It's not far away and I could walk, but I can't take Ezekiel out in this heat. Hmmph. I guess I can pray that they will be alright.

We really need to make an extra set of keys for the car. Sooo should have done that a long time ago.

Hi I sooo should be cleaning my house

But here I am dilly-dallying around on the computer. I might as well say hello to you all out there in blog land, since I've been slacking lately.

News going on here: Dad (my dad) came and visited this past weekend. We had fun :)

Our church farm and garden project is going splendidly. Anyone have any ideas of what we can call this thing? I liked "gateway garden of eatin'" but apparently "garden of eatin" is an actual brand name so I don't want to mooch. We need a better name. The chickens (about 130) are doing splendidly, we planted a small garden, hoping to plant a small orchard this weekend. Lots of people are involved, community is building, it's been fun so far. I'm getting a splendid tan from going out there every afternoon. Oh did I mention it's been above 100 degrees like every single day? I've gone out there dehydrated a few times, and literally after being out there for like 5 minutes I think I'm going to throw up.... needness to say, I am much more careful now and drink lots o water.

So I decided i need to learn how to fiddle... we've got a violin, so I attempted to change the strings and knocked over the sound post. Had to take that in to get repaired- Dad and i did that on Saturday while he was here. We found this cool eccentric little old couple to fix it who have like 5 grand steinways in their house, the walls are covered with violins, guitars, there were 6 cellos lying around. Turns out they both (this couple must be in their late 70's) went to Julliard, are both music teachers, and the hubby studied cello under Leonard Rose (if you haven't heard of him, he was one of the best cellists ever and also yoyo ma's teacher!). They were really sweet, and I decided that I am going to take cello lessons from this guy. How cool is that- I'm so excited!! He only charges $18 a lesson, which is dirt cheap, especially considering how good of a musician he is (or at least should be... I have to admit that I didn't actually hear him play). Oh for those of you who don't know, I have a B.A. in music, and my main instrument in college was cello. But I'm quite rusty now and I think I could use a few good lessons. Anyhoo I'm very excited!!

Oooh what else. Ezekiel is officially crawling, fairly efficiently. He sat up on his own the other day. He's huge. He's cute. He's over 10 months old now!

We are going to come to camp this year. I'm excited-- but also nervous about the 25 hour drive with Ezekiel. Hmmm...

Oh and I am soooo going to get my hair cut. It's all the way down to the small of my back at the moment... and I think I want a bob. No, I KNOW I want a bob. Something really short and cute and cool (as in temperature wise) for summer. I will do before and after pictures for you all.

Ok Zeke woke up from his name and I sooo didn't clean while he was asleep like I was supposed to.

I hope you all are doing well out there!

And the award goes to....

Daniel!  For finally starting his own blog!  You all should pop on over there and leave him lots of comments so that he will keep writing-- he is full of interesting things to say.  :)

We had a busy weekend.  Friday night our dear friends Terry and Natasha came over for dinner and an evening of playing Settlers, our favorite board game.  Saturday morning we went over to help them work on their 1976 airstream-- yup, they bought a travel trailer, too!  They will be moving to KY with us next year.  We (as in Daniel Terry & Natasha... I just watched Zeke) worked on the trailer until about noon when it got too hot and the kids all got sleepy, then I headed home with Ezekiel and Daniel went with Terry to go work on our farming/gardening project behind the church.  He was gone all day. 

While we were working on the trailer, Zeke was in his pack n' play and Maya, T&N's 2 year old daughter, kept walking around Zeke and saying "hi handsome!"  She recently declared that she loves Ezekiel more than daddy and that she is going to marry him.  :)  

The picture below is their travel trailer-- it's parked in a storage area while they work on it, and ours is parked right across the way.  

Too cute to not put up!
Here is Ezekiel *almost* crawling!