cluckity cluck cluck cluck!

We got chickens today!! Here they are. Oh they are just so cute.

We found them on craigslist, which I just love by the way. We drove to the north side of town to pick them up from this adorable little asian woman who has all sorts of different birds she keeps. These ones are some sort of particular bantam (ie small) breed. That is why they don't have feathers on their necks. Pretty ugly, but they lay eggs!! We have them in an enclosed area right now, but in a few days when they learn that this is their new home we are going to let them go all about the yard. I am sooooo excited about the eggs. They should each be laying an egg every day or two.

And here are our pygmy goats! The grey one is Pepper and the tan one is Coconut. Pepper is full grown! They are both girls, so we are going to breed them when they are ready, and then we are going to milk them and we will have our own milk!! Until then, we are joining a raw milk co-op and I am oh- so excited. We will get our first gallon of organic raw milk on wednesday.

This is a crazy spider living in our back yard. I normally hate spiders but I think this one is so pretty that it doesn't scare me. Actually I've seen quite a few of these out in the yard, either bright orange or yellow.

This is one of our tomatoes! It just looks so pretty. It still has a bit of growing to do. This is our first successful garden ever!! If you really want to garden and do it well without a ton of weeding then you should read this book called "square foot gardening" by Mel Bartholemew (sp??). It's a really really really good book.

Ok well time for bed!

New church for us

Well we have started going to a new church. It's kind of sad in many ways for me, but very good for my hubby and exciting for us both. I guess I will explain. When we moved down to TX, we started going to a nice, very very very small (ie like 30ish ppl) non-denominational, wear-your-jeans-to-sunday-service type of church. the "contemporary" type, I guess. One of the best things about this church was the very enveloping people-- as soon as we started going we were invited over to ppl's houses for dinner, we recieved help moving into our house, etc. Very welcoming and loving. Well I attached pretty quickly and started playing cello every week in the worship team, and pretty soon I felt a little overly-committed since we hadn't visited even one other church. Daniel was overall discontent with this church even though he liked the people. I should mention one other thing: through our 3 miscarriages this summer, a few of the women in the church were very supportive and loving towards us, helping me get through that time. They prayed for us a lot, which was wonderful and encouraging. Anyhow, in the meanwhile daniel stopped coming while I was still going. he finally said he wanted to find a new church, so there we were in this situation where I had all these emotional ties and friendships, whereas he didn't feel so strongly. So I went for a few more weeks working up the guts to tell my friends I wasn't coming anymore. I finally did this sunday. It was sad and depressing, and I hated to do it because this church has lost a lot of ppl. But it was best for our family in general and daniel is really excited to try new churches. We will keep in contact with some of our friends from there, too.

Anyhow, so we went and visited a church this sunday. It is literally a half mile from our house. A few weeks ago some women came through our neighborhood to invite ppl to come. And then when we looked up "spirit filled church" online for our city, this was the first one that popped up. When we went we were made very very welcomed-- a million ppl came and talked to us. OH and one of my favorite customers at starbucks (she has nine kids!!) just so happens to go to that church! We were just smothered with hellos and welcomes and "we're so glad your visiting"s. And the preching was really good. Very bible based and honest. The music was ok--- a little too loud, but I think that about nearly every church. I only knew one song, and I liked that. We also went to a bible study on wednesday and the ppl were just great. Really. They were all older than us, in their 30's and 40's, but honestly we really fit into that age group better than in our own, and I like being around people older than me because I can learn alot from them. So we are feeling refreshed and excited about this church. We will see where it goes. It would be prudent of us, I think, to visit some others, too, but we really did just feel at home at this one. They even brought homemade cookies to our front door on monday night! I guess the most important thing to do would be to pray about it. Anyway, it's exciting. I am excited to find a church that is changing people's lives. I want to be involved in a community of believers that really love and serve people, you know?

Anyhow it's refreshing to be in this transition. And I am so happy because it is the weekend!!

knitting a sock!

I am knitting my first pair of socks! Here is a picture!!

So far it is going ok.... the ribbed part is the ankle, and now I am working on the heel (ie the hard part!) We will see how it goes.... I've never done socks before and I am learning from a book. Hopefully i can make the second one look like the first. :O)

This is a picture of our rattle snake's rattler.... ewwww.... the penny and mint are for proportion, and they make a smiley face! Anyhow, our neighbor's dog got bit by another rattle snake last night.... So now I really don't like going out in the yard. I think this is a funny picture.

Here is Daniel right after he killed it.... and there it is, on the ground. (Please excuse the mess.... our yard is a work in progress.....)

Anyway I am excited that I know how to post pictures now! This is us at buffalo wild wings for a cowboys/bills football game last week with Kyle and Sarah- Notice the bills jerseys, and remember that we live in Texas.... everyone loved to hate us that night...

Ok that's enough pictures for now. Well, I have my first cello student this week! I am so excited! He is supposed to come on wednesday... we will see how it goes. Nothing else very exciting is going on. Oh, wait, I am taking a belly dancing class! That's exciting. My neighbor teaches it, every tuesday night. It is a lot of fun, just a few people in the class. I like it. I think sarah (above) may come with me tomorrow.

Well..... I mentioned our goats before, and so I think I should write a little about them and why we have them. We are trying to the best of our ability to achieve some food independence, and so, we got 2 miniature goats (pygmy goats -at full size they are knee-high) so we could have a fresh supply of milk (and learn to make butter, ice cream, cream, goat's milk soap, etc...). Well, before they milk they have to be bred and ahve a baby of course, and so we are waiting until they are ready to breed..... until then, no milk, just goats in the backyard. We also have 3 rabbits for breeding and eating. We have one pregnant rabbit, and so after she has her babies and they grow up, we will have fresh clean meat- we will know where it came from. I am so excited! Not to kill rabbits, of course, (I don't even want to be home when daniel does that) but to have acess to good meat. I can barely bring myself to buy meat at the grocery store, much less eat it. When I eat beef from the grocery I am really sick for at least a day or 2. It's awful. And of course, having access to our own food means we are lessening our dependence on foreign oil and the agricultural/food industry (which, may I say, is horribly corrupted) and that is something I am happy about. At first it was very hard for me to accept that yes, our backyard looks like a farm, and yes, we are different than all our neighbors. But I feel good about it now, because it is something positive we are doing for our lives-- taking charge of our own food source. We also have a garden (2 tomatoes so far) but it's not the greatest... it's only our 2nd one, and the first was a flop. It's mostly tomato plants, one corn plant, some raddishes. There is one other plant but we don't remember what it is... a carrot, maybe? Anyway, to complete our plan we want to get 2 egg-laying chickens, for fresh eggs. That's a substantial amount of food coming from our back yard. I can't wait to get the chickens. (We also want to get chickens to raise for eating (you get a different breed for that) and we have done that in our yard before, so really that isn't so daunting. BUT we haven't done that yet.... there is enough going on right now, and if there are more rattle snakes I suppose our chickens would be picked off pretty quickly.) ANYHOW, I could practically type a book about all the details of what we are doing, but I will refrain. If you have any questions I would love to answer them!

Rattlesnake!

Daniel just killed a 3 foot (at least!) rattle snake in our back yard!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHH!!! It was right by our back door..... I can't believe it! It's so big and gross. I took pictures... I will have to put them up later. I'm still in shock. Wow!

A Thursday

Well here I sit on this lovely thursday. This morning was so nice-- it was a crisp 66 degrees out when I went to work. AAhhhhhh..... Anytime it's below 69 or so I put the seat-heat on in my car and so that was nice. I love seat heat. Of course now it is quite hot out again, but at least the nights are cooling off some now.

ANYWAY I guess we are having a nice week. Daniel has to go to some mandatory military drinking game party tonight. What the heck is that? Who knows. Anyway, I am enjoying my much cleaner house and baked pizza from scratch last night and bread from scratch today. I'm on a roll. I even had time for a short snooze on the couch this afternoon, and I just love those.

Well there are ppl at our door-- better go!