Wow, the chickens have come of age. They are now 18 weeks old and one of our Leghorns (the white ones) has given us our first ever egg from our flock.
 The ladies at 18 weeks (taken today!)
 The first egg (photo taken last night.)
It's really big for a first egg. About a size medium.
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June 10, 2009 update on chickens
Whoa, sorry, but I don't remember that I have this blog very often until someone comments. Thanks, Letitia, for remembering that I'm here!
The chickens are growing up. They're 4 months old now. Just one more month until they are old enough to start laying. Here is a picture of them at 8 weeks. I need to take some newer pictures!
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In this stumbling economy, we have decided to try our hand at raising our own chickens. We got a coop and fencing from a neighbor who moved and couldn't take his chickens. We disassembled that on his property and moved that to ours.
And we got some 3 week old chickens from another local chicken farmer yesterday. Here they are:
Right now they are in the kitchen keeping warm. This week we plan on putting the coop and fencing back together and helping the new hens to relocate to the outside environment. What an adventure!
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February 7, 2009 Where am I?
Goodness! I thought for sure I made a December entry! Now I feel neglectful. Sorry folks! Yes, I'm still here. Christmas was great. Our oldest came down from Indiana for a couple of days to spend some wonderful moments with us. That was priceless.
January was a blessing too. I got another year older, but we don't need to talk about that. I guess that's just more experience under my belt, huh? My boys are growing up. Charlie is as tall as his dad now (6-feet) and only 14 years old.
Harold has decided he didn't like the name Harold for on-line, so we are now going to refer to him as Rosco on-line. He's growing up too, but at least he's still shorter than his Mama.
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November 27, 2008 Happy Thanksgiving! November 13, 2008 Auto Shop
As our middle son started high school this year, we've had to 'settle' on a career path track. At least this seems to be what Charlie is heading for. He's interested in Automotive Engineering. That means lots of time doing 'auto shop'. In fact most days this is where you can find Charlie....that would be when he's not on his motorcycle.
 Here he is changing the plugs and plug wires on our Ranger. This truck is the guinea pig of our auto shop. It's getting all the repairs done to it that is required by our curriculum. Actually it's a bit of a costly program in the long run! But Charlie loves it and is learning (we all are) a lot.
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October 31, 2008 Recipe Binder
Okay, so I'm not one to make "handy, helpful hints" on my blog (hey, I'm not even one to update my blog regularly) but I just thought of something that I do at home that might help someone with their recipes' storage.
I use a thin 3-ring binder with the clear pockets on the front and back covers where I put my most used recipes. I also use clear sheet protectors for the recipes that I pull out from magazines. For the ones I get/find on the Internet, I simply print off and three hole punch to go in the binder.
This way you can easily make dividers to fit your own specific needs. It's so easy to re-arrange the recipes, re-mark them (when you've changed one to better suit your family), and add too or take away from the mother-lode. I just keep the binder on the shelf with the other cookbooks.
:end helpful hint of the day.
~Betsy
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I love autumn! Today is my Mom and step-Dad's 30th wedding anniversary. Such a beautiful memory for us all. I called them today and they are doing well. They live about 300 miles from me.
 Mom and Dave, October 1, 1978
Did you know that my header pictures are always my own personal photos? I have four that I change out per season, and right now what you see is my late summer/autumn header that I took a couple years ago looking out from our back yard.
And this picture is one I've posted before, of our front field being mowed and baled late one summer.
I just love the smell of the hay being brought in.
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August 25, 2008 Pictures and things
Boy, you don't know how much you rely on the Internet until it's gone. Our server here at the college was in the process of being 'updated' when everything went wrong. What was supposed to be a weekend job for our IT department is now into it's second week of struggles.
Our home Internet was off for just over a week, while my hosting site for pictures was gone for a bit longer than that. Web pages / blogs don't look very good without images! At least mine don't because I'm one of those people who likes posting pictures!
How wonderful it has been to find the Internet was back on Saturday night and to find all my images back this morning! Kudos to our IT department who must have worked on the weekend to try and get everything up and running for the students who return to campus today.
And a great week to you all too!
~Betsy
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July 8, 2008 Charlie's Birthday
Charlie turned 14 last week. His birthday is surrounded by our country's birthday, so is always a fun time.
We took him to Music Road Hotel in Pigeon Forge for the day before his birthday, and NASCAR Speedpark for his birthday (where else?) We had a great time!
 And now we're back to school for year 14. As usual, we start back the first full week of July so that we can finish by April. So technically we have 'spring break' and not 'summer break'.
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April 30, 2008 Done for the year!
We finished up our lessons on Friday and I got my documentation finished up and sent out today! Year 13 down and in the books!
and just because I like to post pictures, here are the boys learning the mechanics of their bikes. Education in progress!
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April 4, 2008 Ready for racing March 14, 2008 Time for Spring!
I have been so lax in keeping up my blog. I just noticed that I still had the summer time "Cornflowers" up as my header! I totally didn't change to my beautiful harvest header nor my holly winter header. So here we are ready for spring so I've put up my Flowering Dogwood.
I certainly hope our Dogwood tree blooms this year. Two years ago it didn't bloom at all. Last year we had a great frost (rare around here) just as the blossoms were budding and they all died. I took my header picture almost three years ago, and that was the last time I've seen those pretty pink blossoms on our tree!
Our boys have motorcycles now. I can't believe that I allowed that! Well, they're just dirt-bikes, so if they wreck it's not on the gravel or pavement, right? Still could break your neck I guess. I try not to think about it.
 This is Charlie giving Traveling Sadie a ride on his Honda. My boys are so sweet.
Anyone else raising only boys? Don't you sometimes feel like you need another female in the house? I do sometimes. My husband indulges me with American Girl dolls. They are my daughters I never mothered. They don't grow up and leave me either! And they don't argue about their clothing. Actually I really enjoy my 'girls' as I call them. I have lots of their accessories and even a beautiful 8 feet wide by 8 feet tall Dolls' House that my dh built me so they could all stay together.
 This is a picture of four of the rooms in my 6 room Dolls' House. Disregard the circled girl; I made this picture so someone could pick out which doll I was talking about. (It's Corde, if you must know)
I hope you are all ready for a beautiful spring! Enjoy Life!
~Betsy
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February 7, 2008 Winter 2007/08 TOS
I just received my The Old Schoolhouse magazine and this issue sure is a great one! It has all the Convention news as well as an entire section devoted to FREEBIES! You can read about the Freebies at this link.
Do you have a favorite article from this issue? My favorite article has to be "Following the Iditarod" by Dena Wood. It begins on page 134. We have been reading about sled dog racing, Siberian Huskies and plan on following this year's Iditarod. Lots of good, educational fun!
Oh, and you can meet me and my family on pages 40-41! YEAH FOR TOS!!
~Betsy
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January 23, 2008 Moving on up
My children are growing up. It seems like just yesterday they were crawling around on the floor (well, Harold was...Charlie never crawled...he got up and walked at just barely 9 months old) pulling items off of the school shelves to 'work with'.
Now the school shelves are full of science equipment, art supplies and less and less manipulatives. Just this week, we finally moved the school desks out of the room and put in more book shelves instead. The boys would much rather do their school work on their beds, or the floor, or the sofa, than sit at their desks and 'work'. They never really did like that. They mainly used their desks for art projects (and clutter keepers.) But even then, the kitchen table was so much bigger!
So another phase of our school is gone. First it was all those colorful blocks, letter learning cubes, shape sorters and other pre-school learning apparatus, now it's the desks themselves. Soon I'll be working myself out of a job. But isn't that what mothering is about? Training our little charges to be soldiers in the army for the Kingdom of the Lord? Now they are about to be out there serving Him. One already is. The joys of motherhood *sniff*.
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