Candled Eggs

Candling eggs is like a sonogram for chickens. Here are some pictures of our candled eggs that we have been incubating.

The first is a fresh egg that we candled for comparison.


This one is an older egg and contains a large chick. The big dark shadow is the chick.



This is a younger egg with a smaller chick.


Here is a green egg that we candled with a very small chick.

I wish my camcorder worked in the dark so I could post a video. When you candle the eggs you can see the heart beating and on older chicks you can even see them moving around. There were a couple of very active chicks that seemed to be jumping in their shells. They looked like early baby sonogram videos.

My new car

This is my first car ever. Oscar has had a lot of cars, mostly SUV's, but this one is mine. I know absolutely nothing about it except that it is last years model, it has a little ram on the steering wheel, and it has an optional standard or automatic gear shift and I only know that because Oscar keeps warning me about it. I just told the sales man what I wanted and he showed us a few vans. I chose the one I wanted in the color I wanted and my husband did all the usual boy stuff like check under the hood and discussed gas mileage and what not. They haggled over the price and then he signed all the papers (I don't get to sign papers because I have absolutely no credit. I didn't get to sign the papers on the house either, they actually had to take my name off the mortgage because my no credit was keeping my husband from getting a good interest rate on the house. They keep telling me no credit is about the same as bad credit when it comes to big purchases.) and we took it home. It took me several minutes to figure out the key before I could even start the thing.

I never needed a car before he joined the navy, I just made him do all the errands and Dr. appointments and occasionally I would drive the Tahoe's or the van but now hes leaving so I made him trade the truck for my van.

Here is the inside

It's smaller than the Tahoe but I don't run things over in it. Did I mention that it has seats that fold into the floor so I don't have to take out and carry big heavy seats when I need them out of the way.

BTW - Oscar plans on buying a Hummer while he's in Afghanistan so I don't feel the least bit guilty about making him give up his beloved Tahoe.

Happy Birthday Tanner!!!

(I never blog about Tanner so it's kinda long)
Friday was Tanners Birthday. He decided he wanted to be baptized on his actual birthday.

Oscar did the baptism and Elder Samani confirmed him. Zander insisted on being in the pictures with daddy and Tanner. He is having issues with being the only person in our house that hasn't been baptized. Maybe he'll be our only child to ask to get baptized before their ninth birthday.

Friday night after the baptism we had his party which he wanted to do on his actual birthday as well. I didn't mind so much because it wasn't a Saturday(I don't look forward to Saturdays). We only had about 20 kids show up which is a low number for us so we were thrilled. (we usually average 19 or 20 with just with our kids and their cousins)

It was a movie theme so we turned the living room into a theatre and served popcorn and hot dogs in movie snack trays and had cupcakes that looked like little tubs of popcorn.

I couldn't find his newborn pictures, I guess they are still packed so I'll just tell you that he was the fattest little chunk. The week before he was born he was gaining about 1/2 a pond a day. They had to deliver him 3 weeks early because otherwise I would have never been able to push him out. He was 8lbs 13 1/2oz when he was born. He ate so much that I couldn't produce enough milk to nurse him. At four month old he was eating 12 oz every 2 hours around the clock. Here is our chunky monkey

at 4 months

8 months

1 year

18 months

2 years

3 years

4 years

5 years

6 years

7 years

8 years

(Buy the way the date was wrong on our camera. It took us three years to figure out how to change it and then it died.)

and today.

Todays Project

On Mondays all the extra kids come late (not 5 am) so it is supposed to be my sleep in day, but I don't usually make it pas 6:15 so I get up and do projects. Brendan has this ugly hand me down dresser set that we got from my Great-Grandmother. The picture doesn't do it justice, it is even uglier in person.

Here is what they looked like before I started.

He got a new bed this year so I wanted to refinish the dressers to match his bed but it is a solid wood dresser with laminate printed to look like wood glued to it. I couldn't peal or sand the laminate off so I had to get creative. I went to the paint department at Home Depot and Walmart with a piece of the bed and they didn't have any paint or stains that were close to the color of the bed. So I got on the internet to find something and wasn't successful. I tried to find a faux finishing kit as well and couldn't. I was tired of having dressers in my garage so I decided to do some experimenting. I bought a paint that was way to light and a stain that was way to dark. I figured I could play around with paint to stain ratio until it looked right. I was shocked when it came out right on the first try. It looked exactly like what I wanted. I just painted everything orange and brushed the stain over it and let it dry.

Pictures taken during painting.

And this is what they looked like when they were finished.

I think they match pretty well.

Saturday

I really don't look forward to Saturday, we are way too busy. Today we had to take the kids to the Home Depot Workshop, go grocery shopping, and buy paint (no party this weekend, YAY!!). We also had to take the dog to get shots and get registered with the city which you have to do at the animal shelter downtown. After waiting two hours in line my dog finally left with shots, tags, registration, and a micro chip. Oscar and I left with sunburns. I think they make you come down there on purpose. There is no reason why you can't register your dog online. They want you to come down to see all the animals in the shelter that have either been rescued from an abusive home or found wondering the streets half starved. They know you can't leave without a new puppy so here is Charlie Pride. His official name is Charlie but the kids thought he needed a nick name, you know something for mom to scream at him when he pees on the carpet, so they named him Little Boy Charlie Pride or Charlie Pride for short.

We are having trouble getting a good picture of him because he is too sick to stand right now.

We chose Charlie because he was so small and scared. We thought we could bring him home and nurse him back to health but we were wrong. As we were leaving the shelter the tech that was bringing him out said she thinks she heard him cough. She told us (after we paid and registered and microchiped the dog) that it was probably a cold, but it may be Kennel Cough, which is like very bad pneumonia for dog and it is very contagious to other dogs. She told us we could choose another dog if we wanted or we had ten days to return Charlie if we take him, we of course took him. Oscar called the vet to let them know we were on our way and we rushed over. The dog was fine when we left the shelter but while we were at the vet he got much worse. They did a lot of blood work and test and we found out not only did he have Kennel Cough he also had intestinal parasites, he had been vaccinated way too early with too high of a dose and it was nearly killing him, he has distemper, he's anemic, and he was very malnourished and they only gave him a ten percent chance of survival. They basically told us not to spend anymore money on the dog (after we had already spent $300 at the vet and clinic) unless it was for euthanasia. They gave him a double dose of antibiotic and sent us home with a lot of meds and told us to pray that he is comfortable. By the time we left the vet Charlie was in respiratory distress so when we got home I gave him all his meds, fed him his dog food that requires a prescription (because he's starving to death) and bathed him twice. He was still very uncomfortable breathing and winced in pain when we touched him so I gave him a breathing treatment and some Tylenol and let him go to sleep. When I went in to check on him at midnight he was still to week to get up but his tail was wagging like crazy and his eyes were huge with excitement. After a little more food and water he was able to stand for a few minutes before collapsing in the water bowl. I can only feed him two or three table spoons at a time because he isn't used to food and he'll get sick and the get dehydrated so when I feed him he licks the bowl completely cleaned and whines for more, it's so pitiful, but he does get to eat every two hours so it's not too bad.

He is so very cute and my husband won't even let me spend the night in the bathroom with him, but that's okay, Sarah's sleeping just outside the bathroom door so he won't be scared anymore. He's the new babe in our house and He's definitely a keeper!

PS: I just want to say I hope this doesn't discourage anyone from ever adopting a pet from a shelter, it is always a good idea, We just happened to have gotten a puppy that was fine at the shelter and got really sick in the next few hours. Most rescue stories are not usually this eventful.

Chicks Man

We are now incubating twelve eggs. We started out incubating 3 but Wednesday my my helpful husband went to gather eggs and while he was out in the yard the missionaries arrived for dinner. He rushed in to greet the missionaries and didn't tell me he left the eggs on the counter for me to wash and refrigerate. He left the bucket very close to the incubator and by Thursday morning when I found them I had a very warm bucket of eggs so now they are in the incubator. If anyone was thinking about chicks this spring we will have more than we need in about 19 or 20 days.

I was a horribly bad teenager and for that the Lord sent me an 11 year old with attitude who like to fight with his mother. I'm sorry MOM!!!!!!