Clucking Nuts!

My son has a cardboard fetish. I can't tell you how many times he has come up to me carrying an empty cardboard container with a hungry look in his eyes, and asked, “Mom... Can I have this?” His room is a sea of diaper boxes, shoe boxes, and other random boxes. He does not just hoard them. He builds with them, using in his words, “good, strong tape.” I did not start labeling this a fetish until one night, after the kids were asleep in their beds (or so I thought), and I went to the bathroom. Once past the point of no return on the toilet, I looked over and noticed that there was no toilet paper. Now this happens often. I should have bought stock in toilet paper before Eden started potty training. You would think I would learn to look before committing myself to the toilet... Oh well. Anyway, when I noticed that the toilet paper was used up, I called out to Alex my predicament. And I heard a little voice from Micah's room. “Mom? You know that round cardboard thing......

We now have 14 chickens and 4 more coming in a month. My house is beginning to smell like a barn, but the coop is not done... not that that matters as the older chicks are not yet fully feathered, and it is too cold for them to live outside. I'm becoming impatient to get these chickens out of my house... mostly because they are escaping. A few days ago, when we got home, we did a quick head count and found that one chicken was missing. Our biggest bird, Gwendolyn, was hanging out in our laundry room. This is not the first time that Gwen has escaped. Chasing chickens around my house is not what I had envisioned when I agreed to this crazy scheme. I have now completely gotten over my chicken phobia. Our birds are very friendly, and will hop right into our hands and snuggle down. Chickens are strange animals. When we got our first brood, one was injured. The little fluffball baby chicks were going at the injured bird trying to peck it to death. We learned that thi...