This Saturday We....

Did a LOT of stuff. Or anyway, it seems like we did a lot of stuff :P It all started at 7:00 a.m.

Well, 6:48 a.m. for me. Last night, Mom and Dad said that we were going to get chickens!! and that if we wanted to go, we would have to get up early.

I ended up being the first person to wake up, so I was wandering around the house when I heard a loud bang. I was so scared I think my heart stopped beating for a second. :) It took me about a minute for me to realize that a bird had probably flown into our window. I grabbed my camera and headed outside. And was greeted by more than ten birds, all sitting on branches and chirping and singing merrily. That had me distracted for a bit, and afterwards, I completely forgot about the bird that might have flown into our window. Encouraged by the sight of all the birds at the front of the house, I thought that it might be possible to see more birds around the house. So off I went. Thankfully, I was looking at the ground. Thankfully the bird cheeped. Or I would have stepped on it. As it happened, I was just really startled. I turned the corner and voila there was the bird that had flown into our window.

It actually looked like this at first. All splayed out. I'm guessing it was really stunned after crashing into our window. It must have hit really hard since the noise it made was really, really loud!

It tried flying away, but it kept crashing into the window and flying around like an airplane gone out of control, so it finally decided to just sit and get over its dizziness.

Is it bad to say that I took advantage of the bird? It couldn't fly properly, and was just sitting there so nicely, so I snapped quite a few photos of it. I love taking nature shots (especially close-ups), but right now, it's been really hard to get pictures of anything next to trees, flowers, and water. (Notice how those things I just listed are things that can't run/fly away?)

After I was finally satisfied with the pictures, I went inside and found everyone else starting to wake up. Tiger Lily and Snow White wanted to stay behind, so the rest of us went.

I let Spiderman and Ironman borrow my Samsung and I used my Canon. (Which means you'll be able to see some pictures of me this time! So there, Tiger Lily, I do show up sometimes in my posts! :)

I took a picture of Spiderman with the camera...

and he took one of me :)

Of course, we stopped by Timmy's. :)

The first row in our van bus! Notice Dare Devil's interesting teeth... :P

After a very long drive, we finally arrived at Pullets Plus!

Mom preparing the trunk for the chickens!  (um, I look SCARY here...mom writing this :D )

While Mom and Dad were buying the chickens, Spiderman, Ironman, and I had some fun with the cameras.

What am I doing? :P

Ironman's turn with the camera!

And that's the picture he took of me!

Brother and Sister! :) (Spiderman was taking the
picture with my Canon, so it was kinda hard to
see, thus you can see only about 3/4 of his face.

And then finally, the chickens arrived! We got a dozen of them, which was a big jump from last year! We only had 5 last time.

Yeah... this is the way they carry chickens... Poor chickens :( It looks really weird, but apparently, it doesn't hurt them. Still, you won't see me carrying a chicken like that :P

Okay, probably not the best picture. A knife and chickens? What was I thinking?
Don't worry though, the knife was for piercing holes in the box, not the chickens :P

Driving home...

Once we got home, we put the chickens in last year's run since the chicken coop Mom and Dad were building wasn't quite finished yet. While they were in the run, we noticed that one of the chickens was limping badly. We looked her over and found out that the poor hen had a deformed leg. We were hoping to be able to keep her, but the other hens kept pecking her face and stepping on her and stuff like that :( So Mom decided that the best thing was to bring her back and trade her for another hen. She and Dad both left the house, Mom going to bring the chicken back and Dad to get some things from Home Depot. And while they were gone, Tiger Lily and I had a bit of an adventure with the hens. . .

We had lunch, then Tiger Lily went out to visit the chickens. Then she came rushing in, shouting "Blessing Counter !!(she actually called me by my real name, but I can't say what my real name is ;) Help me, quick! The chickens are escaping!!!"

I hurried outside. The situation didn't seem to be as bad as I had imagined. The chickens were still in their coop... but there were only 10 chickens! (Remember, we got 12, had to bring one back, and Mom hadn't returned yet...)

Tiger Lily looked at me and said in that calm voice that always means that she is feeling anything but calm, "Where's the other chicken?"

I thought that maybe she had miscounted and told her so. But she said, "Nope, I counted three times already. Look!" And then she counted them again. We stared at each other in dismay. There was no way we would be able to find one small hen through 27 acres of forest! And then just as I decided that we would just have to start looking for the chicken (though to be honest, I had no idea at all where to start!) we heard a rustling in our daylily patch. Tiger Lily sprang up onto the rocks and started searching through the tall leaves. And found the hen! Whew! :D

Mom and Dad returned and finished the chicken coop. And then came the hard task of getting the chickens into the coop. We were literally chasing chickens all over the yard. Last time it had been hard enough trying to catch 5 chickens, imagine what it must have been with 12 chickens! I think we scared the hens after we had finally gotten them in, but they still laid eggs! I thought Little House on the Prairie and A Pioneer Story: The Daily Life of a Canadian Family in 1840 and other books like that said that chickens didn't lay eggs when they were stressed out!

The First Egg

The First Four Eggs

And here are some pictures of our "Little Ladies" ;) We're still thinking up names for them, which probably isn't a good idea since we have to eat them later. . .

After the excitement over the chickens died down, we had to start digging rocks out of the ground.

And we re-stacked our woodpile. We had some really strong winds and our pile toppled over :( Oh well.

And then since we were really hot, we cleaned out the pool and jumped in for the first time this year. It was soooo cold!! I was tingling all over! For this year, Ironman was the first person to get into the pool and I was the last (of the children anyway. Mom and Dad haven't tried it yet!)

And that's pretty much what we did yesterday!

What did you do this weekend?