Egg-xactly How I Spent April

About a month and a half or so ago, Dani started talking about buying spring chicks.  I thought that perhaps we could just buy young chickens from a local farmer.  You know,  less hassle than caring for chicks, ESPECIALLY when my daughter is graduating in the month and we have a party to plan.   I thought I had her convinced until one night, I see her and her dad with their heads together over the catalog that you can order the chicks from. 
Isn't it funny when our kids and husbands get together and start talking, there's another job for mom?  It wasn't a week and dad brought Dani home a surprise. He had been to Farm 'n Fleet for something and picked her up an incubator. She could collect eggs from her chickens and try to hatch them herself.

Here's Dani's incubator in what used to be my Stampin' Room. It's now Dani's hatching/homework room.  She has been squating in my Stampin' Room this school year, because it is the quietest room and she could set up an area w/ her laptop that was safe from baby brothers.  I occasionally visit, but not nearly as often as I would like.  :)

My job for the last few weeks it to babysit and turn the eggs while my daughter, Dani is at school during the week and at work on Saturday.  This means that everyday at 6 AM, 10 AM, 4 PM, 6 PM and 10 PM, I go down to my craft room and flip the eggs.  For the first couple of days, it was kinda neat.  Then I found that I had to schedule appointments and errands around them.    I'm the momma to 11 eggs.  My cell phone has the alarms set accordingly.  I ding and ring more than anyone I know!  LOL

Next weekend, April 22-24 the eggs should be hatching.  We candled them and they all have something inside and they are getting heavy.  Now I am like an excited parent.  I can't wait to see what we end up with.  I know there is a couple little Bantam eggs, the tiny brown eggs, but I have no idea what the others are.  Hopefully all will go well and I will post pictures of the newest additions to the Hawkinson Funny Farm next week. 

The Chickens and The Eggs

Everyone in our house is sick.  It is one mean virus!   Riley Kate came home last Monday with a cold and  horrible cough. Evan and I had it by Thursday.  Terry on Friday and Dani on Saturday. It is no fun when the kids and the parents are all sick.  I feel really sorry for Terry.  He has a hernia and a bad cough. He is scheduled for surgery on Thursday.  God willing, he will be well and able to have surgery. 

Today, I felt well enough to stamp after 3 days of lounging and sleeping.  What timing.... there's a brand new sketch over at Krista's Cards & Things Challenge Blog.  Why not stroll on over there and play along?

Here's my card!  It's So Saffron and Riding Hood Red. The So Saffron polka dot dsp is from the Subtles Stack and the Riding Hood Red dsp is from the retired paper Bella Rose.  I love the sentiment.  It is from the Word Play set.  When I had the card almost put together, I decided it needed something.  I added some Basic Black flourishes from the Baroque Motifs set.  What do you think?

Last summer, my daughter, Dani got chickens.  It all started when her science teacher gave her two little bantam chickens (a hen and a rooster), then all of a sudden we had 19 chickens (2 roosters and 17 hens).  It's funny how when mom isn't looking the pets multiply around here.  LOL

Here's a few of Dani's pets.  This was taken last fall when the grass was still green. Over the winter we have lost 3 chickens.  That still leaves us with 14 hens and those 2 silly little roosters!  Now she has an incubator and is going to try hatching eggs.  Oh my word...  I don't know how successful she'll be, but I'm not sure how many chickens we need!  I will say that I never thought chickens would be a fun pet, but we are really enjoying them.  They each have their very own personality AND they keep the cats off the patio. LOL 

She has a half dozen different kinds of laying hens and they are giving us quite the variety of eggs.  I love the little blue/green eggs and the itty bitty bantam eggs! We won't need to color our Easter eggs this year. They come colored straight from the hen!  Some even have speckles.   :) 

 

We also have a hen that is quite the over-achiever.  LOL  Her eggs are a meal all by themselves!

Most of her eggs are double yolked!

We are now getting almost a dozen eggs a day!   We are going to have a new business " Fresh Eggs".  :)
Hmmmm.....I wonder who is going to be in charge of taking care of the chickens when Dani leaves for college next year?