Contrary to popular opinion, life at Hog Mountain can be very exciting. The 3 of us spent Easter Saturday watching the neighbors have a huge moonwalk blown up in their yard. Then, we got to play in it for the rest of the afternoon. (I had to leave for a little while to have a whirlwind shopping spree with Rebecca and Mom). There are always dogs visiting (we usually have a total of 2-3 at any given moment). We only have one- Jack. We know and actually like most of our neighbors. We spent Thur and Friday helping our next door neighbor prepare her guest room for her mother's visit this weekend. It was a bright pink, she wants it a more normal color with a chair rail. The good thing about helping your neighbors is that you usually get invited to dinner soon afterwards.
And of course, we have chickens:
We now have 3 chickens who are fully grown!!! Drought and Clara have been laying for a few weeks now and we were waiting on the baby. Sunshine has begun to lay her daily egg. It is so neat to go out daily and find 2-3 eggs in the little nest that Jeff has fixed up for them. We also have a orange plastic easter egg in there. We had heard that if you put an Easter egg in their nesting box, they would know where to lay their egg. It has worked so far. One day last week, the Easter egg migrated to the front of the roosting pen, then the next day, tried to commit suicide. I saw it on the ground next to the feeding bucket. I really didn't see any reason to pick it up, after all, surely the chickens knew by now that it was a fake and didn't need it. I was wrong. Our oldest, Drought, had a really rough day- squawking and carrying on all afternoon until the egg was returned to the correct location. Poor egg.
The pictures below were taken from inside our "chicken annex". Jeff has built them a little temporary pen where we would like to plant some flowers this year. They eat, poop, and scratch. We get fertilizer and a tiller all in one! It works out real well, most of the time. Jeff had to weed with them a few weeks ago, because they don't like a certain ground cover that we have in there. Wish I had taken a video of them pecking Jeff because he wasn't pulling worms out fast enough for them! It was priceless.
Jeff ran in his second half-marathon Sunday morning. He did great- 2 hours, 15 minutes. We (Amber, Kelly, Rebecca, and Derek) tried to get to several spots to cheer him and Trey on, but really only made it to mile 4, 6, 11, and the finish line. We got stuck with the marathon runners because the policeman wouldn't let us go down the road for fear that we would hit one of the poor runners. I guess he figured that they were in pain enough, some may actually jump in front of us to end the race early. (In his defense, we WERE in Amber's monster SUV) Instead of fretting, we just spent 20 minutes hanging out of the car windows, playing music and cheering on the runners we would never meet again.
After the race, Jeff and I went back to Trey and Kelly's to get ready for my first concert as a member of the Toe-Tapping band. I had tried not to scream too much during the race, but I practiced all the way to the church where we were performing, and by the time I got there, my voice had started to go downhill. In fact, I am still sounding very froggy. The Lord was good though, my voice held out during the concert. It was the oddest concert I had ever been a part of. The majority of the people who were there to listen to us, didn't! They had just finished church and a pot-luck lunch. I guess they were tired. We had 2 tables of people who stared at us the entire time, I'm not really sure they understood that it was okay to smile- we were there to entertain them. The other 7 tables quickly emptied of people or contained small groups of women who talked the ENTIRE time that we sang. It was actually very funny to me. Thankfully- I had my own fan club there (my in-laws, Jeff, and Jonathan). We had a good time, but Daddy (the leader of Toe-tapping) started dropping songs toward the end, to get us out of there sooner I guess (or to end his misery). We sing again in 2 weeks down near Macon, GA. That is a Sunday night "Gig" so we should have a little more active audience- I hope.
I guess that is all from Hog Mountain for now. Hope everyone had a great Easter. Happy April!!!!
