One more thing...

Ava in her rainy day boredom dressed up in this green caterpillar/bug outfit that my mom found at a yard sale. I was cleaning the bath tub when she was putting it on and a few minutes later she came in with a serious face and said "mommy, I think I scared the chicks."
It made me laugh! The chicks are really spastic and I can just imagine what they saw!

This weekend (March 30th 2008)

We had a good weekend but it is OVER-yuck! It has been a yucky rainy weekend but we still got out and about. On Saturday, Ava's daycare teacher opened her house to her WHOLE class and had a party. It was great because I got to talk to the other parents and socialize and Ava got to run around like crazy with her friends.

Today, Dave, Ava and I went to my friend Leslie's new house. It is so cute! It is in Raleigh and if I lived there it would take me 3 minutes to get to work. Ava ran around while Dave installed a light for Leslie and then we went back home. I was so cold all day and am STILL sick so I stayed inside and was not very exciting for Ava. Ava and I reaaranged some pictures in her room and dusted and cleaned a bit. Then we made my Mother-in-laws lasagna recipe. Dave said he was drooling while it was baking. He LOVES lasagna! It makes me laugh because lasagna makes him so happy. We finally got Ava to bed and now we are ready to crash.

Oh yeah, I guess seeing Leslie's new house, Dave said he was sort of in the mood to a SMALL home improvement project. There is a window in our kitchen that has white molding. There is nothing else white in our kitchen and this molding sort of stands out to me. He thought he could easily stain some Oak molding to match our cabinets and make it fit in a little better. He could only find pine at the local Lowes and made several trips to find stain to match out cabinets. We think he got it but now he has to put several coats on it to make it right. Oh well, so much for a small project!

Chick Update #3000

The chicks are getting bigger and bigger! They are getting out of their cute chick stage. I was going to have my friends with kids come over to play with them but honestly they get so mad when you pick them up that I have not wanted to extend the offer. This batch of chicks is a lot sillier than the last batch I had. They "talk" all of the time. Tonight they were making such a ruckus and I went to take a look at them and they were playing a game. One of them would take a wood shaving and carry it around and the others would chase it trying to get it. The chick with the shaving was chirping and making all sorts of noise. They were being so loud that they caught one of my cat's (Lucy) attention and she had to take a look as well. She scared them so from then on they have been pretty quiet. I guess she ruined their fun. By the way, the cats are still pretty good with the chicks but every once in a while they think they might want to stalk them.

Also, notice the poop on my kitchen floor! Ava was grossed out.

The older gals are still "cooped" up. They have access to the lower (outside) level of the ultimate chicken coop but they like inside (upstairs) the coop better. I begged Dave and I may have convinced him to make me a geriatric coop in one month if the old girls refuse to use the ramp for some outside time. This is what they look like:

As for Ava, she is beautiful and funny! She has been letting me french braid her hair and it looks so pretty. I cannot braid my hair for the life of me but I am OK at braiding others hair. In addition, my boss gave me this machine that will put beads in your hair. So lately every morning, I braid Ava's hair and then she puts the beads on the machine and we put them in her hair. She looks very fancy.

Ava said she had a dream last night with Dave and I in it where the chicks lost their beaks. Wierd. Huh? I bet it is wierd to be a kid and have dreams!

She also has two dog stuffed animals and one is a Dalmation and they other is a tan dog. She calls the Dalmation "Fire dog" and the other one "Underdog". It makes me laugh!

She also two stools on top of each other to get to my very tall bed and said "two stools are better than one." Ha! I just do not know where she comes up with all of this stuff.

Here is a pic of Ava at her school Easter egg hunt.

Happy Easter

Here is a pic of Ava with bed head and looking at all of her loot from the Easter bunny! So cute!

All in all it was a great Easter weekend. I caught a cold. It was a wierd one, I am already feeling better. I had an upset stomach, sore throat, and sinus headache. This year my bosses had Easter dinner at their house and invited us over. Ava had a blast and ran around like crazy. She was absolutely exhausted. The kids went on an Easter egg hunt and that was fun to watch. We ate a ton. On the way home Ava asked me when we were going to be home so that she could throw up in the toilet. At that point I immediately pull over and grab frantically for something she could get sick in. I found nothing. At that point I saw her Easter basket bucket and I quickly dumped all of the eggs out if it and that is what she used. I got lucky. She has gotten sick before in the car once and it made a mess of her car seat. Dave had to take it all apart and wash every piece. It was a real hassle so I am glad that we were able to do something.

My mom won a Pottery Barn brand bed at an auction for 150.00 that she gave us and apparentlyy it did not have all of the components to it. Dave called Pottery barn, figured out what we were missing and fashioned a new frame and bed support out of wood. It is great. It is very tall but I like it. It is like a princess and the pea bed.

Chicken Update-Day 2

It is day two of the chickens. We named the adult chickens are names Ms. Prissy, Rose, and Betty. Ms. Prissy will come down the ramp! Ava was so excited when she checked on them this morning and Ms. Prissy was downstairs. The other two girls (Rose and Betty) refuse to come downstairs. They do not do much at all. I am hoping that tomorrow will be a better day for them. I put some food and water upstairs for them. One thing I have noticed is that they like to snuggle with each other. What I have read about chickens is that they are social and do not like to be alone. However, Ms. Prissy is a trooper. She is also the eldest of the chickens and about 2 years old (the other two are 12 weeks). Ava and I like to sit on the ground and watch Ms. Prissy with the ramp and I noticed she complains the whole way up and down it as if to tell me that she may fall and she can't believe we expect her to go up the ramp. It is pretty funny. Silkies have a lot of feathers and fluff and they don't see very well. If we had it all to do over again we would probably have a little different coop design.

The chicks are cute too. Ava and I took them outside for a stint today. We have an old metal dog crate and we put them in there. The chicks were so happy. They were walking around exploring and very happy. I know that sounds silly but they acted different. They were very explorative and I think I translate that to mean "happy" in chicken talk. Unfortunately our cat Lucy was way to interested in what we were doing so we had to put them back up.

The cats seem to leave the chickens alone and the chicks alone (the chicks live in the super brooder my husband made on our kitchen table). BUT if the chicks are outside they are prone to being stalked by the cats. I guess we can't have free range chickens. I also saw a lab sniffing outside the chicken coop today. I yelled at him and he ran off. All in all the chickens are pretty secure especially if they are upstairs.

That is all for now.

Fancy Chicken Update

I brought home 6 chickens today-3 chicks and 3 adults. I was worried how the adults would fair in their new habitat. By the way the chicks are fine-they are in my kitchen. My hubby built the greatest chicken coop with a ramp and lots of amenities. Unfortunately, I think my frou frou Silkie chickens are not the brightest. I opened the coop and put them in the bottom. I checked on them for the next few hours and they did not really move from where I initially put them. In theory, they can walk up a ramp to the top where they have lots of pine shavings and nesting boxes. The New Hamp/Silkie mix I named Black Betty started up the ramp as evening was approaching. She made it 3/4 of the way up and fell off due to lack of coordination. And that was the end of that. Later on, we all went out during the last bit of daylight and there she did it. Miss Prissy (my geriatric girl) went right up to bed. At that point Rose and Betty resorted to snuggling together downstairs. I could not take it and made Dave crawl in there and wrangle them and put them upstairs with Ms. Prissy. He did and now they are all warm. The chicks are happy and warm and getting used to cats staring at them. The chicks are all girls, I confirmed by a genetic test.

Relocating chicks

I have a surplus of chicks so I am bringing some to Wilmington with me tomorrow. The three that I am bringing are in a little brooder Dave fashioned for me. I am so so lucky to be married to someone who can make absolutely anything I want. I am convinced one of them HAS to be a boy because he his wild and very alert. I think the other two are girls because they are really sweet.
There is one Ava named sleepy because it crash sleeps into the pine bedding. I have to look at its little belly to make sure it is still breathing.

Ava really really likes them and they were in her room for most of the evening and then we moved them out because I did not know how noisy they would be and I would be up all night wondering if Ava was playing with the chicks. She was really upset that they were not going to be sleeping with her. She even offered to sleep outside in the Pop Up camper. Awwww.
She has named them Poopy, Sleepy, and Flappy.

More later.....

Saturday, March 8th

Ava and I had a busy day today. She wanted to go to the indoor pool so we did and we were there for a couple of hours. I still smell like chlorine and my head itches. Oh the sacrifices.

Later on I took her to the McDonalds to play on the playset which she had a hard time saying goodbye to. She met some "new best friends" as she calls them.

Her dad is working on a playset for her and she is very excited.Every once in a while Ava yells out that it is "looking good". The rock wall and the ladder is built.

I heart Project Runway and more funny Ava things

Thanks to the writers strike, I signed up for Netflix because my wireless internet and laptop is just not enough :). I love love love Project Runway. We have Time Warner Cable and they deem it necessary not to give us the Bravo channel. I have rented Project Runway since season 1 and I am now on season 3. I am in awe of the designers and think it is so cool. I am pretty sure if it paid my mom and I could go into business. With her skills and my crazy ideas we could come up with some great things.

And as always, here is our funny Ava story. I was doing the laundry and saw these plastic things in the bottom of the washing machine. I took a closer look and there were three tiny plastic ninjas in the bottom of our washing machine. I joked that they were responsible for washing the laundry and my darling husband added in that they were full size Ninjas and I shrunk them. Anyway, they were Ava's and she won them as a reward at school which is a feat all in itself. She is pretty independent and does not like to be looked at or talked to at school or you will feel her wrath.

My child won't sleep and I sewed a fancy zipper

I have mastered a zippered pocket and I am so happy. I found an elaborate tutorial and I thought that I would never be able to get from steps 1-20 and I did it! I am so happy! I have been working on a bag for the past couple of nights. I took tonight off due to a bad mood. Sewing while on a bad mood is no good.

It is almost 10pm and Ava is still in her bed singing. It makes me crazy. I put her to bed at 8:30! I fear she will get up in a bad mood tomorrow (like she did today) and beat everyone up at daycare. She hit a girl on the forehead today because the girl was chasing her and she did not want to be bothered. Then she got put in time out while outside and kicked a girl that was walking to close to her. When I got home, she was fine. She acted like nothing ever happened. We played outside until about 6:30, ate, watched TV, read a book and practiced our letters and apparently that did not wear her out. It makes me want to yell but I don't.