We’re Back!

Here’s a sneak peek at this year’s Christmas card.

So… I’m breaking the several month hiatus because I think I’m ready to start writing again! The last few months have been busy to say the least. Here is a quick recap of the events of August through December:

1. Hyvee Triathlon



Mike biked and his brother ran and his cousin swam. It was a fun time and the pup got to come with us and have some fun at the grandparents’ house.

2. Back to School


This is probably my primary reason for the blogging hiatus. I started back to school full time at University of Northern Iowa. I’m giving it my all in attempts to graduate in 5.5 semesters. December 2015 can’t come soon enough.

Since we don’t live in Cedar Falls, Iowa, I have been dividing my time between our house in Dubuque and my parents’ place near the university. This semester it worked out that I could be home Friday through Monday and go to school Tuesday through Thursday. Next semester I won’t be so lucky, but I’ll touch on that later.

3. Chicken Prep

Mike worked hard on getting the chickens ready for winter and also for being lower maintenance. He created a heated watering system and a food tube that can theoretically keep them fed and watered for a week without us having to do anything. They are amazingly still laying 2-3 eggs a day so we are still checking on them daily, but it is nice to know that if we are gone for a weekend or something that they will be fine on their own for a couple of days.

4. We’re adding to our family.

I know, again, right? A dog in 2012, chickens in 2013, and now we’re actually adding a human to the mix. The baby is due at the end of May, which will be perfect for school. I plan on taking the summer off completely and in the fall, we will commute daily to Cedar Falls with my mom hopefully watching the baby while I go to school. As we’re learning, things happen and we just have to go with the flow, so obviously these are just plans.

You can probably expect this to turn into a baby blog, since that is pretty much consuming our lives at this point

5. Side Projects

These include:

The kitchen that will never be finished

Michael’s quest to find thousands of Mountain Dew bottle caps to win Xbox Ones for him and everyone he knows. Digging through recycling bins, peddling candy bars for bags of caps at the redemption center, hounding relatives and friends to text us their codes, we really have no shame. It was probably worth it because he successfully won three!

Planning a nursery – the Fantastic Mr. Fox theme is full go. Expect adorable foxes everywhere along with their forest friends, way too many stuffed animals and no painting because I am way too lazy for that nonsense. We painted the room gray back in 2012 and I think that will work just fine for our gender-neutral nursery.

So that is basically what we've been up to! Stay tuned for pregnancy talk, kitchen work, and most likely adorable pictures of our furbabies.

Let’s Talk Chickens

Today was time to clean out the coop. It gets kind of messy and the husband was thinking it was getting smelly. Hot summer days will do that. Our girls are broody and messy. They frequently poop into their food bowl and they love digging around on the floor of their yard. I try and keep the water and food bowls clean by changing them out every other day. We need to come up with a better method because most people talk about changing theirs every few days to a week.



I brought Gizmo with me because she’s cute and adorable and was begging me to take her outside. She loves to spend time out in the sun. She also thought it was pretty fun to watch me wrangle the chickens and scoop poop.





I armed myself with some rubber gloves and scooped the old pine bedding into a bucket then dumped it into the compost. I started a new compost pile for the chicken stuff. Then I filled it back up with fresh pine shavings. The chickens were really happy about this. They ran around in the coop while I clean up the yard a bit. I added more mulch and sprinkled this compost granule stuff. It’s supposed to keep everything clean and non-smelly. I think it works pretty well. They also got their first bit of grit. They have dirt and mulch to pick at in their yard, so I think they've been getting sufficient grit, but I added the real stuff (bits of granite) just to make sure they were getting it.





The girls are still on chick crumbles. I have been patiently waiting for eggs/their food to run out so I can switch them over to layer feed. We also have oyster shells on standby. We've been telling people for a while now that eggs are supposed to be coming, so it’s been a long wait. They are 18.5 weeks old now, making them right around the age at which they lay eggs. Of course I will let you all know when it happens!







These girls sure are purdy. The photos don't show it well, but they are shiny beauties with silken feathers. I can't say enough good things about having the chickens. They are so much fun to have around the garden. If only we could keep their names straight!

Friday Dose of Cute