Not a Zoning Violation Anymore

Since we had our zoning changed, we're legal for chickens now, so this addition of 4 more chicks isn't a violation. Kinda takes the thrill out, but they are still cute. 2 Arucanas (colored eggs), 1 Rhode Island Red, 1 Buff Orpington OR Leghorn, not sure yet.

More Snow

Its snowed several days this week, but not much. Here's what happened today, though. Took these shots from the same angle as the ones I took last weekend, for comparison.

The weight on the trees caused on of the branches on the big oak "Climbing Tree" to fail. Now its 11am, and everything is starting to melt into a noisy dripping chorus.

School was not cancelled, so boy are we going to hear it from the kids, especially "the boy" who makes no secret that he thinks school is just a conspiracy to suck all of the fun out of his life.

Wow!

It's a family joke that some of us don't get the holiday stuff out until months later. So imagine the Boy's surprise when an envelope came today, less than two weeks after his birthday! Wow! Go Grandpa & Grandma! He says he now has saved $105, more than he's ever had at once (and we have to stop him from spending it every day. . .)

And, it snowed here a little today--

Cookies

Mom doesn't like the goo. Kit does. Trade off. The boy contributed the marshmallow.

Furlough Gate

Dad and Mom got extra days off this week because of the California state employee furlough program. Time is more valuable to us than money, so we think we are going to like it. We even had a breakfast date this morning, without the kids (sorry, kids, no school furlough).

Mom built a new gate to the zip line, Dad cleaned the gutters and got the driveway ready for a shipment of 10 yards of rock.

And just look at all of the gardening that needs to be done!

Grandma in the News (sort of)

Grandma has been living with us for about two weeks now, and she's already famous in the local media! She was captured walking her dogs on a cold day in town recently. (Her dogs like being country dogs.)

Science Fair Projects

Kit did her experiment to find out if the type of dirt affected the growth rate of different sunflower seeds. She used dirt from the yard, polished gravel, and fortified dirt from the store. The Expensive store dirt had both faster germination, and greater rate of growth in the 20 day period. The polished gravel seed germinated, then just shriveled up.

The Boy measured how long it took various dryer loads of wet towels (by weight) to dry. He determined that a very full load is more efficient than a smaller load, but then a limit is reached where it becomes less efficient with a large load.

Now we get our weekends back. :)