Cute Chicks

These are pictures of our new chicks.  They are bantam blue silkies and they are adorable.  Even though we only have room for 3 we had to get 5 because they are too little to tell which are hens and which are roosters.  I guess now the boys should be motivated to get that chicken coop finished once and for all.  We ordered them thinking they wouldn't be here for a few weeks.  It only took a week for them to come in.  They are not the best laying hens but because we are doing it for the experience rather than self sustainment we decided to forgo practicality with cuteness.  They are really pretty chickens when they are adults.

Peep, peep, peep

Peep

Peep, peep.

Peepity peep

Peep peeper peep peeper peepen

Even Captain thinks they are cute.  He is probably a little too interested in them but we're trying to get him used to them and train him to leave them alone.  I am more concerned about the foxes and raccoons that roam around our yard at night than I am about Captain.  Hopefully he won't prove me wrong on that.

PEEP, PEEP, PEEP, PEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!

The first day we got them we had to leave for several hours.  We put Captain outside so that we didn't come home to the appearance of a pillow fight at a slumber party.  I had turned off the A/C so I figured the 80 degrees our house was at would keep them warm enough.  We filled a small lid with water so they could get drinks if they were thirsty.  When we came home we realized our huge mistake which was equal to putting a wading pool in a room full of babies.  They were all completely soaked and shivering having gone for several swims in their drinking water.  Bryton rushed them up to his room to get the heat lamp on them.  They all huddled under the lamp and reached their little necks as far to the light as they could get them.  I picked one of them up and turned it over so that its belly could warm up and it immediately fell asleep.  My kids kept telling me I was killing it and that I wasn't supposed to hold them upside down.  

A.  It wasn't upside down. 

B. Where they got this knowledge (unfounded) I'll never know but suddenly they are experts in all things chicken.

If I were a chick with a wet belly I would want someone to do that to me but I eventually relented to their admonitions and put it down.  It didn't take them long to warm up but they were not nearly as cute as they had been when we got them home.  Wet chicks are just not attractive.  Fortunately by the next day they were back to their cute selves.  Fresh eggs should be here by Christmas.  Maybe instead of our annual hand dipped pretzels our neighbors will be receiving eggs this year.

YMCA

There is a first time for everything and this summer I seem to be checking a lot of those first times off of my list.  This week I took the camper and the girls up to the YMCA without John.  It was a little scary since I am used to letting John take care of all the outside details on the camper.  Besides some beeping and buzzing noises that had me stumped for a while and the unpleasantness of dumping the sewer, it all worked out okay and the kids had a ball.  I met a friend who was also flying solo in her RV and who also happened to have one of my daughters with her.  It was an all ladies adventure.

One of my personal favorite activities was the tricycle track

We had fun playing roller tag

They all were impressive marksmen

And courageous zip liners

I remember having a family reunion at this place several years ago but I think they've added a lot to it since then.  Right now they're working on building a summer tubing hill.  Apparently they're going to make fake snow for it.  Definitely a place worth visiting if you've got kids.

Heads Made Out Of Straw

We discovered a new way to do hair.

Voila!

Whew!

I stopped posting rather abruptly after arriving at the final destinations of our vacation.  Not surprising.  I have a tendency to leave one thing undone no matter what I am doing.  If I'm doing laundry, I leave one basket full.  If I'm cleaning bathrooms, I clean all but one.  I guess I like to see what I can get away with.  I must have reverse OCD.  I'm obsessive compulsive about making sure that I don't do everything.  Well, this time I'm going to overcome my personality glitch and finish what I started.  Here are the final pictures from the last jaunt of our vacation.

The Sacred Grove in Palmyra, New York where Joseph Smith had his first vision.

Bryton walking through the Sacred Grove the same age Joseph Smith was when he had his vision.

Standing outside a replica of Joseph Smith's log cabin he lived in.

The inside of the cabin

After the Sacred Grove we took a tour of the Peter Whitmer farm and ran into these boys from New Zealand on a church history tour.  I wanted to get a picture of them to post on my blog so I was happy when they asked us to be in their picture.  Their poses made me self conscious about what boring posers we were through out our entire vacation.

So I tried to make up for it with this one.  I don't know what those hand signs mean but I've seen them done before.  I think my fingers are spread too wide though.  I need to work on that.  My hand looks like a mutated star fish and Whitney looks like she's trying to cut her poncho off with her fingers. I've seen movies where New Zealanders stick out their tongues in ceremony before going to battle.  Along those lines I guess you could call this my, "In your face Niagara Falls!  I'm not afraid of you!" pose.  To which Niagara Falls might answer, "Whooossshhhhhhhhhh." forever and ever.

"What's with the ponchos?" you may be wondering.  Well, besides the fact that it was raining, we decided to go on a boat tour that took us about as close as we could get to the falls without drowning.  It was difficult  to look at it for all the spray jetting towards our faces.

We thought we'd spread out a little in this pose but we came off looking like The Niagara Falls Choir performing "O Canada"

Nigara Falls is where we ended our vacation but we've been anything but bored since we got home.  We got to host our biannual cousin camp over the fourth of July.  We had fun swimming, playing water volleyball, getting really sunburned and watching a fireworks show on a golf course.  After the show we decided to wait around for the traffic to clear so the kids ran around playing with their glow sticks and getting goofed up on Rice Krispy Treats.  When we got home the girls went to bed in their own private dormitory shown below while the boys slept out on the trampoline until it started raining.  That's when they came in and crashed wherever they could find a spot.  I was amazed at how soundly Aaron slept on my stair case.

Cousin camp made me remember that we have a camper so I started getting the itch to take it out.  We had been home for over a week so it seemed like time for another outing.  I'm not sure why I like being away from home so much.  I guess I'm a gypsy at heart.  More likely I just don't like the kids messing up my house.  We headed up the canyon near where the fire raged last summer.  It was crazy to see all the damage that had been done but somehow our little camp ground had been sheltered from it.  The wild flowers were amazing.

John put together this bouquet of wild flowers in a plastic water bottle.  They are being proudly displayed beside Bryton's broken machete he got at Harbor Freight for $4.00.

While camping one can never have too much cushion

While John and the kids were out exploring they found this cool lean to someone had made

You can see some of the damage from the fire through the trees.

Bryton decided to chop off dead limbs to build his own lean to.  He was bummed after it was  all complete and  John and I declared it to be more useful for firewood than shelter.  (We did have a trailer with us after all.)  He didn't complain about the s'mores though.

Today is Saturday and John just had his last vacation day.  Right now he's out in the garage finishing up the chicken coop he's been building with Bryton.  He ordered our chickens yesterday!  We'll see how long they survive with Captain around.  He's bummed to have to go back to work but he knows that he has no right to complain.  He finally got his sabbatical that he's been looking forward to since starting with this company and I don't think he would have changed much about it.