I know...... It's been a long time........ But Chickens!!!

It's been a long time getting on here. I have had a long break from writing in my journal, and writing on my blog. They kind of go hand-in-hand. I will probably be updating a lot lately on here with different things, but for now..... I am excited that we got 5 new chickens. Chris and I (well... me) have been interested in getting chickens. Not to take out the expense of cheaper eggs. Trust me on that one! We saw that the country store by us finally got the chicks in, and we decided to pick five up. We ended up driving back that same day about 3 more times, because the heat lamp bulb blew, the heat lamp connection broke, etc...... We have all settled in our living arrangements with each other. The chickens go about pooping and eating and chirping. Occasionally one will pick a bit of the pine shavings and they all chase each other like it's some great game of keep-away. I picked a handicapped chicken. It's neck did not fuse properly, and it is completely tilted to one side all of the time. She can't tilt her head the other way at all. She can also twist it all around where she is looking up at the ceiling. The other birds (at the country store) all pecked her feathers on her wings off, so they had to separate her from the rest with 1 other chicken. I knew no one would pick her, so I did. She is the draw of everyone that wants to come see the chickens. When she is trying to run away, she runs around in circles really fast because she can't run straight because of her neck being tilted. She doesn't act normal either. Her feathers are full and have grown back in, because one of the other chickens protected her from all the other ones. The ones we brought home would try to pick on her, and the other chicken would follow her all around and run ones over that were trying to be mean to her. Now she is kind of a bully. Their names are; Big Bird (handicapped one), Lady, Roxy, Sylvia and Goldie. We got them when they were a few days old, and now they are huge!
Chris decided he would build the coop for them. Coops are very expensive to buy. He designed and planned the whole thing. His brother came and helped him assemble it and do some of the cuts, but most of it was all Chris. I am very impressed with his construction skills. It is complete, except for a few little things, like paneling on the sides where the chicken run meets the coop, and wiring electrical to it for a heat lamp in the winter. We are excited to start getting some eggs. They start laying at about 4 months.

 Conception of the coop and run

 The paint they tried turned out light pink, so they used it as primer instead

 Chris and Bryan assembling the coop

 Starting to come together. They mixed up paint for Chris, and it ended up being hot pink instead of barn red, what we asked for; but we took it back and got the right color

 Putting it all together

 Chris wanted lights like ours on the outside, so we bought those stake lights along pathways, and cut off the bottoms, and they perched the solar lights on the coop

 The ramp and chicken run

 The completed coop in it's place. Chris designed it himself and built it. It looks amazing, with great engineering behind it. Everything he did made it so functional. This coop custom-built from someone else would have cost about $1,500. The material for ours cost less than half that!

 He is going to panel off the space between the run and the coop before we put chickens inside. He also chicken wired the bases so animals cannot dig and get to the chickens

 3 holes are for ventilation, and he chicken wired them off from birds, etc... The door is for cleaning the coop

 The jut is where the nesting boxes will be. The little roof lifts up to gather eggs really easily

 It rained a lot today, but the entire thing inside is sound. The bar is a perch bar, and a second half bar above that is also for perching. We will still line the bottom with linoleum for easy cleaning

 We will change the roof to a white corrugated one to match everything else better. We didn't know what color the coop was going to be before we started

 Chicks

This picture was taken today. The picture before this one was the first day we got them. We got them 2 weeks ago, and look how much they have grown since then. Big Bird is the one with her head completely sideways in the middle.

New Pet. Introducing LEO The Lionhead Bunny

When we got Piggy, she has always been kind of mean and incredibly independent. She hates to be touched and likes to be left alone. She gets into a lot of mischief. We decided to get a cute new baby bunny. It's a newer breed called lionhead. The fur is not typical fur, it's almost like fine cotton. We named him Leo. He doesn't mind being held for long periods of time. His favorite thing right now is to test everything with his teeth. He licks it first, then nibbles. There have been a few "Ouch!" instances where the nibbling was our skin. He is so cute though. He is the cutest pet I have ever had. I have some really cute pictures of him on my camera. These were the pictures used on KSL. It is the blue-eyed white bunny. We washed his paws off when we got him and they are almost back to white again.

GOP Republican Debate

On Thursday night, Chris and I watched the Republican Debate! It was so fascinating! It was more entertaining than a comedy show. A lot of the candidates were absolutely cornered by some of the almost accusing questions. I thought a lot of them handled it well, except for Rick Perry. He was applauded less and less as the night went on, and at the end he was getting booed. I thought that Rick Santorum is too young in politics to know what he is doing. He seemed way less educated than the rest of the candidates. Newt Gingrich has a really messy personal life. He left his first two wives after they were diagnosed with serious illnesses. My favorites so far are Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Mitt Romney. I am going to study out their issues in depth a little better. I found Herman Cain very refreshing. He is a guy that started at the bottom and worked hard to get his way to the top. His wife has no desire to be in the limelight either. He is very genuine. I like also really liked Mitt Romney. When the debate was over, I was sad. It went by too quick.

A whole bunch of exciting things all at once!!!

First on the agenda, we are closing on our house tomorrow. Hurray! It has been a bittersweet experience. Annoying at times, disappointing, but all ended up well at the end. We will finally be homeowners, and one more step towards building our family. Another step for us is getting sealed on the 13th. We are extremely excited to be able to be sealed together. Chris has wanted to wait to do sealings at the temple until we have gone through our own first, and I am excited to see him go through that experience. Another step to building our little family, is that I am finally going to start doing a round of fertility drugs and see what that will do for us. Everyone knows we cannot have children naturally, so we are taking a different approach. I am scared, nervous, etc.... for the whole experience. So many what ifs...... but we are excited to take the challenge. I am overwhelmed with excitement for so many new things in life. Things are going well for us, and we feel very blessed.

Hawaii

I posted all of my pictures on picasa since there were too many to post. I only posted very few on facebook. The link is www.picasaweb.google.com/karleebateman to see my pictures. There are some videos too. It was a great and well needed trip. The pictures tell the story.