Chickens & Musicals

9' this morning! Down from low 50's on Sunday! We have just a light dusting of snow on the ground and it's very windy though definitely less so than overnight.

On the agenda for today: blog, laundry - wash, dry and fold, dishes, work on a project for B - it has a deadline, figure out how to get some exercise...I am sure there is more but that's all I can think of at the moment. Last night I was out fairly late at B's working on a different project than the one I'm doing here at home. Sunday night I did a evening run to Graybil. Two late nights adds up.

We have chickens now - brought them home Saturday evening. We've had 4-5 eggs a day since. It's exciting for me. I just have to figure out how to get them to use their roosts rather than the nest boxes. I also still need to get cracked corn to supplement their feed and to encourage them to scratch more. Squirrel is excited to gather the eggs as well - I have hopes that this will encourage him to try eating them. Come this spring I will be getting 20 more as chicks. Some will be the Amerecanas that lay colored eggs.

On a different note - Stretch got the part of Mr. Bahr in the musical Little Women that the high school is putting on this spring. It's the part that he kind of wanted during try-outs. I'm thrilled for him though I know it will be an incredible amount of work. He is planning on continuing his running as much as possible in between practices.

This morning is a beautiful sunny morning - the sun is glistening on the snowflakes on the ground while more flakes fall lightly. The driveway is plowed though I shoveled some this morning yet before it got plowed yet there is already a very light dusting on the ground again. When the sun came up it was glorious - an arrow of light pointing towards the heavens from a reddish orange ball. Made me think of the Doxology:



Praise God from Whom all blessings flow
Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise Him above ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Let it Snow!

Let it snow! Yesterday we were supposed to get snow overnight - possibly a couple of inches. However we only got a dusting - just enough to have to shovel the driveway before we left for school and bus route this morning. Stretch did a tremendous job after he got off the bus this afternoon - as it had been snowing all afternoon and we had another inch at least. I still got stuck across the road - which had not been sanded yet and had to call for help. My boss came out and was able to drive the bus up the hill - while waiting on him I spread ashes under the wheels and was able to get it mostly out of the road. I shoveled over an hour today - for now it's stopped snowing. We will see what the morning brings.

Other than that not too much is going on. Last week we had floods, lots of fog and very little snow. Then the temps dropped to below freezing over the weekend and now we have snow. The weather has been very very strange this winter.

Stretch is now running at home as track practice has started. He is not going to do track this year as he wants to try out for the musical that will be performed in the spring. This will be his first experience acting in a "real" play so it should be interesting. Squirrel, on the other hand, is now busier than ever - in addition to TaeKwonDo he is participating in the Math Bowl that the elementary school is involved in. They will have one competition in a month or so. In the meantime though he has practice 2 or 3 afternoons a week - on the days he doesn't have TaeKwonDo classes. Math is his favorite subject in school so he is enjoying that.


I was hoping to be able to capture the snow flakes as they were coming down. Unfortunately that didn't happen. However all the snow in the picture has fallen in the last 24 hours or so.

Just got in from attempting to shovel the driveway again. It's not that the snow is exceedingly deep this morning - it's that the temperatures must have dropped so dramatically last night that everything - including the slushy snow we'd had in the space of an hour or so yesterday "flash froze". It was very strange - it went from rain to sleet to big heavy wet snow flakes in the space of an hour yesterday afternoon - just in time for afternoon bus route. Made the route very interesting at best - there were several very slick areas.

O.K. I started writing this this morning before I went on my bus route. The roads were all ice under the slight layer of snow - I was the last bus in to the elementary school this morning as I deliberately ran slow which made me run late. The weather this winter has been extremely strange. I am very glad that we had a scheduled 2 1/2 hour delay this morning - I would not have wanted to drive my route in the dark. (This makes 4 days this week we've gone to school late!) By Sunday we are supposed to be back in the teens temperature-wise - tomorrow they are predicting rain again.

Other than that not too much is going on. With the delays I really don't feel like I've accomplished much of anything this week - there's not been enough time at home and the house shows it. Even in the evenings we've been out running. I guess I had better scoot and load the dishwasher and swap laundry loads at least.

No Cancellation

It's 8:20 am and all the school districts around us have closed. We were on a 2 hour fog/flood delay but apparently are not going to close. The fog was so bad yesterday that I actually missed stops and got turned around on my afternoon route. Suz says that it's worse today. I am not looking forward to this. Around here the fog isn't too bad - Dipstick (who is closed again today) says it's pretty thick up by him. B is at work.

This weekend was wild - we were closed on Friday. Saturday the roads weren't too bad and we were able to get the driveway cleared. Sunday night we had another 3 inches or so of wet heavy snow - Stretch and I used our 2 hour delay yesterday to shovel it off. We had just finished the hill and were calling it quits when my boss showed up with his plow. He finished off the top - I generally leave that if I'm hand shoveling due to it being flat.

I now have a chicken coop at my house - it was brought down on Sunday afternoon. One door hinge broke but otherwise it traveled safely. Now it's a matter of replacing the hinge, getting feed, straw and nest boxes in. Then I will be able to bring the chickens home. I guess I will probably put a fence around it as well so they don't roam all over the place...not sure if I will fence the coop area or the garden to protect it.

I'd better scoot - just about time to run my bus route.

Edited to add: The bus route was definitely challenging this morning. North of the main E/W highway visibility was about 1/4 mile - better than yesterday afternoon but still not good at all. Also...after I picked up my first student I ended up having to back out about 1/2 mile of washed out dirt road to a place I could turn around at. There were no signs up warning one of a washout or deep water over the road so I didn't realize it until I was right there already. That had me running a solid 10 minutes late on the entire route. Fun times indeed! And sleet is predicted for tomorrow.

Snowed In Again

This is what I woke up to this morning - Stretch had made coffee and started a fire in the fireplace. We are off school today due to snow - I think we were one of the last districts to cancel. However when I heard that the police were requesting people to stay off the roads I knew we would. Snow now seems to have tapered off quite a bit - fizzled almost to nothing. I didn't think that was supposed to happen for another hour or so. We certainly didn't get the 11-15 inches that were predicted. I would guess that we probably have 4-6 inches but have not yet been outside to measure it.
La phoned this morning - she is also snowed in at home. We had a good chat. While we did so, the boys took Christmas ornaments off the tree and set them on the coffee table in the family room. The hope is that we can all work on putting them away while watching a movie rather than me doing it all on my own. (I know...I know...it should have been done a month ago but life has been busy. At least it's not March.) For me it's always enjoyable to remember who made the different handmade ornaments and when they were given to us. Both boys have a good collection of ornaments to take with them when they move out of the house - both handmade and purchased.

This afternoon Stretch and I will go bring in storage containers for the Christmas stuff. We will likely also work on shoveling the drive as I don't expect to get plowed out until tomorrow at the earliest. Squirrel will have to stay inside as he's been running a fever. I had him to the doctor last night - he's now on a z-pack. The nice thing about that is that he will only have 2 days to remember to take it once Monday comes - rather than having to take it 3 times daily for 10 days. While we were out we did our grocery shopping for the next couple of weeks. The stores were crowded and later in the evening when I went back with B to do his there were large empty areas on the shelves where the store was sold out of milk, bread and other staples.



Here's a view from the side door out onto the deck looking towards the road - you can barely see that the road is even there. It would probably be really nice sledding for the boys.

Lunch is over so I'd better head off to get bundled up to go outside. Stretch has been looking for excuses to put this off but it must be done.

I feel better...

I feel somewhat better this morning about getting stuck yesterday afternoon - the roads were at least as bad as they were yesterday - lots of ice and black ice. There was a trash truck stuck cross- wise across one road and apparently a county truck blocking another road during morning route time. There were also plenty of warnings from one driver to another about icy roads. I had a couple of spots where I felt the bus start to slide but it wasn't too severe. Tomorrow could be a very very different story - we are under a winter storm advisory from 10:00 pm tonight through tomorrow. There is to be some combination of rain, thunderstorms and snow that we get. Personally I'm hoping for more snow than anything else even though it means shoveling for me. At least once it stops snowing and the sun comes out - even if it's cold it is pretty. And with the temps being back in the 20's for tomorrow snow is better than ice.

Something that was really funny about yesterday afternoon was what my preschool student said when he found out that he had a seatbelt all his own..."For me?? I get my own seatbelt?! Thank you E..." He was so excited about it - talking about telling his mom and telling his cousin. I am thankful for that as it means I won't have to struggle with getting him to wear it.

Other than that, not too much is going on. I've got daily chores planned, bills to pay and cleaning to do. Stretch is really looking forward to being able to run again tonight. Squirrel has TaeKwonDo and I have a haircut scheduled.