Friends, plus raising chickens is like raising kids

I've been blessed to visit with lots of friends so far this month. 

Amy Odom and her daughter Charlotte came for a visit at the beginning of the month all the way from Maine.  It's so much fun to see new babies and see their parents' features in them! Charlie looks just like her dad Doug.

Jessie and her family are in town and we're trying to get together as much as possible. The kids are getting along well which is great! We're going to the Smithsonian in DC on Wednesday.

We got together with Jeremiah's law school friend and his family on Sunday. Again, their son is almost J.'s age and they entertained each other pretty well. It was good to see them again. They're the kind of people that if we just had more time, I know we'd really have fun with them. As it is, we're all working parents (2/4 are lawyers, 2/4 are teachers) and live about an hour apart so we last saw them a year and a half ago!

We don't exclusively hang out with people who have kids, though sometimes it feels that way.  

Last night we had an awesome backyard campfire with Julie and Heather. Their kids are our kids. I mean, our kids are their kids.  I mean, they don't have children of their own but we definitely share ours with them. J. has never had a trip (an "adventure") without us- except for each time that they take her out!  But they stayed until midnight- way after the kids were in bed.  So that counts as hanging out with people without kids! 

Of course, mostly I've been seeing my MOMS Club friends, which by definition...

Best Moment of the Day: It was a great day. It was all awesome. Slept in, Morning yoga with friends in my house while the kids play, Big playdoh fest with my kids, Picnic lunch on my back porch, Nearly 2 hours of quiet time without kids in early afternoon, Then visit to playground where Jeremiah joined us, Then snowballs!  Nice relaxing evening at home and now watching "Chuck" on netflix.   This is why I keep going!

Worst Moment of the Day: Even the bad news was good news today. Tried to take J. to get her blood drawn but got there literally one minute too late. Instead we went to the playground! 

Thoughts of the Day: For us, having a chicken is like having a kid.

• First batch of chickens: we dreamed of them, we planned them, we spent a lot of effort trying to find the perfect type of chicken at the perfect time of year for us.  We read lots of stuff about preparing for your chickens and about how to care for them. We read chicken care books and ordered a subscription for a chicken magazine. And then we gave time and affection to our baby chicks as if they were our kids. Obviously this was before we had kids bc we had extra of those to give!
  

• Second batch of chickens: we thought we knew exactly what we were doing since we had just done it a year or so earlier. We made a split second decision to get more chicks, now, from wherever possible and then we just went ahead and did it. Never cracked a chicken care book. We tossed them into all the old stuff from the first batch and they had to make-do with the hand-me-downs even if it wasn't perfect. "They'll be fine!"

• Third batch of chickens: Ok, since the others keep getting eaten by predators maybe we need to reevaluate here. Let's get back to doing a good job with this. We reevaluated our chicken gear and got rid of/ threw out some of the old stuff and are going to buy them new stuff. We're rebuilding the coop in the next few weeks and we're considering reinforcing the fencing for the daytime predators. We bought heritage breeds and now that we're chicken raising experts, we're done testing the boundaries of what's necessary versus hypervigilance versus old wives' tales. We know how we want to raise our chickens.

Sometime this week our new (third) batch of day old chicks will come in the mail.  Jeremiah and I did inventory and cleaning and made a shopping list for them, preparing for our new babies. I wonder what they'll look like? I hope they take after me!