The coop is done!

We finally had nice enough weather that I was able to finish painting the chicken coop.





The chickens will be moving out there sometime in the next few days. It will be so nice to get them out of the living room! They will still have to have the brooder lamps on for a few more weeks but at least I won't have to listen to them cheeping all night long. Our next project will be finishing the attached run.

Need a laugh?

I've been looking through ads of horses and came across this one.

Someone has a great sense of humor.

Ginger

We've had a really terrible day.

We got up early this morning to get the horses loaded for gymkhana only to find Ginger, Lorna's older horse, was ill. We took her down to the vet in the big city but she didn't make the drive. The vet tried to resuscitate her but it didn't work. Lorna chose to watch the necropsy that was done to determine what was wrong with Ginger. We found out that she had had some major trauma to her neck when she was young, probably running into a fence, which caused her esophagus to become enlarged. Her food was no longer moving into her stomach as it should and everything was making it difficult for her to breathe. It was good to hear that nothing we did caused her death but that still hasn't made it any easier to accept. We spent the afternoon at the gymkhana show just helping out and watching, it was a balm to be around people who understand what we are going through. I'm sure that we will all shed tears frequently over the next few days, Ginger was a very large part of our life.

Church Matters

I have found that it's easier to ignore things when I'm busy. The last few months have been filled with preparations for the chickens, Sweet Adeline stuff, and shuttling Lorna all over the place for horse related stuff. Even though all of our attempts to attend gymkhana shows over the past 4 months have failed we've filled our time with lots of stuff.

The rain and snow over the past 2+ weeks has made everything slow down tremendously. We had planned on having the kids ride in a parade last Saturday but we got 5 inches of snow on Friday making it impossible to get the horse trailer out of the driveway. This is just the way things have been working out.

Due to the slow down Paul and I have had more time to discuss our plans for the future. We have moved around a lot, the longest we have ever lived in one place has been 2.5 years. I think we have been searching for the allusive perfect place. One where Paul has a steady job, we have a great church home, and where we can afford enough land to do what we want. We know we aren't going to ever find such a place so we've been discussing staying here. Paul has the best job he has ever had, the company is wonderful and the opportunity for growth is good. Because this area is sort of rural there is the opportunity to purchase land, not as much as we want but still enough to do something with. The biggest problem we have come up against is the lack of a solid church. It has been easy to ignore the problem because we've filled our time with other things. But as we discuss the probability of actually settling here for a long while I become nervous about the lack of spiritual care. We've tried all the Lutheran churches in an 1.5 hour radius, I even called further out and have found nothing. In fact I've been told there isn't anything like what I'm looking for.

I finally convinced Paul to try the one here in town, after all it's only 15 minutes from our door. The only thing the experience did was make me even more depressed about our options. We knew the church had some quirks but we didn't realize how many. Women leading parts of the service, campfire type songs complete with guitar, open communion, and the children's sermon which was on how we need to try to do what the Bible says because it's all about obedience (no Gospel all Law). All of this really brought home how spoiled we've been in the other places we've lived. I still don't have any idea what we are supposed to do here. I'm not looking for an easy answer but at the same time I don't feel comfortable just ignoring the problem.

Not one of the churches we've visited has had a sermon that contains both Law and Gospel. All but one have women participating in the service and that one has a pastor who doesn't believe communion is important (his own words). When you are faced with driving 1.5 hours the last thing you want to do is settle for a church that has practices that you disagree with. At the same time how do you just give up going to church? Maybe we just aren't looking at things right, but all of our attempts to just go to a church and ignore the stuff we don't agree with have failed. It may be time to try again but I don't know that I can convince myself and the rest of the family to actually do it.

More Chick Pics

The weather here has been so bad that we can't do anything so the only thing we've been doing is watching the chicks. The are growing really quickly so we will be setting up a bigger box for them today.

They love to pile up together when they are sleeping.

Chicks!

We got a call at 6:30 this morning asking us to come pick up our chicks. They arrived in less than 24 hours from when they shipped and all the ones I ordered survived.

Along with the 10 chicks I ordered I also received 12 "packing peanuts". One didn't survive, it looks like it got squished by the others.



We ordered 2 Rhode Island Red, 2 New Hampshire Red, 2 Black Australorp, 2 Buff Orpington, and 2 Delaware. We received Ameraucanas as packing peanuts. I'm kinda hoping that at least one of the peanuts is a pullet since that breed lays green and blue eggs.



The chicks are settled in their temporary home. They are all eating, drinking and making lots of noise. It doesn't look like they will be able to stay in their current tub for more than a few days because of space. Paul brought home some really huge boxes for which I'm really thankful because we received more packing peanuts than I anticipated.

Catching Up

The last few weeks have been filled with horses, horses, and more horses!

Last week we attended a horse expo in Pomona. It was incredible but very tiring. We looked at most of the 300 vendors that were there, attended a few presentations, and just enjoyed the beautiful weather. It was a very long day since it was 3.5 hours from home but well worth the drive.

The training with Sierra is continuing to progress. She is loading in the trailer better and better each time. She is walking and trotting without too many problems but she doesn't want to lope. She's still very young so she has great days and lots of stubborn days. But overall Lorna is very pleased with her progress.

Saturday we took all 3 horses down to the trainer's facilities. While there Lorna exercised 2 other horses since her trainer is recovering from surgery. One of the horses is a new halflinger pony. He's really cute and has been named Malachi in honor of our son.




Training with the pony Lorna's been helping out with has come to a standstill for now. There is some question about whether it will continue or not since he's just not taking to things well. He is really spooky and is not calming down at all. One way or another Lorna will continue working with her trainer helping out with the horses. It's amazing the differences I can see in her over the last month. She has become much more assertive and self-assured. She's thoroughly enjoying the challenges these horses are presenting and actively working towards learning more in order to become a better rider. Watching her interact with her trainer, listening and learning, has been a real joy. And of course my mommy heart just soars when the trainer tells me how great she's doing and how much she enjoys her company!

Besides horse stuff we've been working on the chicken coop. The only thing left on the coop itself is the roof. It will need to be painted soon but since we are expecting a storm to come in tomorrow it will have to wait till next week. The chicks are shipping today and should be arriving sometimes over the next 2 days. I'm really excited. I plan on keeping them in the house for the first few weeks and then they will be moved into the coop.