Date NIGHT!

Bret Eldredge concert and line dancing! My idea of a really fun night:)

The Chicken Coop That Almost Killed Us

 

 

So it was a normal day. We woke up with  a plan to build a coop for the chickens to be housed as they have gotten large fast. The project started well with the whole family helping. Then as we became overheated and tired, the accidents started. I walked out from changing a diaper and stepped straight onto a nail. It went through my shoe. Unfortunately, I knew I hadn't had a tetanus shot in quite some time so I grabbed my shot record only to find it had been 18 years since my last one. (horse ppl should have one every 5 years) The best part was that the nail was laying in old horse manure......ha even better. So I called my Dr who told me I had to come in right away and get a shot. Nate's mad because quite frankly he needed my help, not to burdened with all the kids while I run out for a shot. So he stood telling me I am so accident prone and annoying. I get to the Dr and am waiting for the shot and I get a call from Nate. He says in a weird voice, "Babe, come home right now, I had a bad accident," then hangs up. I feel the color drain from my face not even knowing what happened and run to the nurse telling her I have to leave immediately. She had just finished filling the needle and pounds my left arm. I take the stairs and run FAST to the car. I call him back as I'm rushing through traffic. He tells me he has called an ambulance and he thinks he had cut an artery. I call my mom who lives close and tell her to rush over and get a tourniquet on him. When I arrive the fire trucks were here, and my mom. I rush to see him and he's totally purple, in shock and heart rate only 37 bpm. Shortly after, an ambulance arrives and we all head to the hospital. They ended up having to call in a plastic surgeon to reattach the pieces of tendons that were frayed. Oddly enough they did the entire surgery with him awake, right there in the ER. All's well that ends well though and he does have good use of his hand still. There are some issues with how tight it is and the thumb and middle finger, but they say he will heal well. I hope that's true.

The coop did get finished and the baby chicks do LOVE their new home! Next project, PIGLETS!

 

Yard Sale Finds

 

a $200 bistro set for $40

Brand new for only $15

 

I'm proud of our newfound love of yard sales! We are scoring big time and saving :)

End of school year parties at the park:)

WEeeeeeeee Chickies!!!

 

 

Aren't they just perfect? 30 new chicks all different breeds. 8 layers, 3 roosters and 20 meat chickens. We will be picking up turkeys next week and of course we will eat those for Thanksgiving and Christmas:) We had lost our 3 remaining layers last week to a fox. It came in and slaughtered them all. Farm life has been rough on us lately I tell ya.

New Beginnings

Its been so long since I caught up on blogging.......... Nates mare Quincy died the day before Mothers day from a freak accident. We had went riding and the next morning she was not right. She was sweaty and stiff and thrashing some. We gave her some medication and she looked better so we went fishing as planned. When we got home that evening(my mom checked on her several x during the day and said she looked fine) she was NOT fine at that point. She looked like she had went down shortly before we got there and had thrashed a lot of her mane off. She was in agony. I called vet after vet but being a holiday weekend, we couldn't get ahold of anyone. I left messages for 5 different vets though and we waited for a call back trying to make her comfortable. She passed fairly quickly(within about 15 minutes of us getting home) and a vet finally did call back but it was too late. After telling him what her symptoms were, he was certain she died from oleander poisoning. We went backtracking the trail we had ridden the day before and sure enough there were oleander on the side he was riding her on on the trail. :( Very sad life lesson. One leaf can kill a horse. The oils on your skin can kill you. DO NOT allow your kids or animals near this deadly stuff. So we said our good byes to his beautiful mare. We waited a bit and Nate was finally ready for a new horse. He got this beautiful new girl April. She will need some training but is so far very smart and catching on quick! :)

Some Gardening and Canning

My favorite time of year! Canning salsa, spending long hours outdoors gardening, weeding, mowing, growing, smelling flowers:)

Country Girl

My little country pumpkin BryleeAnne learning to walk:) Go baby Go!

Revamping Space

As a large family we are always finding ways to make our smallish house fit us all nicely. So last week, we had one of the largest kid rooms converted to two smaller kids rooms to give the kids more separation. Here is Everett and Jaxxons new room:) I think it turned out super cute, small, but exactly the right amount of space for them! I will post Kaylas new room pics soon

Poor Kenna

          The last week of school, my little Kindergartner Kenna woke up to a not so ordinary day. She was screaming that she couldn't get out of bed. Kayla(my oldest daughter) heard her and carried her to the couch unbeknownst to my sleeping self. I woke up and saw her in some pain and starting asking her if she had fallen the day before or what she thought it was. She kept saying she hadn't fallen and was hurting so bad that when I tried to pull her PJ bottoms down to check for bruises she screamed in writhing pain. I wasn't too concerned and thought maybe it was terrible growing pains. An hour later she needed to use the bathroom and couldn't even lift her own body up to get there and was begging me to carry her. When I picked her up, I knew this was NOT growing pains and something much worse. She screamed so loudly and tears immediately sprung up. I felt the warmth of her body and knew a fever had set in. I called her pediatrician who thankfully was able to see her pretty quickly. When I got there and he saw how stiff her hip was and the amount of pain along with fever, he told me to rush her to our closest children's hospital ER. I was very frightened at this point because they were concerned about a septic hip(never knew this existed). They took us in right away at the children's hospital despite the ER being completely overloaded. Xray confirmed it was not broken.  In an ultrasound, you could just see the huge pocket of fluid in her hip. They rushed her in to the OR to aspirate fluid. At this point the Dr. let me know that if there fluid was even slightly infected looking that she would undergo emergency surgery to clean out her whole hip joint. By the grace of God, it was the proper color and that didn't happen. We weren't in the clear yet though as they said surgery would still be possible, but we were to wait for lab results which took several hours to come back. Thankfully they were clear and it was deemed a virus that settled in the hip joint. After aspirating the fluid though she was feeling much better and able to gently hobble within an hour of the procedure as she was barely coming to. I am so grateful my baby girl is okay:) She wasn't able to run the last few days of school, but she had fun anyhow!