Operation Backyard Chickens

We are very close to embarking on the adventure of owning our own backyard chickens. I've spent portions of the past few weekends converting Zeke's doghouse (which he never used) into a coop and fencing off a portion of my yard into a chicken run. By this time next week we'll be the proud owners of four Rhode Island Reds. Why are we doing this you ask?

- We already spend nearly $4 on a dozen free-range, organic eggs each time we grocery shop. Why not just produce the eggs ourselves in an environment where we know that the chickens are being fed and raised naturally?
- It will be a good experience for the kids to help raise the chickens
- I've always wanted to give it a try

Now, all that being said, there is a chance that our dog will use his Houdini-like abilities to break into the Fort Knox-like structure I've created and help himself to our flock. Our dog is about the gentlest thing ever, but he is by nature a hunter, and he has killed mice and birds before. If that happens and he manages to serve himself up a chicken dinner, I'll just chalk this up to a fairly expensive and time consuming failed experiment. Certainly wouldn't be the first time it happened (and definitely wouldn't be the last!).

Here are a few pictures of the coop and run.

Our little kicker

This is Sam's first year of organized sports (not counting the ballet class she took last fall) and she is just absolutely adorable out there on the field. Her team is the Thunder Tigers and they play little 3-on-3 games. I love this first photo because you can really tell that Sam did her own hair before the game and she managed to get about three little ponytails sprouting out of her head. It was too cute.

Check out this typo!

My love/fascination for public typos has been well documented on this forum (see here and here and here). But this one may take the cake. By way of background...the people up here in Seattle are all atwitter over the fact that the Washington Huskies have a decent football team for the first time in about the last decade or so. And as a result of a close loss to LSU and a HUGE win over USC this past Saturday, the Dawgs have found themselves actually ranked among the top 25 football teams in the country. But because it is such a rarity for the Huskies to actually be ranked, check out what one online sports site did (please click to enlarge!):




Special thanks to the Shonk for tipping me off to this!

Blogging from a new computer

I think I blogged awhile back about how our 4Runner was broken into. Well, as a result, I am now blogging on a new MacBook Pro computer. I haven't fully explored all of the features of this awesome computer but it was definitely love at first...sight/touch/feel. This is a great computer.

Goodbye old friend

Well, he/she/it is finally gone. After being an integral part of our family since 2001, our old Volkswagen Jetta has finally flown the coop. Thanks to the amazing Craigslist, I was able to find someone who would take the Jetta off our hands for a little more than $1000. At the end of its time with me, the Jetta had over 195,000 miles and had lots of weird little quirks: the sunroof wouldn't enter, the fuse for the wiper blades would frequently blow, there was a huge hole in the dash as a result of a break-in, and the front passenger seat slid back and forth all the time. But nonetheless, the Jetta was a great car for and and very reliable to the end. We put a lot of miles on that car; while I'm not exactly sorry to see it go, we definitely have a lot of memories that we experienced with that car.

Tigard High Class of 1999 Reunion

I had a really great time at my 10 year high school reunion. It was tons of fun to reconnect with friends that I hadn't seen for a decade (just saying that makes me feel old)! It was interesting to hear where life has taken everyone and remember the fun times that we had back at good 'ol THS.

Family Pictures - August 2009

We were fortunate enough to have some family photos taken by the very talented Marcy Dorschel. Take a look!