Don't Mess with Penny Henny

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!!

Well it happened. It finally happened. I was starting to wonder if perhaps Jesus, the most famous chicken in the coup, was a girl or a boy! But she laid an egg. Yes, you heard it here first. She LAID AN EGG!! A little egg, mind you, but an egg just the same. A small white egg. Do you think I could sell it on ebay for a lot of money? How many eggs do you think have been laid out of chickens named Jesus? I am willing to bet a large sum of money this is a rare specimen indeed! In addition to Jesus, some of the other girls are warming up their feathers by spending time sitting on the nests and laying some eggs also as the days grow longer. I had forgotten how much I missed collecting eggs every day. We get 2-3 a day now and it will grow to 6-8 as summer arrives. I plan on adding more hens and chicks to the flock this spring.

Both of my cousins have added new babies to their families in the past month. My cousin, Katy, in Colorado, had a little girl named Allison Taylor to join another sister named Emily. Her brother/my cousin Jeff and his wife Kim, living in Texas, had a little boy on Valentine's Day that they named Benjamin Robert who will join his other brother Matthew. You know what's funny, well at least to me, is all the cousins in our family have 2 kids and they are all the same sex. My sister has two boys, I have two girls, my cousin Katy has 2 girls and now my cousin Jeff has two boys. I am always happy to hear about now additions to our family.

We have someone living in our guest house. He was Doug's medical assistant and we are all enjoying his company. It is especially nice for Doug to have another guy at here at Camp Estrogen. They can do guy things like ride dirt bikes and play Need for Speed on the Wii. Boys will be boys.

Doug's aunt, Karen, was featured on the front page on our local paper to celebrate her contribution to our community by folding origami cranes for people to help brighten their days. She has given a number to our hospital and they have hung them and have said they help the children when they are having procedures done and they can focus on the crane instead of the needles. Below is one of the pictures they used in their article. Congrats Karen!

That is all friends.

Snow Moon

What is it with my mild obsession with the name of the full moon each month? I don't know. Perhaps I have a suppressed fascination with vampires. Anyway, today is the snow moon. I look up the meanings on the farmers almanac and this is what they have to report about this months glory. February: Since the heaviest snow usually falls during this month, native tribes of the north and east most often called February's full Moon the Full Snow Moon. Some tribes also referred to this Moon as the Full Hunger Moon, since harsh weather conditions in their areas made hunting very difficult. I know it is going to be beautiful and we will celebrate it by joining my mother in law, Betty, for her birthday celebration. My mother in law, I might add, defies time. She simply doesn't age! I thank God my girls genetic make up seems to weigh heavily on the Dunham side.

Yesterday was a busy day and it was fun to have my sister, Lisa, here. Yes, I do have a sister. Please don't ever EVER tell her "Oh, I didn't know Stacey had a sister!" But anyway, she came out and spent some time with me. She is going back to school and is a stellar student so I appreciated the fact that she took time away from her studies so we could swap meat. Yep, that's what we did. We swapped meat. She traded some of their locally grown hamburger for some of my locally grown pork so her husband could make some summer sausage. He has recently developed a hobby of making stuffed sausage. After we swapped meat, she joined me in an afternoon of making pepper jelly and the results were SO worth it. I love love love the pepper jelly over some cream cheese spread on some crackers. It is so tasty!!

And with that friends, I must go. I have used up my allotted 10 minutes of time today that is not devoted to feeding, cleaning, organizing, picking up, moving, feeding, changing, washing and whatever else I do. Do you think I am kidding?

Back on Track

I wanted to share a few pictures from recent events. The girls had such a good time (along with their parents) at the Portland zoo and Cannon Beach. It was cold at the zoo but spirits were still high. Hadley was so excited to see zebras and Kate liked the giraffe the best. A summer trip to the zoo is a must for this year.

I think I mentioned in the earlier post that my grandpa celebrated his 91st birthday this week. He had a really nice party at the Country Club for friends and family. Someone was kind enough to snap this picture of me and my mom and sister, Lisa.

Saturday was a beautiful winter day on the farm. Doug Lowe came and joined Doug and I for some trap shooting. I can't wait to do some more shooting soon, it was fun!


Saturday night we went to the Evening of Elegance which was a fancy benefit dinner for the local Hospice, an organization Doug supports strongly. It was a special event for sure, we sat at a table with Doug's nurse, Janet and her husband who is on the board for Odd Fellows. After bidding in the silent auction and enjoying some of the valley's BEST wines, we sat down to a four course meal while the live auction took place. You could tell by the generosity of donations this is something others felt passionate about also. As an early Valentine's Day present Doug surprised me by bidding (and winning) a trio of hand made tribal baskets. :)

I am glad Saturday was so beautiful because today is that dreary freezing fog out here and a good day to sit inside and reflect on life, which I might add, is only possible to do because Betty kept the girls overnight.

One Month Closer to Spring

I have taken quite a little break from the blog. I apologize for the vacation. When I am gone so long then there are so many things I feel like I need to report but so little time to write it all down. I will give you the highlights.

* My parents have returned from their trip to Sedona, Arizona. Their horses had lived with us while they were gone and were happy to see them return. They are currently in the process of trying to buy a home in Goodyear. Hopefully that will work for them.

* We had to say good bye to a long long time friend, our 19 year old cat named Haley. She was a fun cat who got us through our college years and made all the moves through our life.

* We took a trip to Portland and Cannon Beach last weekend. It was the first time the girls had been to the coast and I tried to prepare them by explaining several times that this was NOT going to be like Hawaii. The weather ended up being beautiful and mild. They didn't seem to be bothered by the cooler temps, they loved playing on the beach and making sand castles. We had a really nice room right on the water. Downtown was 2 blocks away and it was an easy walk. The food was great, I love seafood and indulged in my favorite....oysters.

* While in Portland we made a trip to Lloyd's Center so Hadley and Kate could see the ice skaters. Hadley especially is infatuated with the beauty of ice skating. On Friday everyone joined me on a trip to Powell's bookstore. I love love love that place!! Oh my gosh! However, as soon as we got inside Hadley pointed and said "MAMA, LOOK!" Great. A little person. Midget. I don't know what the pc thing is to call him but I was thoroughly embarrassed. Hadley didn't mean any harm, she just doesn't get to see that kind of variety in people on the farm. And then we took the girls to the zoo, it was surprisingly fun considering the cold temps. I will share pictures later. Before we headed out of town we took Doug to the Triumph motorcycle dealership in Beaverton and drooled over some high dollar street bikes.

And with the kids bouncing off the wall and "playing" the piano I will take my cue that I need to finalize this post and look forward to staying on top of the farm life in blog form from here on out.
* My grandpa celebrated his 91st birthday at the Country Club on Wednesday with about 50 friends and family members. It was so fun to see all of their friends and everyone enjoyed a slide show of his life and family. My grandparents are amazing people.

That should pretty much bring you up to speed of the high lights. Forgive me if I forgot something.

Feelings of Accomplishment

Don't you love it when you get something done...something that you can see and shows for your effort? I have had feelings of ambition in the last week or two and have been wanting to put some different flooring in our laundry room for quite some time so I thought this would be a good place to direct my energy. It was an old concrete floor that was always cold and it needed to be repainted so I just picked up a few boxes of those stick down tiles from Home Depot and away we went! We, meaning me and myself. It feels good to have a mini face lift in the laundry room and now I am looking at the back entry way and our upstairs bathroom. I love love love the look of real tile but I realize my skills are not what they should be to take on such an advanced project so I will just be happy with what I have got right now.

The second photo also gives you a glimpse of the small princess dress wardrobe that the girls share. Who'd a thunk I would have two little girls that would love to dress up?? I swear to you, I never even owned a Barbie doll! But back the floor...looks good huh??

And with these exceptionally warm days I spent a good bit of time cleaning out my car and cleaning off the patio and raking wayward leaves and just enjoying being outside. It was 60 today and I was outside working in a tank top. Isn't that crazy? However, Kate can always top me when it comes to crazy. She was "helping" me hose off the welcome mat and next thing you know she is giving herself a shower under the hose and it soaking wet. It took quite awhile before she could be convinced it wasn't quite warm enough for such thing.

No matter how much I love to cook I never seem to learn that I really need to READ THE DIRECTIONS THOROUGHLY!! I had planned on preparing the leg of lamb last night for dinner but than I actually started reading through the directions and realized I needed to a) butterfly the meat and b) marinate it for 24 hours. Ok, I had to get my dear, extremely talented friend Brooke Maloney on the horn right away. What the heck is a butterflied leg of lamb?? She has answered COUNTLESS cooking questions for me in the past and I know there will be just as many in our future. She is AMAZING! She is a fantastic cook, really. I want her to move to Walla Walla and knock the socks of the wine community with her cooking. But that's kind of off topic isn't it?? The point is, my leg of lamb is wallowing in olive oil, garlic, lemon, rosemary and other tasty herbs just waiting for me to grill it up tonight.

That's all friends. Gotta get out and feed the horses before the sunsets.

Wolf Moon

Did you see it? Wasn't it amazing? Oh, I shuttered as I watched it crawl up over the Blue Mountains last night to show it's intense beauty. What was it?? The wolf moon! The wolf moon is the name of the January full moon named for the hungry winter wolf packs howling at the village edge of the Native Americans. Oh how I love a full moon.

And that, friends, is the most exciting thing I have to report...isn't that great? No flooding. However, all the flooding on the coast brings back vivid memories of the floods we endured when we lived right next to the Pilchuck Rive in Snohomish where we lived when Doug was in medical school at University of Washington. And the lay night drives his parents made to help us gather our belongings and stay with us to boast morale when we worried that all of our material things would float away. Thank God for higher ground!!

The sun is actually shining right now and the weather is mild. I love it. It is a shot in the arm. My parents are continuing to enjoy a restful and fun month in Sedona Arizona. It is great they get away every year at this time so they can enjoy the better things in life.

I have been cooking up some great stuff here. We had a really yummy chicken stir fry recipe from www.thepionnerwoman.com . A round steak from this years deer was also on the menu, a recipe also modified from her website. Tonight we are going to have a leg of lamb from a local farm. I haven't had lamb in a million years and I don't recall ever having leg of lamb so this should be interesting. Yesterday I made a fresh salsa when my sister and nephew came to visit. I think we knocked back most of the salsa and chips before the sunset. I am in the mood to COOK! Too bad I am not in the mood to EXERCISE!!

Ok, that's all. Gotta get back to running this joint. They are lost without me.