Family Day at the Denver Museum

Today we went up to Denver to the museum, they are having a snake and lizard exhibit and Aleric loves reptiles so we just had to go. My Aunt lives up in Wyoming so she and her husband met us in Denver to spend the day with us. We had a great time! Aleric ran around like crazy and we had lunch together after the museum. Hopefully we be able to get together soon!

Here are some pictures from the day!

Aleric as a moose!

Aleric touching dinosaur tracks

Aleric and Chris looking at dinosaurs:

Aleric and His Auntie Julie reading information about fossils:

Aleric and his Auntie Julie and Uncle Joe on the Sky Deck overlooking Denver (Aleric hates the wind)

We had such a good time, hopefully we can do it again sometime!

Yard Work: Project Trees

Last week the weather was nice, the wind was for once not blowing and with temperatures in the 70's and 80's I was not about to sit inside all day so I went outside and gathered up lots and lots of rocks and made rings around my trees with them. They went from this:

To this:

(I have 6 trees that I did but really who wants to see 12 pictures of trees??)

I have added mulch to them to help them retain water better, last year we used straw and while it did help a lot and kept the mouisture in, it looked crappy and blew away. I hope to get my other trees soon so I can keep digging holes and planting them.

And a little ladybug that I was SOOO excited to see!!

First Run

Ok so maybe it isn't my *first* run but today was my first run outside in a long time. I am seriously out of shape. I am using the mapmyrun app on my phone and the stats suck, I went 1.40 miles in 22 minutes, Now in my defense I had to walk more than I wanted to due to my new neighbors dogs trying to start shit with me and Orion, and I had to stop at the half way point to try to get my hydration pack to work and after a few minutes of trying it still would not work so I gave up. Now I feel like a weakling because I felt that I needed to carry a hydration pack on a 1.4 mile run but it was almost 80 degrees outside AND I am so out of shape. I felt so horrible that I couldn't even run 1.4 miles, I had to stop and walk for a bit. But this being the first real run of the season I know I will improve a lot on my skills with some time. I have not ran at ALL in over a month due to being sick and the fact that the treadmill is buried under so much shit that needs to be put in storage. Ok anyway I was just seriously excited to run outside and had to share, no pictures today but with any luck I will be going again tomorrow and the next day, and the next day and the next day :-)....

Chicken Yard Reconstruction

Well spring is here, and that means I will be outside a lot more than I care to be in the winter time. The grass is starting to grow and soon the bugs will be out in force, my trees will be budding new leaves and I will be off to dig up more trees from my friend Eds house. We also ordered 20 trees from the Arbor Day Foundation so I am awaiting them to show up to plant. And I also have some peach trees and apple trees that I have started from seed that will hopefully be ready to plant outside sometime this year. Thinking about all these trees makes me want to get outside and plant my garden also but in order to plant my garden this year I needed to move the chickens to the other side of the yard, so we did a complete chicken yard reconstruction today. We moved out thousands of tumble weeds (I hate hate HATE tumbleweeds), we removed and replaced all the support boards for the fences and re hung all the fence and of course had to move the "Chicken play things" I had made out of pallets. And I figured while we moved the things we would create some new things for them to play with. It was a long day but it was worth it and I LOVE being outside in the sun. So anyway now for pictures!

They were on the pen on the far right that is overfull of tumble weeds, all 3 pens were like this, in fact there were so many tumbleweeds we found over 20 eggs that were lost and hidden in the weeds so these will become dog food eggs:

This is the new pen on the left:

Closer up picture of the new pen, with my new "Chicken playground toys":

The baby gate pen attached to the dog house is the isolation pen for Miss Chicken Bird who was attacked and partially eaten alive by Dogitar (she is recovering very nicely):

And this is a picture of all my chickens and I think the ducks are somewhere in here also:

And thats todays work, I had more things planned to do today but this was really important and it really needed to be done so we got it done today and the rest can hopefully get done over the next week!

Oh My Gosh

I can not believe its already March. I have not got done half the things I wanted to do so far this year. I have managed to read almost 2 books this year, and I have been doing a small bit of crafting but not anywhere near the amount I should have done so far. Aleric is now fully potty trained and I am SO happy! I really thought he would be in diapers forever but he is doing great and has not had an accident in weeks! I have like 5 quilts that need to be done, they are in the stages of started, not started and still in my head. I seem to just keep adding things to my plate when I really don't have much more room, but I feel they are all important things that need to be done. I am NOT a good housekeeper, I really fail at keeping the house in perfect working order but I am trying hard to work on getting the house in order. I am doing it just in time because our good friends just moved in with us from Salida and I am so happy to have them staying with us. I also am going to hopefully do some craft shows with my good friend Martha this year and hopefully sell my wares. I will be trying to get on that sewing along with the quilts previously mentioned. And as if that is not enough I just got clearance from my amazing husband to sign up for the Warrior Dash again this year. I have already booked the hotel and am signed up for the race all I gotta do is get running and hopefully I will be able to beat my time from last year. It was seriously the funnest day of my life and I cant imagine not doing it every year from here on out. Also I saw a really awesome video on the chive today about a girl and her hula hoop. Its amazing, you should check it out so I am going to either order one or make my own and hopefully start hooping to build up some long lost core muscles from when I was pregnant with Aleric. So this is why I have not been blogging for a while, and I have been sick for the better part of the last month and seem to have just got back a cold AGAIN so hopefully I am on the mend soon and can start running regularly and crafting regularly, and just generally get back on schedule and back to life.