Happy Birthday Dear Maddie... & Quail!!!

Madelynn Emma Romer is now a whopping 4 years old! When I told her yesterday that she was going to be 4 she said "why?" I replied with, "well, that's how long you have been on the Earth." She said, "that didn't take very long!" Ah, the mind of a 4 year old! Here she is getting ready to blow out her candle...

Nathan, Maddie & Kaylie waiting for mommy to take a picture so Maddie could blow out the candle... Oh, and singing!

I made her cake. I did a 2 tier cake with a princess crown across the edge of the top layer. I made stained glass candy for the "jewels" in the crown. I flavored & colored the candy with kool-aid! it was super yummy. Like jolly ranchers!!!

Here is what the top looked like....

My beautiful family watching Maddie open her presents this morning. Kaylie would always cheeze when no one else was looking, then look away when everyone was smiling! Silly girl!

And last but not least (especially when it comes to numbers!)... The baby quail. At last count we have about 75 babies. There are still more eggs pipping and hatching, so I'm sure it will eventually be more. They are Texas A & M and Jumbo Brown Coturnix quail. Aren't they cute!?!?

OUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday evening while I was peacefully sleeping in my bed I was awoken by a horrible sting on my arm! I knew exactly what it was and began searching through the sheets to find the culprit. When I was unsuccessful I began taking off my PJs just to make sure it wasn't on me! After again being unsuccessful to find it, I left the room to find my husband and inform him that I just got stung by a scorpion in our bed! He searched the sheets and quickly found the little bugger nicely snuggled in the fold of the sheets on my side of the bed. He then called the ER to see if I needed to come in. They said no, not unless I start loosing consciousness or having severe muscle spasms! YIKES!!! He also had to call poison control to make sure I could still BF Danny. They said yes, the venom is a protein and gets broken down in the stomach before it ever gets a chance to have any effect on his body. This is my arm about 36 hours after the sting. It got a little swollen at first, kinda like a mosquito bite, but soon you couldn't tell anything had happened. Oh, except for the fiery hot needles that were from my armpit to the tip of my thumb and index finger! You can see a little red dot in the center of the picture just below my scar.

Here is the scorpion that is held responsible for the attack! Guilty!!! No trial here!!! He/She is an Arizona Bark Scorpion and is the most poisonous scorpion in the world! Great! Why did it have to crawl in bed with me?!?! I was in "severe" pain for about 12-13 hours. After the pain finally wore off I became numb from my armpit to my finger tips! It has gradually gone away and as it does it becomes tingly like when your hand or foot falls asleep. Fun! It is still DEAD (numb) about a 4 inch diameter around the sting site. Me planning his punishment....

What shall be his punishment for viciously attacking me while I was peacefully sleeping in MY bed? Death by beak squad! That's right I fed him to the chickens!

My satisfied customers!!!
"Got any more?" "We'll come inside and search the place for you!"

Another New Adventure!!!!

That, my friends, is what 240 quail eggs look like! You heard me right, I said Quail! I have Rob Ludlow and his website www.backyardchickens.com to thank for this! I am addicted to all the information that is on there! One evening I came across a posting about quail. I thought, what in the world do you do with those? So I did some research. Aparently you can eat their eggs (fried or pickled) and you can eat them! After reading some mouth watering recipes for quail, I decided I wanted to give the little buggers a try. I researched on which ones would work best for me as far as ease of raising and good meat. Coturnix Quail is what I have found and that's what these eggs are going to be, if I'm lucky! I found someone on eBay that was willing to do two types for me. I wanted the jumbo brown and Texas A & M coturnix quail eggs to hatch. The A & Ms are supposed to be all white meat, which is what Brian likes. The Jumbo Browns are all dark, which I like! So, we now have close to 120 eggs of each! Why so many? Well, the person I was getting them from offered to double my order of eggs for just $10 more, so I couldn't pass it up! Most people say that $0.20 per egg is a good deal. Well, I got mine for $0.16! Hopefully it won't be a "you get what you paid for" situation... I set them yesterday, so they should be due to hatch around Sept. 25-27th. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Potty Training has begun...

Well a couple days ago. I decided to have Kaylie sit on the potty while I was getting ready after my shower. She had never gone potty on her little toilet, so I thought maybe letting her sit on there for longer would help her. Sure enough she went pee! She was so excited. The next day I decided to try to see how ready she was. She only went pee on the potty 3 times and had many accidents. Then she kept telling me that it was "too hard, mommy." So, I quit. I learned with Maddie that forcing a kid to potty train makes everyone miserable! No pressure here!! I just kept it fun. I even told her that if she went poop on the potty I would make her cookies. Well, I thought for sure that she would just stop doing it when I didn't ask her anymore. But, to our amazement she went poo in the potty 2 days later all by herself. No one asked her! Then on Sunday, Nathan woke her up and took her in the bathroom with him while he went potty. She went pee again. She ended up going 2 more times before church then pooping and peeing when we got home from church. So today we went and bought our big girl some underwear and I held up my bargain and made her some Chocolate Chip Cookies! Yummy!

Big Girl on the Potty!

Cheese!

Enjoying her well earned cookie!