GRANDKIDS

I Know it has been a long time since my last blog, and I won't bore you with excuses. So let me just start fresh.  We have been watching our grandson Owen for the last couple of weeks while mom and dad are at work.  I try to be helpful to my wife who does about 99.9% of the work.  And I just hang around being her go-fer. I go fer diapers, bottles, clothes and all of the other baby  paraphenalia.  Oh, I sometimes hold him and feed him and every now and then get to rock him to sleep.  But he is definately Grandmas Boy.  For now anyway.

  

I will get my chance later.  But for now he is a squirmmy little butterball (that grandma just adores), and that makes it a challenge to get a photo of those special moments.

Oh, soooo sleepy.......

Now I didn't forget the other two....

They were here on Monday and stayed the night.  They got to see, pet and feed Papa's pet chicken.

Goldie is a very special hen. The only chicken that I have ever raised that likes to be held and petted.

And they got to see my new bunnies.

This is 0-2.   WHY you ask?  Because 0-1 was already taken (Owen). And it's cute and cuddley, and chubby too!!!  So wifey named it 0-2.

These are the twins, they are about 10 days younger than 0-2.

While they were enjoying the pleasant weather in the back yard, my little chicken chaser Ethan, would not take either his father's or my advice not to chase the hens or tease the roosters.  Both of the children have had run-ins with my Big....Mean............

"MR. ROOSTER" .   Sadly Ethan ended up chaing a hen he thought was Goldie into the chicken run.  Mr. Rooster came running to the commotion and scratched Ethan in the back of the leg.  Scaring the daylights out of him, but not stopping him from shaking his fists at the mean old rooster.

He had another close call as his parents were leaving, but he managed to out run him.

Now he was terrified of Mr. Rooster and stayed close to Grandma or me!

Grandma and I were taking care of the rabbits and Aden kept an eye out for that "Bad Chicken" and both of them were hiding behind me!

Well somehow that SLY old bird made an end run behind the chicken coop and snuck up an us from behind!!!

Aden pushed her brother behind her and stood between Mr. Rooster and his intended victom. She got spurred in the leg for her bravery.   

I kicked Mr. Rooster in the head a few times to stop his attacks, and then had to back him down and chase him away, just to remind him just WHO was boss on this farm.

Aden was crying and wanted to know why he attacked her, she sobbed "I didn't do anything to HIM".

All of a sudden Goldie came right up to her and made a few clucking sounds.  I told Aden that Goldie was very concerned about her,  and she quieted down while petting the sympathetic hen.

The next day, the kids were walking around the yard with grandma while I was at the chiropractors, and spotted this....

an Eastern Milk Snake.  It was about a foot long and was probably a young adult as they only reach about 20 inches long.  They are rare in this area, and I had never seen one in the wild before.  It had gotten from the grass in the yard into the thorny flowering shrubs which are also full of raspberry bushes. And they were trying to catch it to show me.

Now I know this may not sound like such a big deal.  But my wife is about as afraid of snakes as anyone can be.  And for her to be trying to catch this little beast who was not only striking at them but vibrating its tail like a rattler is  truely amazing.  She had half of her body stuck into those thorny shrubs with a plastic bucket and a stick and was doing her best to get the snake into the bucket, with the two kids hollering encouragement as Dan and I pulled into the driveway.  I tried my best but the little guy got into the base of a large clump of shrubs and got away under the mulchand debris.  So we came into the house and looked it up online and had sort of a snake study lesson going on.

All in all, it was quite an exciting couple of days, for all of us.