More rain...

Yet another storm blows in from the south. The storm brought 1.65 inches of rain between Friday afternoon and Saturday night. Enough already! :)





Job 36:27-28 "For He draws up the drops of water, they distill rain from the mist, which the clouds pour down, they drip on man abundantly."

Job 5:10 "He gives rain on the earth, and sends water on the fields, ..."

Job 37:5-6 "God thunders with His voice wonderously, doing great things which we cannot comprehend. For to the snow He says 'Fall on the earth,' and to the downpour He says, 'Be strong.'

Blessings!
P.S. Check out the slideshow I added to the right, it has all my favorite pictures of flowers that I have taken over the years.

The end of basketball season

Wyatt's basketball team, the Trinity Lutheran Eagles, have finished their season. Last night was their last game. This was the most exciting game ever! Our team was down 3 people but came out playing hard and never let up the whole game. It seemed like they were all possessed by the singular goal of getting a win under their belt. They WON! The whole team and all the parents were so excited! Wyatt had a best game ever and scored 17 points and made 5 of his 7 free throws (which he has been practicing)! He had lots of good rebounds and steals and good passes to team mates. The smiles on the boy's faces were priceless! The final score was 35 - 33.

Wyatt has played for the Eagles for 2 years and never have they had a winning game. They have learned to persevere, play hard and encourage each other in the face of the reality that they will lose because honestly, they simply have been no match for the other teams in the league. Trinity Lutheran School is so small compared to the others they just don't have a lot of boys to even make up a team. But the boys enjoyed playing together and always had a super attitude. I am especially proud of Wyatt for how he handled the whole season. He practiced hard not only in practice but at home he was constantly practicing at home in the driveway. He really applied himself to improving his skills and it showed in his games. He improved in his ball control and shooting form. He also was super strong on rebounding. He is hoping to get involved in a team to keep playing in the summer.

So the season ends with a well deserved win for a group of boys that has had enough experience in how to handle losses!

Yay Eagles!

Basketball season winds down

Wyatt's basketball season with his school team will be over tomorrow. The boys had fun playing and kept trying hard with a pretty good attitude for losing every game. Wyatt has worked hard and improved his skills throughout the last couple of months and I am very proud of him for that! He would like to find some basketball camps to attend this summer, we will see what we can find. Here are some pictures I got at the last game I was at. Wyatt is #22.
Yay Eagles!
Blessings!

The Little Things

It seems that lately life is so busy. There is no time to take for yourself. Deliver the kids to school, go grocery shopping, get home, put them away, straighten the house, throw in a load of laundry, pile some clean laundry on the bed to be folded at some unknown future time, put away clean dishes so you can put in more dirty ones, find tax papers (it is almost tax time), check which bills absolutely have to be paid, get them ready to mail, is it already time to go back to town and get the kids? Then after scool it is dentist appointments, basketball practice and games, scool projects and homework. Factor in driving time and the day can get pretty busy(and I am a stay home Mom, working Mom's have even more difficulty).
I have found my quiet times as I drive back and forth, listening to music or just being quiet, reflecting on my life and where it is going and what I'm doing. Am I forgetting, in all this business the truly important things? To love my children and my husband, to make the time to talk with them and see how things are in school or at work. To listen and encourage them with what they are doing? Am I making time for myself, to rest and not lose sight of some sanity?
I changed the picture on the header to a frazzled hen in the middle of her moult. Many times I feel like that! Instead of a "bad hair" day I will call it a "bad feather" day! Sometimes I get to feeling like no one notices or even cares about all the things I try to have clean and done when the family gets home, does anyone even notice at all I wonder? What a pity party, right?
A couple of days ago I set aside chores I should have been doing and took my dogs on a long walk. I needed some air and the morning was cool, crisp and beautiful. On that walk God taught me a lesson on the little things. I took notice of a spider web spun on some weeds, the sun came out through the mist and lit up thousands of dew drops on the web. They sparkled like jewels. I was on my knees in the wet weeds looking at the wonder in front of me, then I looked up and saw the whole hillside was full of sparkling webs. It was beautiful! Then I looked closer to the ground and saw tiny Lupine sprouts covered with dew. As I peered down into the amazing tiny part of this world I could smell the damp ground. I could feel the cold wetness of the dew soaking my shoes through to my socks, my pants were soaked and my elbows I was resting on sunk into the wet ground. It seemed that in that moment God asked me, "Do you notice or even care about the little things I do each day?" In my mind I felt God reminding me not to lose sight of the little things He does for me, His beauty is all around us. Let's not forget to look, take a breath and say "thanks God" I needed that!
Romans 1:20 says:"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
Blessings!

Time to hatch!

It is time again to hatch new chicks! I love doing this and usually hatch at least one batch each year. I have never gotten tired of the anticipation of the little peepers, watching the hatching and playing with the cute and fluffy chicks.

I have a lot of hens that also are good setting hens and go broody and raise a few chicks of there own. The picture at the top of the blog is one of those hens and her little chick from a couple of years ago. I don't keep them all; I sell most of them or give them away. I do keep some to replace the older hens in my flock.

This year I thought I would keep track of the process with photos and then try to video the hatching and post updates as I go along.

I have a new Little Giant incubator this year because when I got my old ones out to clean off and fire up they were all chewed up my mice. It was no big loss, the old incubators had lasted a long, long time and I welcomed the excuse to get a new on. The Little Giant styrofoam incubators work just fine for the hobbyist and are easy to use. This time I splurged and got one with a circulation fan to keep a more even temperature over the eggs.

I am so looking forward to these chicks! I got a new rooster a few months ago in preperation for this Spring. He is an Araucana. I named him Tiny (he is huge!). He is a very beautiful rooster but has been getting an attitude lately. I will post a small picture of him. I hope he has been getting along well with the hens.

After about 10 days into the incubation I can candle the eggs and see how many are fertile and throw out the bad ones. I have set 40 eggs and today Feb.10th is the first full day of incubation. The hatch date should be March 2nd.

I will keep you posted!
Blessings!

Go Eagles!

My son is playing basketball now for his school. The school, Trinity Lutheran School, in Paso Robles, California is a great little family oriented, Christ centered school but when it comes to athletics, they aren't so good. Well, what can you expect from a small school that only has 3 8th grade boys! The team is made up mainly of 6th and 7th graders. Wyatt, my son, is a 7th grader. They have fun together and enjoy the game but sadly will probably lose all their games. Learning how to deal with defeat is a valuable lesson for a young man but I sure think that it would be nice to see them win once!
Wyatt has improved his B-ball skills a lot since last year and scores a lot of the points for the team. I enjoy watching him play. My husband and I will be there to cheer him on and who knows, maybe they will pull out a surprise win!
Blessings!