EIGHT

She couldn't resist a quick race around the front yard as Elsa.

2021 week eight

We got snow in Texas. It seems a bit of an understatement. The snow also brought suspiciously uneven power blackouts, tons of water damage from broken pipes (luckily not at our house) and several deaths. It was quite the winter weather "event" as city officials are calling it. 

Twice a day we had to go thaw the chickens water dish after their main bucket froze solid. This is a three inch layer of ice that came out of their bucket one morning. We got one of these for four days straight. 

We all had to take some walks to ward off the cabin fever, but it was quite the event in itself getting dressed for -15 wind chill walk. The air has never been so dry in Texas. We were all balls of static electricity and dried out nasal passages.

V and T took every opportunity to lay in or crawl through the snow.

We only managed one baby snowman because the snow was just too dry and cold. It wouldn't compact. 

But it did make excellent ice cream. 

We even let Salem out to play with his friend Roscoe for a bit. 

Practicing spelling on the icy windows.

The only place to warm up.

Obligatory candlelight dinners.

The power at our house would come on for 15-45 minutes and go off again for a few hours. It was enough to keep a steady supply of hot water, a hot oven, and a warm enough house for a couple days. But on Tuesday the power went off at 11 am. We dealt with it until the next morning when it still hadn't come on. Matt wanted to stay home to keep an eye on pipes and water dripping, and to heat the house in the event that the power did come on. He took the kids and me and Funyun and the incubating chicken eggs to his parents house who never lost power. The power didn't come back on at our house until 27 hours had passed. It never turned off again though. And we went home Thursday morning. 

We had to put Funyun in our jackets to warm him up.

The kids didn't mind being at Grandma's house one bit. Theo, however, still needs to learn that under every circumstance it is rude to wake up at 5:30am at someone else's house. Or really at your own house even.

The pure excitement when the first chick started to hatch.

We lost the first chick that hatched due to our power being out, but Grandma's house was warm enough for 7 chicks to hatch.

When we got them home, four more hatched. And there was one that just couldn't get out of her shell. After two days of her trying, I helped her crack out. She is very very small though and we're not sure she's going to make it. 

But the baby chicks brought so much joy to our house during this uneasy week.

Salem, does not share in our joy and he wants them so badly. He has to be locked in our room all night where he just paces around and pesters our faces in our slep.

Theo claims this is an ice mountain, but he clearly made an ice chicken from frozen chicken water cylinders. 

Our big hens didn't venture out until the weather got up to 20 degrees. Then they were so cute pecking around the yard. We threw out a ton of bird seed this week for the poor cold wild birds. And we had so much fun sitting at our window and seeing all the different types of birds that would come to eat.

By Saturday most of the snow was gone.

And by Sunday we were running sleeveless around a park.

Quotes

Theodore

"Papa is under-arresting me!"

When Theo heard me get up to go to the bathroom (definitely NOT to wake up for the day) at 5:30am, "Mama, I'm so sorry I missed the first part of you waking up!" 

A song Theo made up, "I have a cat. His name is Salem. He is the best cat ever. I have a dog (No you definitely don't) and you have a cat and we are both best buddies!"

Veronica

"Look! Someone drew an interesting shape in the snow." It was definitely a penis...

"Cat's don't marry. A boy cat just sticks his part in a girl cat and then they never see each other again." V explaining the facts to Theo...