Chicken Tragedy

See this cute (horrid, evil) little opossum?

 

 

Well, he's been living under the henhouse for about the past week, feasting on chicken every night.

 

Every morning we have been going out to the coop only to find another decapitated bird. Every morning I madly plugged up every hole I could find and put wire over every possible place a creature could enter. But every night he scratched his way in again.

 

We finally caught him in the hav-a-hart trap last night (after he got yet another chicken). Let's just say, I didn't have a heart. This little opossum is no more.

 

So we've gone from seven chickens down to two. I bought eggs at the grocery store today. I don't even remember the last time I had to do that. We'll get new chicks in the spring, and should have fresh eggs again oh, about this time next year.

R.I.P. Bald Eagle, Butter, and Foghorn.

 

Lucy's Mystery Party

The girls had so much fun last year at Lucy's mystery party they wanted to do the very same thing again this year. Luckily, I was able to find another Nancy Drew-esque, non-murder mystery, this one about a diamond heist. But Lucy insisted that we had to start this year's party exactly as we did last year's, with a few rounds of Cheeto-head.

 

Shower caps on . . .

 

Plenty of shaving cream . . .

Throwing Cheetos to see how many will stick.

 

After the Cheetos were gone and the girls had worked out all their energy on the trampoline, they came inside to work out the mystery.

 

Sleuth kits.

 

Diamond rings, as part of jewelry store decorations.

 

Working out the clues.

 

Aaaaaand, this is the point where I had to put down my camera and supervise the clues and the scavenger hunt and dinner and cake and the after-dark flashlight search through the field for the missing diamond.

 

We had a "late night" party (I'm not yet ready for a sleepover, especially since Lucy has so many best friends) and ended with popcorn and treats and The Pink Panther movie. I now have a year to recover before we do this again.

Pierced Ears!

My sweet little daughter turned 10 yesterday. Ten years old! I can't believe it. And she's a fifth grader, so this is the last year I get to make her special birthday cookies for her class. She will be way too cool for this next year in middle school.

 

The thing she wanted more than anything was pierced ears. I have been reluctant to let her, because I got my ears pierced by a teenager at a mall when I was a kid and it was miserable. They were uneven, and kept getting infected, and I finally let the holes grow back together. I wanted Lucy to have a better experience but there aren't a lot of options in central Vermont. I was on the verge of driving several hours to a tattoo/piercing parlor that was willing to take kids. But then we heard of a salon not too far away, with a very experienced ear piercer, and my mom offered to pay for it as a birthday present.



 

It seemed pretty easy and straightforward -- so I got mine done as well. The woman said she'd done thousands of ear piercings but never did a mother-daughter duo before.