40 x 40 - 19. Build a Chicken Coop in my Yard

I have always dreamed of having chickens.  When I was in high school we hatched chicks in one of our classes.  When the time came, and no one wanted to take them home, I did.  For a couple of weeks I raised a baby chick in my bedroom.  

Eight years ago I moved out to the country.  It would take those eight years to convince my husband that chickens wouldn't be such a bad idea.  We were absolutely not equipped to bring chickens home.  Then a great opportunity came to get a one-of-a-kind chicken coop made by a group of Oregon Institute of Technology first-year engineering students.  There was no time to wait to make a decision (and it really wasn't my fault that my husband was in the middle of a heated meeting at work when I asked him if I could buy it).  Later my husband would ask me what he had agreed to.  I told him not to worry, but he did need to take the truck down to the Habitat for Humanity Resale Store the next day to pick up our new chicken coop.

Bringing home the coop was just the first step.  We figured that we had about six months before the spring baby chicks showed up at the feed store.  That meant that we would have six months to get everything set up.  We still had to convert the old garden into their pen.  Plus, aside from the coop, we still didn't have anything else.

Then I talked with one of my friends who has been a backyard chicken farmer for years.  She surprised me when she said that the local feed store had fall chicks right now.  I told her that we weren't ready, but she quickly convinced me that if we got chicks now, we would be six months ahead and have eggs in the spring.  

We headed off to the Grange Co-op to pick up everything we would need.

The next day I was back to pick up our chicks!

It was important to me that our other animals be introduced quickly to the chicks.  Knowing that the chicks were in a safe place, I let Mack take a look.  He instantly fell in love!  Every time I open the door he comes running to check on the girls.

The next step was to paint the coop to match the house. 

The girls seemed pretty content with their new home.

The first few days we were checking on the girls constantly.  They are so cute!  Plus, I am pretty sure that one of then doubled in size overnight!

Lae'ula wasn't as impressed as Mack was.

There hasn't been any down time around our house in the past week.  We spent an entire day getting the pen ready. 

And Scott is in the middle of switching out the tin roof with roofing that matches the rest of our out buildings.

We are both happy that we went ahead with getting chicks in the fall.  It's been more of a challenge keeping their coop at a steady temperature but we really will be six months ahead.  Plus, it has pushed us to get everything set up and done.

So now it's time to meet the girls:

We'll be sure to keep checking back with the girls to see how much they change over the next six months.

For People Like Me

Last summer I bought a bike.  Not just any bike.  A "Cruiser" bike!  This bike has three gears and a top speed of 10 miles an hour.  It's not made to go off road, down the front of a mountainside, or through a wooded trail.  It's made to ride on a smooth, paved surface.  It's painted fire engine red with white flowers accents and a white wicker basket on the front.

Shortly after purchasing my bike, we were back at the bike shop to pick up my bell.  I saw a poster for the annual CASA Ride for the Kids.  This is a 50, 75, or 100 mile all road bike ride around the county.  I made mention to Scott that I would like to do this ride.  Without looking up from the register, the guy behind the counter said "that's not for people like you".  People like me?  What exactly are people like me?  Needless to say, I didn't register for the event, and actually spent very little time on my bike.

Flash forward to last weekend.  The community just west of us put together an amazing fundraising event for their community; the first annual Greensprings Mountain Festival.  This was a one-day event with tons of things to do around the Greensprings community.  Scott was interested in going so we researched the list of events and I was so excited to find they were having a Cruiser Bike Poker Run.  What!!!!  A Cruiser Bike Poker Run!!!!  Sign me up! This was definitely for "people like me"!

Our first stop though was at the Greensprings Fire Department fundraiser breakfast.  

Then we met up with the rest our group.  After deciding on the rules of the poker run, we were off and riding.  There was quite a hodgepodge of bikes.  Several cruiser bikes, a tricycle, and even some mountain bikes.  See, us "cruiser" people don't judge.  We didn't care what type of bike you showed up with.  Everyone was welcome.

We rode for a while before finding our first green bag at our first stop.

If you don't know what a poker run is, it's where you ride around to five different spots.  At each spot you randomly pick a card (and a treat) out of a green bag.  At the finish line, the person with the best poker hand based on the cards they have drawn wins.

My first card was a queen.  Off to a good start!

Another thing about "cruiser" people like me, we are just out for a good time.  We did play the game right, but nobody really cared if they won.  They were just out enjoying the absolutely beautiful nine mile ride around Hyatt Lake.  "Cruiser" people have fun names, like our leader "Fish".  "Cruiser" people come from all over.  Some just happened to be driving by on their way home from Burning Man and saw a "Cruiser" bike ride.

Thankfully there were signs all along the way so that we didn't get lost.

Thankfully I was in last place at this point and helped myself to this sign souvenir.  

One last thing about "Cruiser" bike people like me.  We don't judge you if wear your bike helmet clear through lunch because you forgot you still had it on, and your husband thought it was so funny how special you looked in it so he never mentioned that you might want to take it off!

We didn't win the poker run, but we had lots of fun.  We are already excited for all the fun things they have planned for this event next year! And hopefully it won't take another full year before I get back out on my bike.

40 x 40 - 6. Attend My 20-Year Class Reunion

I can never understand when people say that they don't want to attend their high school reunion.  I had so much fun in high school and I have so many great memories.

I look at these pictures of myself from 20 years ago and I feel like they were taken just yesterday.

If given the chance, I wouldn't tell myself anything about how life would turn out.  All the good, the bad, and the ugly that has happened over the last 20 years has brought me to this point and I can't imagine being anywhere else.

There were, of course, those embarrassing moments in high school.  Like our senior English teacher who made us wear a Kermit the Frog puppet on our head on our birthday.  (If you look close, I am wearing a Ricky Van Shelton concert t-shirt that I got when we went to the Alabama / Ricky Van Shelton concert at OSU.  How many of you remember him?)

I always had the best Halloween costumes.  When you are blessed to have a mother who can sew just about anything, you learn to take advantage of it.  This photo would reappear at my high school reunion.

I also always had a homemade prom dress.  I loved this and was proud to tell everyone that I had a one-of-a-kind dress.  On more than one occasion my dad had to entertain my prom date while my mother finished sewing me into my dress in the back bedroom.

This was Junior/Senior prom my sophomore year.  I got to attend because my date was a junior.  The other couple in the photo are my friend Colynn and my cousin Troy.

This is Junior/Senior prom my senior year.  I went with my friend Chad.  Chad and I had been friends for all of high school and it seemed fitting to go together.  After prom, we drove up to Portland and watched the OMSI laser light show to Pink Floyd.  

But my favorite prom memory is from Homecoming my senior year.

Walking out on the football field during halftime of a football game with my dad is one of my all-time favorite life memories.  (No, I didn't win.  Jane Scheie did.  But it was enough to just be nominated!)

My freshman year was clouded by the school flag controversy.  For the entire school year, there was a huge debate about changing our school flag to something other than the confederate flag.  This newspaper article is from the beginning of my sophomore year.

It wouldn't be until the middle of my junior year before the confederate flag would be taken down from the school gym and replaced with a custom designed flag.  We were so young and naive.  We couldn't associate this flag with the history that it represented.  We could only see that the system was trying to take something away from us.  Looking back as an adult it's easy to see that the right decision was made.

Every year the class took their official photo in front of the tree that the first class planted in the courtyard.  This was a tradition that would only be changed when vandals cut the tree down a few years ago.

Can you find me in this photo?

Look close.

Immediately following our graduation ceremony, the parents put us on buses and took us up to Portland for an all-night party aboard the Portland Sternwheeler.  The next morning they brought us back to a local park in Albany where we had a little final ceremony and released balloons. 

Flash forward 20-years:

Remember how you thought everything was so big when you were a kid and then you go back and you realize that it was just normal size.  A walk down memory lane would not have been complete without visiting the place that gave me such great memories.

The class tree was gone, and in it's place was a beautiful flower garden.

Oh to be 18 again!

I never could have imagined how nervous I would be.  What if nobody recognized me?  What if I couldn't remember other people's names?

People did recognize me.  I did remember everyone's names.  But the nervousness didn't wear off; and I was not the only one.  When the formal part of dinner was done, and the emcee said that we had two hours to go until the next scheduled event, everyone just sat there.  No one got up to mingle.  No one got up to get another drink at the bar.  No one moved!  It was so obvious it was funny. 

Finally, John Barnes (who was always the outgoing one of the class) got up and silently walked to the front of the room.  He took the microphone and looked out at all of us.  He said that if no one was going to mingle, he was going to call us all up one at a time and ask us questions about our life.  It took a few people being called up before people started volunteering to go up.

Everyone was grateful that John did this.  It was so much fun hearing about where people are and what they are doing with their lives and their families.  It made it much easier to "mingle" later.

The turnout was not the best, but those of us that did attend had a great time.