Qoutes from Emelyn, age 3

"Get me some milk right now! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy Mommy Mommy! Get me milk RIGHT NOW or I am going to stab you with this fork! Are you ready? It's gonna hurt! 3...2...1..."

(In a shocked voice) "Da SUN is HAWT!!!"

"I don't like Edgar. He's mean to me. He makes fun of me." (Edgar is our cat.)


"SHHHHH! I am TALKING on my PHONE!!" (While holding a remote/calculator/insert random object to her ear)

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 sticks butter
2 eggs, divided
1/2 TBSP baking powder
1 3/4 cup white sugar, divided
1/2 TBSP vanilla
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 tsp salt
1 TBSP baking powder
3 cups flour
1 bag chocolate chocolate chips

Soften the butter in the microwave. Put it in the mixer bowl and add ONE of the eggs, the baking soda, ONE cup of the sugar, the vanilla, and the molasses. Beat until well combined.

Now add salt, baking powder, and the rest of the sugar. Beat until well combined.

Next add the flour. Mix well. (The mixture will be dry and crumbly.)

Now add the second egg, and mix until everything is moistened. The dough should be a normal consistency now.

Last, add the chocolate chips and mix until they are evenly distributed.

Shape the dough into rough balls and flatten them in between your hands. Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes.

Peyton Does Not Support Literacy

Sorry for the bad quality. I took this video with my iPod because it was just too funny to miss!

Cheer

I don't think I've mentioned it before, but I'm in All-Star Cheer right now. Instead of being school cheer where you cheer for sports games, we practice with a gym and go to competitions. This is my first year, and I'm already nervous about competitions!

I have my punch front, front walkover, and round off back handspring on floor. I'm working on my standing and drop step back handsprings, as well as round off multiple back handsprings and connecting my front walkover to my round off. The jumps we're doing right now are toe touches, double toes, hurdlers, and pikes. I used to be doing a right hurdler in our routine, but my coaches changed it so that now I'm doing left hurdlers, which aren't as good as my right hurdlers, so I kind of wish they would change it back!

I'm on a level three squad right now, but some of the coaches are hoping we'll be able to move to level 4 at the end of the season.

Are any of y'all in cheer or gymnastics?

Robert Louis Stevenson's "From A Railway Carraige"

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!

It's hot.

Really hot.

Really, really, really hot.

Like 112 degrees hot, and it's supposed to be hotter tomorrow.

Rain would be really nice right now. We actually have a 20% chance of rain next Monday, which might not sound like much to you, but it's a better chance than we've had in a looong time, so we are really hoping it will turn into something so we don't have to water the gardens 17 times a day just to keep the plants from shriveling up into tiny balls of dust.  And our neighbors have about 100 goats with no pasture to eat from and hardly any hay coming along.

You know what annoys me about the heat here?  When I see someone online complaining about how hot it is, and how expensive their electricity bill is because of their air conditioner, and then they say something like, "And I'm from MONTANA, so I really know what I'm talking about when it comes to heat."

And then I mentally invite them to come to Texas some time and personally experience what hot really is.

It's kind of like when we get 1.5 inches of snow here and it's a freezing 28 degrees, so all the schools close, and it's all over the news how extreme the weather is this winter!  And then you Montana people start rolling your eyes at us just like we do at you during the summer.

It's hot here in Texas.

Really hot.

Really, really, really hot.

The Best Chocolate Ice Cream EVER!

This is a recipe for the world's best homemade chocolate ice cream! You'll never go back to store bought after trying this!

The basic prize-winning vanilla ice cream recipe came from my grandmother, an I modified it to make chocolate ice cream. Here's what you'll need:

4 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 14oz cans sweetened condensed milk
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 1/2 quarts (6 cups) milk
1/2 pint (1 cup) heavy whipping cream
4 1oz squares unsweetened baking chocolate

Beat eggs in a large saucepan. Add one at a time in this order, stirring very well in between: sugar, whipping cream, sweetened condensed milk, and vanilla. Make sure all ingredients are completely combined.

Place the saucepan on a burner over low heat. Meanwhile, melt chocolate in the microwave. Slowly stir melted chocolate into egg mixture.

Turn heat up to medium. Cook, stirring constantly, until right before mixture starts to boil, or until it starts to noticeably thicken. Remove from heat and pour into the barrel of your ice cream freezer. Slowly pour in milk, whisking briskly until well combined. Follow the directions that came with your ice cream freezer for freezing the ice cream. Our freezer is very noisy, so you might want to put it in a quiet place.

When your freezer is finished with the ice cream, it will be the consistency of soft-serve. I think this is the best way to eat it, but if you like it firmer, transfer it to a non-glass container and freeze for a few hours until firm.

Enjoy your ice cream!

And We Have SNOW!

Last night, we knew that we had a winter storm coming through, but we were just expecting nasty wet sleet. When we woke up this morning, the ground was covered with SNOW! We usually don't get much snow around here, but we have around 1.5-2 inches right now. It's really hard, though, and in high-traffic areas it has turned into ice. It's supposed to be even colder tonight, but we're not supposed to get more snow.

Hopefully it will melt off soon, because our next door neighbors have around 50 cashmere goats who are going to have their babies any time now. One had twins yesterday, but the neighbors didn't know it was out in the woods with its babies, and when we went to see them this morning, one of the babies had frozen to death. The other one was on the ground squealing, and I knew we needed to get it before it froze too, so I went over to grab it and wrap it up in a towel. When I picked up, its hair was frozen to the ground.

Our neighbors had told us that the mother goats can be very protective and that they can try to ram people who get close to their babies, so when the mother goat started coming towards us, I tried to put the baby down to see if she could take care of it, but it couldn't stand up. I grabbed it back up and we ran to the fence. My sister jumped over and I handed her the baby so I could jump over. I took it back and we ran to our neighbors' house and gave it to them.

We went with them and found the mother goat (who had gone back to the herd). We got her into a shed and gave her the baby, and when we left she was licking it, but later when we called the neighbors they said that it died too. We are all really sad about it. :(

Hopefully, the other goats won't have their babies until it is a little warmer.

Our Rabbits

In December, we got 6 baby Californian rabbits for a 4-H project. We showed them earlier this month. One of my sisters got a 3rd and a 5th, and the other's rabbits didn't place. I had one that placed 4th and one that didn't place.

We were basically renting the rabbits from the breeder. If we gave them back after the show, he would "sell" them to us for a cheaper price, so we did that with 5 of them and one we bought to keep. That ended up being my 4th place one since she was the only girl. We gave all of the other ones back to the breeder, but one of my sisters (the one whose rabbits placed) kept that one. I had named her Holly, but my sister changed her name to Heather.

Right before the show, someone at our church told us that they had a rabbit they didn't want any more because it was "mean". They said it was a female mini lop, which happened to be exactly the kind of rabbit which I had been wanting to get! So, I adopted her and named her Heidi. She actually isn't mean at all, she just doesn't like to be picked up. She loves to be petted, though, and she will hop in your lap if you sit down. She acts VERY dominate to the other rabbits, though - she doesn't hurt them, she just chases them around and mounts them sometimes. (The people we got her from were told by the vet that she was a girl, so she's just a very bossy one.)

Then, my other sister (the one whose rabbits didn't place) decided that she wanted a rabbit too, so she got one from a local pet store. I think it's an American fuzzy lop, but we'll have to see how big it gets. It only weighs about 1.5 ponds right now. Its name is Hannah.

We don't have them in cages (I hate it when rabbits are always locked up in tiny cages). Instead, we have them in a 12x12 shed right now (they are mostly litter box trained), but we're going to have to move them out soon because the shed is going to be our chicken house. We are going to move the rabbits to an enclosed covered porch that's about 6x10. It has a lockable dog door in it, so hopefully we can build a little run outside that they can play in when the weather is nice. I'm excited about moving them there because the porch is attached to the bedroom that I share with my 2 other sisters who have rabbits, so we won't have to walk out to the shed to take care of them any more!

Does anyone else have rabbits? If you have an outdoor run for them, how did you build it?

Chickens!

As some of you may know, we moved out to the country in November of 2010. We've been planning on getting laying breed chickens from eFowl for a while, but we had to wait until it was closer to spring for all of the kinds we wanted to be in stock.

When I checked a couple of days ago, they had everything we wanted except one kind, so we decided to go ahead replace those with a different kind and place our order.

We are getting 5 Ameraucana pullets, 5 Australorp pullets, 5 Brown Danish Leghorn pullets, and 5 Welsummer pullets. I did a ton of recearch to make sure that we picked out breeds that are good layers, lay a variety of colors, and have good temperaments. I've read that leghorns can be a little flighty, but our friends at Life In A Shoe said that their leghorns are their friendliest chickens! We followed their suggestion and ordered brown leghorns instead of the regular white leghorns so that they won't be as easy for hawks (which we have a lot of) to spot.

The Ameraucanas are also called "Easter Eggers", since they will lay blue, green, and sometimes even pink eggs! I've read that pure Ameraucanas will only lay bluish eggs, but that the hatchery variety are not usually pure.

The Brown Leghorns will lay white eggs, like the kind that are usually sold at grocery stores. They will probably be the most prolific layers.

Australorps lay large light brown eggs and are also very prolific layers. They are black in color and (if I remember right) grow to be the largest of the hens we ordered.

The Welsummers lay very dark brown eggs, which can be nearly black in high quality birds, but the eggs from hatchery birds aren't usually that dark.

Our chicks should get here somewhere around February 18, and they will be about 2 days old. We're busy getting everything ready for them right now! The chicken house is about 12'x12', but when they're little they have to stay in a much smaller area so they don't wander away from the heat and food and get "lost". (Apparently they aren't too bright at this point.) As they get bigger, we can let them have the run of the whole house and the yard! We are really excited about them!

Stay tuned for more updates about our chickens - I'll be sure to let you know when they get here!