Another "Eggcellent" Weekend!

Whoops I've definitely been slacking on posting! I have a bunch of different little ones that are in the making but I just realized now that I haven't posted anything since last Tuesday. It just felt like it hadn't been that long since I've technically been working on different posts all week! 

I have an exciting announcement, though, yesterday Amanda got: 

Chickens! Did you figure it out by my oh-so-clever-but-not-really post title?!

I told my one coworker this morning and her immediate reaction was "to eat them??" Nah, they're for laying eggs! My aunt has some in her backyard and it might sound unusual to have them while living in a small suburban town but I think it's pretty cool. I wasn't too crazy about the idea at first since I didn't know what would happen when we'd eventually move or if they'd bee too high maintenance or noisy. Plus, I don't eat that many whole eggs (just the egg whites normally) so I didn't want all the eggs to go to waste. 

Amanda's birthday is around the corner, though, so I decided to be a good sister and caved so she could get what she truly wanted this year. I mean I finally got my dog so I honestly don't really mind at this point! As long as I have Layla I'm happy haha! Which means yesterday we had a whole family outing to a chicken farm! And when I say chicken farm I mean this farm was swarming with chickens of all breeds and ages. I never knew there could be so many different breeds of chickens but there are dozens! 

These were some of the wee little baby chicks that were so cute! 

We ended up getting four adolescent chickens and all of them were a different breed that will lay different colored eggs. That way we'll be able to tell which of the chickens are laying eggs if there comes a time when they're too old and no longer laying. Don't worry, I'm not going to allow Amanda to send away the old ones! We'll just build another coop next door so there will be a retirement place for the older ones :) 

Count on me to be the one person who gets too attached to their chickens haha! Also, the condition that I gave Amanda if she got the chickens is that I got to name them. I told her I'd pick the most ridiculous names I could think of and she wasn't allowed to change them. 

So far we have: 

Bubbles

Mercedes

Garthetta (Garthie for short)

Yes, Garthetta is not a name. But my cousin Hannah has an obsession with Garth Brooks the country singer and kept telling me to name one of the chickens Garth. Well since that's a boy's name my aunt joked around and said to call her Garthetta to make it a girl. So that's how that came about and we'll call her Garthie as a nickname! I know we're ridiculous! But I love it so it's sticking. 

So far Amanda has approved of the names but we're looking for a fourth! I told my friend Megan she could have the honor of naming the fourth so we're waiting to see as they get older which names fit each of them. We're open to any suggestions and the more fun/crazy/random, the better! 

Right now they're set up in Layla's old crate on our sun porch. It worked out because Layla hasn't needed her crate since she was about 6 months and the chickens can't go outside yet since they're not old enough. My dad is building the coop for us so in the next month or so when they're able to go outside, their new home will be ready! For now, they're fine in the dog crate with everything they need. 

Layla absolutely LOVES them so far. I swear there's no one or nothing that she doesn't like! As soon as we got them set up yesterday, I had her come out because I want her socialized to them as soon as possible. That way she'll always have a good reaction to them, won't hurt them, or won't get too excited or curious about them. All I did was allow her to come to them on her own, sniff around their stuff, and then opened the door for her so she could see them. After she seemed comfortable, I took one out and let her sniff it up close. I made sure to be calm and neutral about it so she could read my take on the situation. If she sees that I'm calm and comfortable then that's how she'll react to them too! I don't want her to get overexcited with them and think they're something to play with or worse to chase or hunt. 

This morning she was super cute. As soon as I opened the door from the living to go on to the sun porch to let her outside, she went right over to the crate, jumped up so she could put her paws on the table, and then wagged her tail!

On another happy note, I was able to run outside again this weekend and today, too! The best part was I was able to take Layla with me this morning. It's finally gotten to the point where most of the ice is off the sidewalks so I feel comfortable taking her with me again. Before it was too much of a hassle to negotiate myself through the dark with the ice let alone have her to possibly slip too and take me off balance.

We did a nice easy run this morning since the poor thing hasn't been able to come with me since probably the first week of January or so. It's been so long that I've completely lost track! We did between 2-3 miles and she loved it! As soon as I told her we were going for a run this morning her little ears perked right up. She got absolutely filthy with all the water and muddy patches but I just toweled her down really well and wiped her clean with wet paper towels. I didn't mind at all because I love being able to take her running with me! Plus she has to go to the groomers soon anyway so I'll let them take care of the deep cleaning!

I'm going to work on getting some other posts up soon but I hope you all had a great weekend and wonderful start to the week!