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(And yes, I am embarrassed by this. I am not an exception to the rule that no one likes to see themselves on camera… But Lil’ E is such a doll 
)
“In its most profound sense, beauty may engender a salient experience of positive reflection about the meaning of one’s own existence.” -Wikipedia
“Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it” -Confucius
“Beauty is not caused. It is.” -Emily Dickinson
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” - Used by Nelson Mandela in his 1994 inaugural speech
A few hours later, the snow had piled up quite a bit - this is the most snow I’ve seen in my entire life! Watch the slideshow for some random recent pics. Oh, you’ll see my chicks are growing up! Their names are Cocoa (the maran), Ginger (the Gold Sex-link), and Paprika (the Rhode Island red). Cocoa has turned out to be the “sweet” one- she enjoys being handled. Paprika is curious and the leader of the bunch, also doesn’t mind being handled. Ginger, bless her heart, is a big baby and we joke about putting her outside when she won’t shut up.
Yep, one Gold Sex-Link, one Maran, and one Rhode Island Red. I got them at two weeks old so they won’t be in the brooder (a box with heat lamp) in our kitchen for more than about 4 weeks. Yay! What should I name them???
Here’s what I’ve designed for a portable coop and run so far. It’s using the old rabbit hutch as a coop for them to lay, and then building a predator proof run from 2×4’s and wire mesh walls against it. Exciting stuff, huh?
We’ve got a great little backyard, as you can see from these photos of Lil’ E and his new bud from the “child-swap” situation, Finn. All it needs is a few chickens!
Why raise chickens in your backyard? BackyardChickens offer these reasons:
For more information about raising backyard chickens, check out the following links!
BackyardChickens.com
MadCityChickens.com
Livingscape Nursery; Chicken Fest (where we got our chicks!)
Urban Agrarian blog
wiki-How; Keeping Chickens in the City
The City Chicken
My Pet Chicken
Of course, watching the eclipse from the rooftop last night made Lil’ E want to sing about twinklin’ stars… on about the third round (he went on and on) I grabbed it on the camera’s video (sorry about the sideways thing!)
can appreciate the beauty in this picture:
Ethan’s first potty poop, 2 years 7 months old! And yes, he will kill his mom one day when he finds out she put this picture on her blog…
It’s been awhile since I’ve shared some photos!
Check us out, doin this or that around town. Snapped some shots of what my last post described- the opened tulips, the many Spring shoots and early blooming flowers! Check out Peter Rabbit runnin around, as well as the melted crayola “stain glass” butterflies we made today! Can anyone say “Spring Has ALMOST Sprung?!”
Yesterday, fam and I did Christmas Eve service and then strolling Peacock Lane. Cookie making pics from the other day are also included in the slideshow, as is a picture of Christmas morning- Lil’ E with his amazing stocking full of apples, oranges, cranberries and a maple candy cane, lol! Oh, and his breakfast of “Christmas” yogurt.
I made beignets this morning, our traditional holiday breakfast. We all exchanged one gift this year, while Lil’ E also opened some gifts from his Nana Betsy and Papa Rene. It was actually quite nice to avoid all Christmas shopping this year and have a simple Christmas. Last night, our big Christmas Eve dinner was Thai food (which we will likely re-heat and serve alongside Pasteles for Christmas dinner- a real Puerto Rican abomination, no doubt!)
later addition: I’ve mustered up some cooking gusto and decided pasteles just won’t go with leftover Thai. So I’m making some potato wedges and a salad, along with a desert of apple/delicata squash/sweet potato casserole topped with brown sugar and granola over vanilla ice cream. WHY OH WHY doesn’t Portland have green pigeon peas, or gandules, so I can make a traditional puerto rican holiday meal, I have no idea. So a “whatever’s around” Christmas dinner will have to do! (Hey, integration is groovy.)
After slideshow, enjoy Lil’ E first “How To” video- a natural born podcaster!
I’ve got a lot more videos from this week but can’t find the USB chord to hook up my digital camcorder, so that clip will have to be a little late for Christmas, but oh well!
later addition: AND OH MY GOSH!!!! My FIRST sighting of legitimate snow ya’ll!!! On Christmas Day! How perfecto! This is the most lovely snow, coupled with NON freezing temps (its only 37 degrees outside). Check it out! I’ll upload videos later…
Tonight the fam tried out the Flexcar for the first time, reserving it for a 6 hour excursion out to Hood River city to climb aboard the Mt. Hood Railway train “Polar Express” themed ride. (Flexcar was fab, btw). Lil’ E started off the ride a bit bewildered- the Polar Express is one of his all time favorite movies to watch and he’s very familiar with tunes and music in movies, so when we boarded to the movie’s soundtrack he was trying to piece it all together for awhile. Eventually the Styrofoam cup of hot chocolate and the molasses cookie was enough of a sugar high to make him go a little bananas (he even tried to eat the table a bit at one point.) The ride was neat, you listen to music, have a little snack, and hear the cd version of the Polar Express book read aloud. At the end you get to the “north pole” where the train picks up Santa and he comes around to each table. EACH TABLE, each child, out of sooo many on 3 cars of this train. So, instead of the scheduled 6:30pm end time, the train went back and forth on the tracks (and every one knows how motion sensitive I am, right?) until Santa could make it to all the kids, which didn’t happen until 7:15pm. Suffice to say, the second half of the evening was dragged on more than necessary. They did have some caroler’s come sing to us while we waited for Santa, and they were even kind enough to honor Lil’ E’s unorthodox request of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (see video below).
As far as how Lil’ E liked St. Nick, I’ll just let you watch the video for yourself!
Enjoy!
Bewildered Lil’ E
Twinkle Twinkle, by request
Santa experience…
Once I sat down in Santa’s lap with him, it was all good
As every one knows, this is my favorite time of year. I hold onto the idea that there is magic and sacred meanings to the season, regardless of all the hype. After a lovely little Thanksgiving meal with Hubby and Lil’ E, we woke up Friday morning with the intent to go see the downtown Macy’s After-Thanksgiving Parade. Intentions, intentions.
Instead we awoke to Lil’ E standing outside our bedroom door calling out, “Mama. Open the door, please, mama. I went ca-kee in my bed.”
Luckily, it was not the smelly brown mess I envisioned upon hearing the word “ca-kee”, but rather lots and lots of pee-pee. Poor baby had drank way too much sparkling apple cider- I should have seen this coming. So we took the time to strip his bed and get it in the wash, while I cleaned him up in the tub. When we finally made it downtown, we could see Santa’s sleigh from the MAX line window, jumped off at the next stop and ran up to the sidelines just in time to put Lil’ E on Hubby’s shoulders to see Santa. Whew!
From there we headed into the mall, where Santa was arriving to have children up on his lap. Since we didn’t want to wait in line and we don’t have money to pay for the pictures anyway, we just pointed him out to Lil’ E while we strolled around. We did get to see some Victorian Carolers, who upon request from Lil’ E sang “Jingle Bells” to him. They were not so obliging when he called out “ABC’s!” for the start of a subsequent song set.
But we didn’t shop on Black Friday, being that we: A. are doing this Advent thing with our church and B. have very few local folks to purchase for anyway. So we walked around, had lunch at the Greek Cusina, and watched Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (Lil’ E did great!)
We were really just stalling until 5:30 when the annual Christmas tree lighting would take place just outside at Pioneer Square. But because they started with a local radio DJ thanking all the sponsors of the event in what seemed like several every known languages based on the time it took to do so, we ended up leaving before they even lit the dang tree, much to the gratitude of my absolutely frozen pinky toes, (it was about, oh, 35 degrees or so.) So I don’t have any great shots of that, but another blogger did really well with photos of the tree lighting- so check it out if you want to see a bit about what you (and I!) missed, lol.
Afterwards, I caught up with Misty at Fox Tower and defrosted to a showing of I’m Not There, which was excellent, and probably would’ve been more so if I had known anything more about Bob Dylan than the fact that he wrote/sang, “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “How Does it Feel?”. I’m now asking for some sort of major Bob Dylan greatest hits compilation for Christmas, lol. Misty put some of his quotes on her blog, so I’m guessing she was moved too.
Well, that’s it ladies and gents. And we’ve got a bus to catch to get to church this mornin’ so that will have to be my parting farewell.
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