blacker died

Each year 9 of my best friends from college and I get together over a weekend for a "Besties Reunion" in different places accross the US and stay up way too late and eat way too much food. Well, I was on my way to the airport yesterday headed for "Besties in Boston" when I called to confirm my ride and was informed that it was next weekend not this weekend. So, I'm back at home feeling pretty foolish with a clean house and no laundry and decided it would be a good time to update my blog since I haven't posted in 2 months and life here has been anything but uneventful.





A sad experience for all of us was waking up on the morning of the 4th of July to discover that one of our chickens, Blacker, had passed away sometime during the night. Savannah mentioned that Blacker was resting under a bush the whole day before as they were playing in the coop. The kids nick named her "sleepy head" and Savannah was making sure the boys didn't wake her up.

We had a moment of silence as TJ dug a grave and buried Blacker. Emmett was extremely sad, wailing would be an appropriate description of his entire morning. He would be fine one second and then he would fall apart again. The great thing is it gave us another opportunity to talk to them about enjoying life knowing that death is ok and happens to everyone but that we can be together again.

TJ gave the kids each a new chick this Easter (TJ-Maria, Moo-Bessie, Mc-Snowball, Sa-Lily, and Em-Tweeterhead) and we had to sell McKay's (Snowball) after it began cockadoodledooing. He was very sad and I told him he could have my chicken. His response was, "I think I'll have Blacky because she really needs me." I know... our first batch of chickens names are very unique... Blacker, Blacky, Yellowy, Goldy, Brownie, Tweeterhead 1, and Tweeterhead 2. You can probably guess their color, Tweeterhead 1 and 2 are multi colored Brahmas with a yellow base. We are down to 7 chickens now (3 from the first batch, and 4 from the second).