Mr. Funny and his brood of chicks

Week one chick update: The chicks are all doing great. I am amazed by how fragile they are, and yet how much they grow each day! Every morning I go down to clean their brooder and see that they have a bunch of new feathers. The black one (Omelet) is several days older than the other two and it makes a huge difference. She is bigger than them and has a lot more feathers. Isaac loves to go down and see them. They run and hide behind their food when they hear us coming, but the minute we put treats in our hands and say "here, chick, chick, chick" they come running and eat right out of our hands. Isaac loves to feed them.

Here is a picture I took yesterday after a week at our house (they are 10 days old now) and you can see how their loosing their down covering and getting new feathers. They seem to have tails coming in and along the top of their back. From yesterday to this morning the black one has gotten a lot more!

Isaac had a wal-mart gift card for his birthday, so we went down and let him pick out a new bike helmet. I liked the Cars one, but he insisted on the one that had Bert and Ernie on it (Sesame Street) He was so excited to wear it and the arm and knee pads that came with. He played outside all afternoon wearing the whole ensamble. His shirt fits perfectly...it says "Mr. Funny" on it. You can see his scissors in his hands, he was going around cutting on my bushes.

Sorry I have no pics of Matthew, we went to the duck pond yesterday and the camera was not working...ugh. I will get pics soon, he is so happy and healthy lately. For the first time in literally 3 months, we are all healthy at one time. It is soooo nice, I had forgotten what that was like. :-)

On a side note, potty training is going well, Isaac has stayed dry for 3 days now and is not wearing diapers during the day anymore, even when we go somewhere. YEAH!!!!!!

We have been invaded by...Pirates! Arghhhhhh!

On Saturday we had a Pirate Party for Isaac and his friends. What a great time we had. We decorated the porch in a pirate theme, complete with a plank to walk up. In the background we had the song from the Pirates of The Caribbean playing to help set the mood.

Chris printed off the big pirate ship picture, and we had a big pirate flag covering the door. It looked awesome and is still up as I hate to take it all down. We were blessed with a really nice sunny, fairly warm day (by february in Oregon standards!)

Our first ship of pirates "walking the plank"!

Here is the band of scallywag pirates that met everyone at the door. Chris's parents were here for the weekend, which was really nice. (Matthew had fallen asleep, so did not join the party until later)

Capt. Isaac was so excited to greet everyone! He talked like a pirate all day (and again yesterday , and today...)

Everyone got their pictures taken on the porch, and most had dressed up in full pirate gear, it was so cute to see them all decked out!

Isaac was happy to have his best friend Cole come. Cole just got a new baby brother on monday and we weren't sure they would venture out for our adventure. We are so glad they did. Welcome Pirate Ethan!!!!!

The kids had a great time playing games, especially musical chairs.....my favorite was Tori who picked a chair and stayed there the whole time!!! Kaetha was our winner, with Zander putting in a good race for 2nd. We also had a pirate ship pinata that was a lot of fun. I have never seen such crazed looks on the kids faces as they beat that thing as hard as they could.

Isaac had been asking for a pirate ship cake for months now as it is on display at the local grocery store. It was the coolest cake! It came complete with pirates to man the crows nest and fire the cannons. He loved it!

Matthew even got in on the fun...here is Master Mathhew and his pirate hair! Argh!!!

We had such a fun time and it was great to hang out with all our good friends. We visited for a long time while the kids hid treasure and played pirates! When everyone left Isaac crashed in about 5 minutes....that was one tired pirate.Thanks to everyone who came and gave presents to Isaac. Our house is overrun with pirates and we are having a great time playing with them!

Happy Birthday Isaac

Hard to believe that our little boy is turning 3. Time goes by too fast. He seems so grown up now.

We aren't having a party for Isaac until tomorrow, so we tried to do somethings to make his actual birthday special. In the morning, I made him his favorite pancakes and put candles in them so we could sing happy birthday.

Then we drove to Oregon City to meet daddy for lunch. From there we drove to Mulino to pick up Isaac's Birthday presents....3 2 day old chicks!!! He knew we were getting them and was so excited. I had originally decided that one of them would be Rhode Island Red, but when we got there, Isaac insisted on getting the white one (a leghorn) So we ended up getting a Buff Orpington, a Austerlop, and a Leghorn.

They will live in our basement for the next few months until the weather warms up a bit and they get all their feathers, then we will move them out into their coop in the backyard. Hopefully by July we will be getting some fresh eggs.

Isaac loves the chicks, and wants to go down and see them first thing in the morning, and all day long. He is so gentle holding them and of course wants to hold the white one the most, that is definetly his favorite. He named the white one "peacock" and the brown one "Hashbrown" and the black one is "Omelet". :-)

Bogey seems to be oblivious to them, they chirp away and we hold them, and Bogey just lays on the ground looking bored. I am sure that when they start running around, she may try and go after them, but one peck from them and she will have her tail between her legs running the other way. :-)

Long time no Blog...Christmas and beyond!

It has been a long time since I have blogged (obviously) I even comtemplated whether I would bother anymore, but I know of several people that love to see pictures of the boys, so I am renewing my commitment to blogging!

I will post a smattering of pictures from Christmas onwards, I was thinking that we had not done much, but as I look at the pictures I see that life has been eventful. But for the most part one or all of us has been sick everyday since around November. This has been the worst winter for that and we are all tired of it. It has made life really difficult around here and we don't venture out much. I can't wait until spring and hopefully we can get out of survival mode. UGH!

We had a great Christmas, as you can see by this cute, cute picture of the boys on Christmas morning. It was fun to see Isaac fully get into the whole Santa thing. Matthew seemed to enjoy his first Christmas, and was so excited to open presents (and then try and eat the paper!) We spent Christmas day here with Anne's family and then drove up on Boxing Day to Canada to see Chris's family. Luckily for us we purchased a new Mini Van the week before Christmas, so it was a much much more comfortable ride up to Canada.


Isaac at Grandma and Grandpa Dunlops house playing "Hungry, Hungry Hippo's"

Matthew sure enjoyed mashed potato's and Cranberry sauce...Mmmmmmm!!

Once we got home from Christmas we were ready to get going on the house. I had been without a kitchen floor for a few months, and though it was nice to ignore it and not clean it, I was anxious to get the kitchen done. Chris worked really hard and now we have a beautiful laminate floor. Chris did a great job installing it....now if I could just find time to finish painting the cupboard doors, and paint the walls, and get the trim done...ugh, I guess we still have a lot of work to do!


Chris, Happily putting in the last board! Way to go Mr. Handyman.


In January, we finally got enough snow to play in, but only for a few hours and then it melted. Isaac was so excited to go out and build a snowman, and Matthew loved feeling the snow and looking at everything.



The big news of the last month is that we have started Potty Training Isaac. He is eager to go on his potty and wear big boy underwear, but usually on his terms. That means that he does well for awhile and then will have 2 or three accidents on the carpet. I will be so happy to get our carpets cleaned soon! Today we went out to lunch at my Grandmas and he used the bathroom there and stayed dry all morning, hopefully this is a sign of things to come!!! I can't wait.


This last picture seems to depict our life the last few months. This is us visiting our friends Dave and Wendy in Canada last weekend. On the sunday that we were leaving, instead of playing with their two boys, Isaac climbed up on me and fell asleep (10am, very unlike him) He ended up having a fever that lasted most of last week. I feel like I have spent about a month on the couch with either kid sick or myself.

So there you go, a very quick up date on what we have been up to! Tomorrow we celebrate Isaac's 3 year birthday. WOW, I am amazed and sad at the same time...he is such a little boy now, no longer my baby. Will do a post on him and his special suprise for tomorrow.