Bicycles

We decided to ride our bikes down to Julia Davis park a few weeks ago for the annual Art in the Park. We love to wander the booths drooling over merchandise we could never afford, laughing at all of the strangely dressed Boiseans, and examining photographs, taken by actual photographers, of beautiful places we've been to. (I'm teaching parallel structure to my 9th graders)

However, this is not a post about Art in the Park...it is a post about getting to and from Art in the Park.

We now live about three miles from the park, and since Nikolai has done so well on his two-wheeler, we are phasing out the trailer. So Nikolai rode his own bike with Jay's close supervision, and I took Aleksi on the tag along bike. If you've never ridden one of these great inventions, you'll just have to take my word on this...it's HARD. It looks easy when everyone else is doing it...but I found it hard to keep my balance and keep my bike going where it needed to.

Added to this, is Aleksi.

Several times while riding, the bike would suddenly sway to one side and I would have to keep us both upright and not run into others sharing the greenbelt path. Aleksi had several excuses as to why we were swaying:

1) "I was tired of sitting, so I thought I'd stand up for a while."
2) "My head was itching, so I had to move my helmet back and forth to scratch it."
3) "I don't even have to use the handlebars on this bike!"

Needless to say, we made it there and back in one piece and had a good time doing so...even if the ride was a little wobbly.

Chicken Love

We've been enjoying having our chickens around since the spring. Looking back at their "baby" pictures, they have grown quite large. We've enjoyed showing them off to neighbors and friends...they can be a great distraction when needed. We've enjoyed about five fresh brown eggs and...

WARNING! Do NOT continue reading if you don't enjoy BLOOD and GORE...

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we butchered our roosters over Labor Day weekend. We butchered them for several reasons,

1. we aren't "allowed" to have roosters within city limits and
2. have you seen two roosters together? or heard two roosters crowing in the wee hours of the morning? If you answered yes, I don't need to go on.

I was concerned about the butchering and our tender-hearted boys, but apparently I'm the only tender-hearted one. I almost cried and couldn't watch, while the boys enjoyed the whole bloody (literally) show.

Jay did the honors, dipped them in boiling water, plucked the feathers, took out the guts, cleaned them, and froze them for later enjoyment.

I stayed out of the way, pulled a few (very few) feathers, rinsed the blood bucket, and stayed out of the way. (I know I said that twice, but that's mostly what I did.)

We ate one of the roosters that night and enjoyed a good meal with homemade stuffing and corn grown in our corn field. It was a good end to a not so fun day.

Now that the roosters are gone we finally let the boys name the three girls. Prior to this we didn't want to name them in case we had to eat them, which turned out to be a good idea. I may have pictures one day, but our three girls are Golden Girl, Reddy, and StormCloud. This is what happens when you allow a 6 and 8 year old to name your chickens.