Eggs for Easter

I hadn't planned on waiting another three months between posts, but here I am at the end of April already. We've had a very exciting few months between January and now. Our biggest news, which I mentioned at the end of my last post, is that we're now chicken owners. It's been so much fun watching them grow from awkward little chicks to nearly full-grown hens. The girls were born in December, and are now just about at egg laying age.
This is Alice, our Buff Orpington. She is three weeks older than the others, and just laid her first three eggs this week (more on that later!):
This is Stella. She's a Black Copper Marans, which is a French breed. When she starts laying eggs, they will be a dark chocolate color.
This is Snookie, our Jersey Giant. She's much bigger than the other girls, and is such a klutz!
This is our little Olive. She's a Silver Laced Wyandotte, and is the spunky one. She loves to sit on our shoulders like a parrot.
Logan and I have a lot of fun hanging out with the chickens. We're constantly learning something new about them. Last week we found that they think rose petals are like candy! They're always happy to see us walking into the garden, especially if we have food for them. Our godddaughter, 4 1/2 year old Chloe, had fun feeding the chickens when she met them a couple of weeks ago: Even Clark is fascinated by the chickens. He has to stay on a leash when he's outside with them, because when they run he wants to chase them. But he's gotten MUCH calmer around them the past few months: Now that I've introduced the chickens, I'll go back and tell about what we've been up to the past few months. In February, we went to Tahoe for a few days in the snow with Clark and our friend Ann and her dog Pepper. We tried putting socks on Clark to keep his feet warm, but he wasn't too thrilled with the idea:
Logan and I got snowshoes for Christmas, and had so much fun walking around the neighborhood. There was a storm while we were there that dropped several feet of snow. At the end of March, we travelled up to Ukiah to visit our friends Chris and Jenn and their daughter Kira. We had a nice relaxing rainy day, and enjoyed Jenn's amazing cooking. Chris, Kira, Logan and I took a walk in the rain that afternoon: Kira is such a smart little girl. She seems much older than her 2 1/2 years. We really enjoyed getting to know her. That was a busy weekend, because only an hour after we returned from Ukiah, my sister Katie's bridal shower began. The shower was held at my grandma's house in Sunnyvale, and hosted by two of Katie's bridesmaids, Leah and Jaci. It was a really lovely shower, and my mother-in-law Sue came up for the party. Katie got a nice selection of gifts: And the purple polka-dot cake was so cute! The June 25 wedding will be here before we know it...
Last week was Logan's spring break, and we decided to take a short trip down to Disneyland to see what has changed since our last time there in October 2009 (for my 30th birthday).
I surprised Logan with tickets to the special dessert package for the evening water and fireworks show, Fantasmic. It's his favorite show, and buying this package enabled us to sit in seats rather than staking out spots on the cement an hour before the show. They were great seats, and we really enjoyed the show:
We also headed over to the newer California Adventure park, to see the progress in the huge construction projects that are taking place over there. The newly remodeled Mickey ferris wheel looks great during the day, and even better at night when it's all lit up: The Costco Travel package we booked came with a free character meal. We normally wouldn't pay for a meal with the characters (this one was a princess lunch), but we thought we might as well take advantage of the free meal. It was so cute to watch the little girls awestruck when a princess would arrive at their table for a photo. Of course, Logan had to have a photo with his favorite princess, Belle: Logan couldn't resist the opportunity to pose as an action figure: A self-portrait while taking the raft back from Tom Sawyer Island (although I think it's been renamed The Pirate's Lair now, to tie in with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies...) We stayed at the Sheraton for the first time this trip, and enjoyed watching the nightly fireworks from our 7th floor balcony: Yummm- enjoying a Mickey Mouse ice cream bar in his new storm trooper t-shirt:We got a call from my mom on Tuesday afternoon while we were in Anaheim, telling us that Alice laid her first egg! She had been exhibiting signs for the past week that she was almost ready to lay, and sure enough she was. She laid her first egg in the straw on the bottom of the hen house:
Mom called again on Thursday as we were driving home to tell us that Alice laid egg #2, and this time she laid it in the nesting box like she's supposed to! Below is a photo of the first two eggs, along with a store-bought large egg for size comparison. Small first eggs are normal, so we're expecting they'll continue to get larger as Alice gets to be a more "experienced" layer. It was so exciting to come home to two eggs, and even more exciting when egg #3 arrived while I was at work on Friday. Logan, still home on vacation, found it that afternoon. This has been a nice Easter surprise, and we're looking forward to more (lots more) eggs in a few weeks when the other girls start to lay too.
For more on the chickens, take a look at Logan's chicken blog: http://playingchicken.wordpress.com