Family Bonding.

I believe it was the great philosopher Plato who once said, "A family who kills together stays together."  Oh wait....I think that was Play-doh not Plato who once said that.  My bad.  This weekend we took this wonderful quote literally when we butchered 29 of the chickens at the farm.

Now, I know some of you are super sad right now thinking of a poor defenseless chickens who had no idea that Saturday was Reckoning Day and I used to be with you.  But really once you've killed one, you really don't feel that bad.  They aren't the nicest of animals.  They just kinda peck around and don't interact or give a rip about you.  And really, that's what it's all about....how they make us feel, right?  Just kidding.  But anyways these suckers were ready to give their lives so that we could eat.  You should have seen them.  They were big.  I have learned that as long as you don't get emotionally attached to them and just look at them as a food source, you're good to go.

(It's a requirement that you don't look good when you kill chickens.  You don't want them to feel bad.  I mean, I don't look good...Mom, you look lovely!)

It definitely ended up being a family affair.  All hands on deck.   Thankfully the two younger boys decided that this would be a great time for both of them to take a coordinating 3 hour nap.  Here's how the breakdown went.  Sara's hired hand who we call "Tractor Man" (not to his face, btw) did the killing.  I won't tell you the method that we killed them because I don't want to scar anyone, but let's just say they all ended up dead.  So, then they were hung upside down by their feet and dipped in hot water for about a minute and then dipped in cold water.  This helps to release their feathers and make them easier to pluck.  Good in theory, but they were still pretty hard to pluck.  Wes, my mom and dad and I were on plucking duty.  Then the chickens headed over to the chopping block where they were dissected by my sister the resident surgical nurse and Tractor man, the person who probably had the strongest stomach.  They cut off the feet and the heads and took out all of the insides.  Boy am I glad that wasn't my job. 

The whole affair took us about 4-5 hours and we ended up with some beautiful chickens that look exactly like what you would see in the store.  Some of them are even bigger than what you would see.  Now a word of caution.  Sometimes I read people's blogs and they are describing something and they make it sound so easy....well this was not easy.  The payoff was great, but the work, not so great.  So, just wanted to let you know! 

(Like I said, a family affair...though we did shield him from the killing!)

Now off to plan my menu for the week, I'm thinking chicken parmesan, chicken nuggets, grilled chicken, chicken quesadillas....

An Update from Sara

If those who haven't been reading the blog for long, last May my sister Sara lost her husband, Chuck to colon cancer.  This past year she has begun to rebuild her life by moving to Indiana to be closer to family, bought a 42 acre farm and started a new job.  I know I promised months ago to show you a picture of the farmhouse.  I finally found one on my computer.

 I know in this pictures the place looks haunted but it's not!  It's very charming and has just needed a lot of TLC to bring it back to it's former glory.  So anyway, talk about a lot of changes in Sara's life!  I wanted to give you an update on how she is doing, in her own words. 

It is amazing to me how you can choose to continue moving forward, even when every fiber of your being just wants to go back to the way things used to be. This is not a sad post about how much I miss Chuck. Instead I just want to say that I am changing...my life is changing and that is a good thing.

This picture was taken a few years ago while we were camping. Back then our life was all about fishing. Yes, we did other things but they mostly revolved around getting to or leaving from- fishing. Chuck told me early on, when we first moved to Florida, that he had always dreamed about living on the water and being able to have a boat to go fishing. At that time we were just finishing paying off debt, starting a new marriage, and building our family. That did not seem like the best time to be going out and finding a place on the water (prior to the real estate crash) but he was insistent. So, we found a place to rent on the water and as a welcome home present, I bought him a boat, just like he always wanted. Well...some people called it a canoe but we both loved it. I had no idea that this was the beginning of our fishing obsession (aka life in Florida). Chuck loved it and we spent the next 6 months fishing in that thing almost every night (I eventually bought him a real boat :). Back then, neither of us knew anything about fishing and we were so excited just to catch a catfish. I remember talking about how Florida people talk so bad about this poor misunderstood fish. Months later we bashing them right along with everyone else. We eventually grew in our fishing abilities and lived out Chuck's dream. I cannot tell you how many times we would sit outside of the house and just marvel at how lucky we were to be living in paradise at such a young age.

I look back at pictures of our many adventures and am reminded how we were able to live out a lifetime, in just a few years. Chuck seemed to know just how important it was to chase his dreams and live each moment to the fullest. We don't know what life will bring us and we only get one shot. I want to live my life this way...right now I am following my dream of building a farm. I am figuring out what is important to me, building relationships, mending fences, and healing hurts along the way. I know that most people would look at me and think I am crazy as I fight off raccoons, weasels, and hungry deer. Chickens have become my obsession and I now have a pregnant horse in my barn. I have family coming and going, children laughing and screaming. There is enough work on this farm for 3 grown men working full time...and there never is enough time. Life is continuing to change for me and I am loving it. As Chuck once said, "life is a crazy ride so grab it by the horns and ride the crap out of it".

 I am taking his advice, hopped on and am holding on for dear life.

~Sara Creech

Where we are headed!

I promised I would give you an update on the future of where the Cook family is headed.  Well, there has been a change of plans.  We originally had planned on building at the farm on part of the land that Sara owned.  Well, after finding out that we couldn't really build a house that would fit our growing family and get a survey done on the land without being about 15k over budget, we were back to the drawing board.  The most obvious answer to us was to move close-by.  We chose Brownsburg which is about 20 minutes from the farm and about 20 minutes from Wes' work.  We also liked the idea because the kids could get the "farm experience" by visiting and still live in the city close to friends and church with no problem.  We have been looking for homes and we think we found one.  It is a short sale so who knows how long it will take to close on, but the good news is that our offer is the only one they accepted and they have taken it off the market.  We're hoping that all those things point to us getting the house!  We are also hoping that we can move straight from our house here in Noblesville to our house in Brownsburg.  That might be too tall of an order, but a girl can hope can't she?  Here are a few pictures of it! 

Here's a better view of the house and garage.

We are hoping to get this house.  When we walked through it, the possibilites were endless.  There was even a secret door in one of the bedrooms!  How fun is that if you are a 5 year old boy...or a 30 year old boy for that matter!  And there is so much room for our family.  You would not believe how much I have been itching to get into a new place.  My secret hobby is decorating and I can't wait to start working!  The house that we offered on is pretty much a blank slate.  It has newer carpet and neutral paint so I am excited to bring some new colors to the space.  I think I will bring some of the colors from our house in Noblesville just because I'm not sick of them yet but I think I will introduce some new ones as well!

Things at the farm are going along well.  There is so much work to be done that I joked to Sara that I don't think we will ever be done.  The inside of the house is looking good but the outside and the "barn side" as we call it are in need of some major TLC.  Sara has been running herself ragged trying to get things done.  It's not easy to keep up on work when just mowing the lawn can take hours.  She is still keeping up with the chickens!  We have lost about 8 of the chickens so far to different things like animals, sickness, etc.  I guess they say that that's to be expected.  Our laying chickens are getting nice and big but they still have a few months to go before they start popping out eggs.  Our meat chickens are getting huge!!  They will be ready to give their lives so that I can make fried chicken in about a month.  It's a tough sacrafice to make, but someone has to do it!

There definitely have been bumps in the road such as broken down tractors, not having the right equipment to get jobs done, getting on each other's nerves, people not seeing eye to eye, etc.  We knew that things wouldn't always be perfect and we were right!  But if you're going to undertake such a huge project, why not do it with people you have to spend the rest of your life with anyway? :)

The future is starting to get clearer now and we are getting more and more excited!

Bloglettes

I have so many things that I would love to share on here, but they are just little snippetts of life around here and not enough to make up a full blog...so now I have coined a new term.  Bloglettes!  Little baby blogs all put into one blog, so here goes.

~Yesterday I was at Target buying a necklace and earrings and I was in the checkout with a checker woman who looked to be a little younger than my grandparents.  She was so cute in how she checked us out; she had to say everything aloud so that she knew that she was doing everything right.  Well, she got to my neckalace and earrings and said "oh I have something perfect for this in my bag!"  Lo and behold, she pulls out an old cereal bag that she has brought from home and proceeds to put my jewelry into the bag.  "See, now it wont get lost in your bag.  I just love to recycle!"  I had to stifle laughter when she was doing it, but my mom and I got a good laugh out of it when we got to the parking lot.  I'm pretty sure that her boss didn't see her pulling out things from home to give to people.  It was so cute!  I did check to see if there was any cereal left in the bottom of the bag, but alas, it was empty.

~The other day, I pulled up in front of the preschool that Preston goes to a little bit early.  I was right in front of their playground and I was excited to see that the kids were still outside playing.  I tried to find Preston but I couldn't find him until I saw him sandwiched between two little girls.  Then it was time for all the kids to line up and all of the sudden those two girls start pushing each other in order to be the one standing closer in the line to Preston.  It was intense!  I thought they might start pulling hair!  The poor girls ended up losing their sticker for the day, all because of their little fight.  I asked Preston about it later and in typical boy style, he just says "they just both love to be by me, I don't know why."  I think it's cute, but I really don't want Preston to be one of those kids who has a "girlfriend" all the time.  There will be plenty of time for that when he turns 40.

~Potty training is still going great.  Owen has been staying dry at night and has been taking himself to the bathroom whenever he needs to go.  The one I expected to be the hardest ended up being the easiest.  He does pee in his pants about once a day when he is too busy to stop playing, but I would much rather throw wet clothes in the wash than have to change his diaper all day!   Okay I promise this will be the last time I mention it, I'm just so excited!

~Cameron has turned into quite a handful and is very reminiscent of his older brother Owen at this age.  He LOVES to scream when he doesn't get what he wants, when he sees someone besides himself eating, or any other time for that matter.  I thought I was over the trauma from when Owen was like this, but I guess not.  I am driven CRAZY by it.  The only saving grace is knowing that just as with Owen, it will be with Cameron; just a phase.  Other than the screaming, Camerons still just has his two little bottom teeth, but the way he eats, you would say that he has all of them!  He outeats both of his brothers at every meal.  I am amazed at how much food Cam can put away.  We thought he was going to be skinny like Preston but maybe not!  When food is out of sight, he is a delight.  When food is in sight, you better watch your back!

In the next week or so, I want to tell you more about our future plans and also give you an update on how my sister Sara is doing.  Stay tuned!

Day 2 of potty training

Well, I am just so excited about the progress that Owen has made that I can't help but brag about him for a little bit!  He has FAR surpassed my expectations when it comes to this potty-training thing which kinda makes me sad because I don't like to think that I underestimate my own kids!  Last night I took a chance and put him in underwear all night and he stayed dry!  Then this morning he peed by himself on the potty before we took Preston to school.  I am still letting him run around with only a shirt on and no bottom and that seems to be working great.  The one time I did put him in underwear was this morning on the way to preschool.  He was dry when I got him out of the car but then when we got inside, he was all wet!  I guess the garage must be a comforting place to go! ;)  As of tonight, he didn't have any more accidents and stayed dry even when I put him in a diaper when he went over to Aunt Mandy's house for his nap while we closed on the house.  He also went #2 on the potty all by himself without even warning me that's what he was doing.  I can't believe how exciting this has been for me!  I guess it's the thought that I might be back to one kid in diapers in the very near future!  I guess it's true what they say: when the kids are ready, they will do it.  Okay, I'm done bragging on him now but I wanted to give an update! 

Also we are now renters in our own house!  How weird is that?  We have a lot to be thankful around here.

Goodnight all! 

Potty-Training in Real Time.

Since Owen is about old enough to drive a car, I decided I should probably get the boy potty-trained.  You know I don't take these things lightly, maybe because I have heard so many horror stories!  I have tried to wait until he seems ready and now I would say he's way past ready!  I decided on Easter the day after would be the day that we started.

I woke up before Owen and I listened very carefully for him to wake up.  Then I swooped in and stole his diaper like a ninja.  He didn't know what had just happened to him!  I told him he was a big boy now and it was time to say goodbye to the diapers.  I took him straight to the potty and he looked at me and said "can't do it."  After some crying and fit throwing, I had to take out my secret weapon.  I didn't have to use this weapon with Preston until a lot later in the process but we all know my little Owen likes to blaze his own trail.  So anyway, under much embarassement, I will share with you my secret weapon.  A baby gate.  I have told friends about this and they all look at me with horror and astonishment but you know what.  It has a history of working for me. 

Here's where I'm coming from with this:  For most kids, potty-training is less about the actual act and more about a battle of wills.  They don't want to be told what to do.  For long enough they have been used to going to the bathroom whenever they choose.  Now their crazy mother or father is telling them, no you do it when I tell you to do it.  You can imagine that doesn't go over real well.  At least not if you wait until they are 3 to do it, like me!  So anyways, I think you have to take yourself out of the situation and put the responsiblity of going in the toilet on their shoulders.  So, after Owen threw his fit, I told him he was going to stay in the bathroom until he went.  I put up the gate in the bathroom door to block his way out and then I left.  He continued crying and so after about a minute, I went back in there and said "I know you can do this.  Call me when you go and you can have a piece of candy."  Once he realized that I wasn't going to be an audience to his fit throwing, he stopped crying and within 2 minutes of me leaving he had had his first success on the potty.  I celebrated with him and then gave him a piece of candy.

Now here's where I have a hard time.  Once they have their first success, where do you go from there?  There are lots of theories out there like setting the timer and making them go after a certain amount of minutes.  I tried that today with Owen and he started getting agitated everytime I would tell him he needed to try and he would say "I dont' have to go."  So I said to myself, this is ridiculous.  I wouldn't hover over him to eat his dinner so I shouldn't hover over him for this.  Instead I put the potty in the middle of the room (sidenote:  from the beginning he has been naked from the waistdown, no underwear.) and told him to show me what to do if he had to go potty.  He sat on the toilet a few times and showed me so I decided it was time to leave him alone.  I left the room and said, "You go when you need to go and when you do, you get a piece of candy!" 

About 30 minutes later, he said "Mom, I pooped!" (he still calls peeing poop...baby steps!)  And he had!  I was actually so surprised because I really didn't think he would be able to do it on his own that I started jumping up and down!  I think seeing me excited got him excited so by the time he went one more time, I gave him some underwear and he said "Now I get to be just like Preston!"  I just love that! 

The process is only about half done as we still haven't tackled the "other issue" but I am very encouraged that he has done so well on his first day.  Way to go Owen!

Catch-up

Wow, it's been a while since I posted on here.  My apologies.  It's not for lack of wanting to, it's more that life just got busy and before I knew it, it had been a month since I posted!  Well, for the good news, we sold our house!  We accepted an offer the end of February and were supposed to close last week but things got held up so now we are closing 2 weeks late!  At this point, I don't really care as long as the buyers are solid (which they are).  We were able to get pretty close to what we were hoping for out of the house.  I think when we put it up for sale we said X is our bottom dollar and it ended up being $1000 above that once we paid all the realtor fees and closing costs, etc.  So we are counting ourselves very blessed considering the current housing market.  We also will be staying in the Noblesville house until June 30th because the new owners have a lease they can't get out of until then so they are renting it back to us for 3 months.  That will give us some more pooltime and friend time!

We just got done with spring break.  The first part of spring break was pretty rough because Preston was begging to go to school and was so bored.  Wednesday we left for the farm and were out there until Sunday.  The kids loved getting to see the chickens and "their dog," BJ.  They still claimed to be bored at times but we got the playroom in the farmhouse all nice and kid friendly and they seemed to have a good time.  Friday Wes took the day off so we went exploring.  We went to Brownsburg and Avon and then stopped and got some ice cream at the local dairy bar.  If I could figure out how to afford living with neither one of us having a job, I would do it!  I love hanging out with Wes and the kids together.  We also had a bonfire.  I wouldn't call it a good one because we didn't realize that when you put wet logs a fire all you get is a bunch of smoke!  I know...we are wilderness losers.

  My parents came this weekend and then we had the huge project of getting 42 trees planted for the orchard.  I wasn't there for about half the time but everyone there worked their tails off!  Mike and Jashawn came from Noblesville to help out too which was so nice!  It took about 9-10 hours to dig all of the holes and plant all of the trees.  I would be lying if I said that this is the kind of work I love doing.  I kept having to tell myself FREE APPLES!  FREE PEARS!!  FREE CHERRIES!!  You know how I love free.  Well, I guess the trees weren't free, but you get the idea!

Our neighbor at the farm is an old farmer who used to own the land that Sara now owns.  He came over and took the two boys out on his 4-wheeler.  They had SO much fun!  Preston kept saying "I need to do that again!!"  Maybe someday we can get our own 4-wheeler.

Easter Sunday we tried out a new church in Avon that we really liked and then we headed for Anderson.  It was about an hour and 15 minute drive from Avon.  It's always nice to see Wes' side of the family and makes me wish we got up there more often!

I know I keep promising pictures and I never deliver!  I take them on my sister's camera and then I always run out of time and don't get around to emailing them to myself!  Sorry about that!  Hope everyone else had a wonderful Easter celebrating the wonderful gift of Jesus!