Chickens and Turtles and Nests, Oh My!

Spring has arrived here in Texas.  I see baby horses and cows every time I drive into town and the air is full of allergy-inducing pollen to "delight" the senses.  About a month ago I bought some beautiful flowers to go on our porch so our house wouldn't look so drab next to our over industrious yard working neighbors well kept plots:

(This isn't an accurate pic of our house...Patrick has since torn all of those bushes out save a small ornamental one on the corner.)

A few days before Easter we bought some baby chicks:

Isabelle named them: Pizza, Music, Happy, and Potato. 

They've since grown rather large:

Pizza and Music are the big brown ones and Happy and Potato the smaller black ones.  While they've been living on our back porch, Patrick has been building them a bigger coop out behind the garage/barn next to our mulch pile:

It's nearly done and I'm sure they'll like it much better. 
Earlier this month our adventurous turtle started escaping from his rocklined pond that Patrick made him:

We've found him in the far reaches of the yard, but we have always found him...that is until two weeks ago.  After realizing we hadn't seen him in a couple of days we started looking...and looking...and looking.  But alas it seems our beloved family pet of 16 years has finally heeded the call of the wild and gone on a grand adventure from which he may never return.  Hopefully he is having the time of his life, making turtle friends and little turtle babies, and not squished on the side of the road somewhere.  Bye Golly!!

Last week while watering my plants I discovered that one of the ferns and one of the flowers had nests in them! 

The fern had 2 baby birds and 3 eggs in it when I first discovered it.  This shouldn't have been a surprise as a bird seems to fly away from it every time I get near.  The flowers had just a nest, in the final stages of completion.  Now, a week later,  the fern has five baby birds in it.  They are very tiny, but growing fast.  When I first saw them, the oldest were no bigger than the last joint in my finger...they're not much bigger now:

The flower nest has since been completed.  Tuesday there was one egg in it and as of today there are now two.  They seem to be the same type of bird as the fern layer. 

I try to be extra careful when watering my plants now so I don't douse the babies, and I keep checking the remaining ones for signs of habitation, but I think they'll remain vacant for the time being. 

It's been heating up here, today being the worst so far, in my opinion, as it is incredibly humid outside and I've had to turn on the a/c.  I hear there's snow in Utah.  I'm not sure which I'd rather have. ;)
  

So there you have it.  Springtime at the Thadens!

Yeah I know...

I suck at updating. Now we're so far behind I don't know what to write...birthdays? Easter? New beds? Pets? Flowers? Today it will be birthdays since I already said I'd write about that. All of the birthdays in our family except Henry occur during the first three months of the year. Patrick's is Jan 10th, Isabelle's Jan 20th, James Feb 20th and mine is March 7th. So we have non-stop parties at our house during those months or so it seems. Here are some pics:

First was Patricks birthday. He turned 34 this year. We didn't have a big party and he opted for dinner out with the family as his birthday plan. We had cheesecake for the cake since he loves it:

he got lots of cool iron type books.

Next up was Isabelle's 4th birthday.  She decided she wanted to have a "Pinkalicious Party" after getting that book for Christmas.   We told everyone to wear their favorite princess dress or pink clothes.  Here's what Isabelle wore: 

we decorated the whole house, but here's a pic of just the dining room

we had pizza and pink lemonade and pink cupcakes....

Next up was James's birthday.  He turned two....and was very sick, so doesn't look as happy as he could have been..

 Here's his fancy robot cake I made....before it got squished by saranwrap....

James wanted French toast for his dinner....

one of his favorite presents was a firetruck that flashes lights and makes noise.

My 29th birthday was next.  We didn't do much...we had yummy cake, presents, and Patrick and I went to go see Avatar in 3-D.

Here's me with some of my presents...Isabelle took both of these pictures btw.

  So there you have it.  The Thaden birthday extravaganza.  Sorry there's not many words....I'm trying to catch up on posts, and pictures seems to be the easiest way.

Ward Talent Show

I promise I'll do a "real" post sometime next week after the last of our birthdays is over.  Until then here is a video of me at our ward talent show...just before the batteries in our camera died.  I was really tired that day, which is my excuse for slowing down so much on the chorus. ;)

Where's my doctor?!

Here's the easter egg from the "Blink" episode of Doctor Who for those of you also going through David Tennant, aka "the Doctor" withdrawal:



and here's a funny Scottish kid talking back to him:



That show rocks...if anyone wants to pool their money and spring for one of the Doctor Who seasons as a surprise birthday present for me that would be cool. But they're freak'n expensive so I'm not really expecting it. ;)

First "real" Haircut.

When my mom was here over Christmas we took Isabelle to Quick Clips (or something) to get her first real haircut.  My mom and I have both cut her hair before, but this mainly consisted of trimming her bangs.  Her hair has been getting longer, but it is so fine that it looked scraggly and messy all the time...within a minute of combing it it would look all stringy again.  I thought maybe a shorter cut would help this.  For her part, Isabelle has been obsessesed with Victor from the Corpse Bride. 

She wants to BE Victor.  So she has been asking if she could get her hair cut like his.  I agreed, figuring that anything shorter than what she had could be considered "like Victor".    So the big day came.

 My mom and me took Isabelle and the two boys to the hair salon. 

I was getting a trim and some layers put in so I went first so she could see how it was done.  She didn't seem very interested.  I was worried she would squirm and cry and change her mind halfway through.  I should have known better.  Isabelle hasn't ever been very sentimental about girly things like her hair, even though I keep expecting her to. 

(completely unrelated: check out the stylist's fuschia and florescent green chipped nails, pink hair streaks, pierced nose and lip ring.  I honestly didn't notice any of this at the time...)

She sat right down in the seat, held still, tilted her head when asked and when she was done she thought it was awesome.  She went around telling everyone she looked just like Victor now!

 It does look much better.  It curls under all on it's own and doesn't need a bow or anything to look cute.  So all in all I'd say the first haircut was a success!

This is about as messy as it gets....  What do you think?

Dining Room: Before and After

So we've spent the last two weeks frantically (at least on my part) trying to finish the dining room before company comes and so we could put up our Christmas stuff.  It had wallpaper and we had avoided this room 'cuz it was really, really hard to strip the paper.  We finally decided to paint over it.  In order to do this we had to primer it with special shellac primer that goes on wallpaper, then Patrick textured it to look similar to the rest of the house, then primered again this time with regular primer and finally paint.  Here are some pics:

Before:

The one of James is the before pic...in the background.  It was the best I could find.  We've switched computers recently and I don't know where all of my old pics are.

We had to cut out the bottom of one of the built-in bookcases so we could put the piano against that wall too.

This is after we've done the first coat of primer, but before the texturing.

Patrick priming after texturing, the night before he has to leave on a business trip....

Ready for paint.

The drama of the bookshelves begins.  I thought the darker green would look good...but was overwhelmed by way too much green....so I bought yellow paint...that was awful.  It looked like a preschooler colored our room...I didn't take a picture.  Then I bought a gold/wheat color.  That was much better:

This is before we put up the Christmas stuff.

After (don't laugh at our tiny table and mismatched chairs, we're working on it...):

and here's a shot of just our tree...the big 9 footer we got to match our 11 1/2 foot ceilings (we thought our 6 /12 foot tree might just look silly).

So there you have it.  The result of nearly two weeks of 2-3am nights.  What do you think?

Here is Henry's reaction to the whole ordeal:

Coming Sometime in the forseeable future: Hallway: Before and After, Baby's Room Hallway addition: Before and After.