from Moline, IL

I can't get onto Facebook from this hotel computer, so I thought I'd type a little something here on my blog. So far, we've travelled at least half-way across the country and are on our way to OH tomorrow where my brother and his family live.

We had a great time visiting with Denis' sister in Nebraska. We spent a day with the nephew who has two little girls. We went to a museum and then a winery. We found out that a "dry red" in Nebraska means a sweet red in Oregon. We will be flying out there in October for our neice's wedding.

We stayed one night with Denis' folks in Iowa. Then tonight had a really nice time at dinner with three couples that Denis used to go to church with when he lived here. It was great getting to meet some of his friends who were so close.

Tomorrow, we should have just a 6 hour drive to get to Ohio and hope to make it there in time for my nephew's baseball game. That's it for now!

Been so busy!

Hello my friends! I know that I have been very negligent in keeping up my blog of late. I guess it's been over a month now since I last posted. Here's a bit of an update on what's been keeping me so busy these last weeks.

Chicken update: the baby chicks are now a little over 3 weeks old. Our original plan to have a broody hen mother them didn't work out. The hen pictured below didn't take them, so we did a quick hen trade the first night that we brought the babies home. The second hen took them initially, but then didn't know what to do. She had never raised a brood of chicks before. So we've been taking care of them ourselves. It's been fun, but a bit time consuming. Our weather has been getting pretty hot during the day, but cold at night. There were a few nights that we were worried that it would get too cold out in the coop. But they have all survived so far. They are going outside now and really enjoying eating the grasses and weeds in their little enclosed space.

Work: I've had a bit of a perfect storm of responsibilities at work in the last two weeks. I have a chart review project that I've been trying to work on for the last month. But my manager wants me to prioritize it now and get it done. I worked extra days the last two weeks, covering for a coworker's vacation and then going in on my days off to start three new insulin pumps. Starting a new insulin pump always means receiving multiple pages. So I've been getting paged almost daily by three different people for the last week. All making Tracy a bit scattered.

What's next: Now, I finally have a somewhat normal week coming up and we have to get prepared for our big road trip. We'll leave one week from today and we're taking my car which is a MESS. I'd like to get it into the shop for a look-over. Got to clean the house so it's ready for our house-sitter, cat company-keeper, chicken wrangler extraordinaire. We thought that the chicks would add a bit much extra work for just my mom. Between the two of them, things should go smoothly.

I'll be very ready for the vacation. :o)

Project chicken continues

So, if you have been following our ongoing saga of getting set up to have chickens for fresh eggs, you know that we have progressed through a couple of stages already.

Stage 1 - gather information, read books, talk to friends, find out legalities, etc.

Stage 2 - obtain a coop and a location for it. Done

Now we have moved on to stages 3, 4 and 5.

Stage 3 - decide what breeds we want and if we want to buy adults or raise chicks. We decided to raise chicks so that we could get the specific breeds that we want. We ordered our baby chicks from a local store and we will pick them up THIS WEDNESDAY (and I mean it this time...) We're getting two chicks each of three different breeds; Barred Rock, Americauna and Rhode Island Red. We're also hoping that we can get a hen to raise our chicks so that we won't have to do quite as much work.

Stage 4 - borrow a broody hen from a friend. Enter the hen in question!

One of my coworkers loaned us this hen who has been broody (sitting on eggs hoping for chicks to hatch) for about a month. I have named her Henrietta Penelope Cluckbottom (Henny Penny for short).
She came to us sitting on two real eggs and one glass egg in a pet carrier. Do you notice anything wrong with this picture? one, two, three real eggs and one glass egg. Yep! Henny Penny laid a new egg. This means that she's not broody any more. She's snapped out of it.


I didn't realize that when I opened up the door to the coop to have a little chat with her on Saturday. And when she decided to step outside, I wasn't too worried. My coworker told me that a broody hen will go outside for a while, but go back to her eggs pretty quickly.


We started to worry about 30 minutes later when Henny Penny showed no interest in returning to her nest. She decided to roam around our garden instead. She quite enjoyed a little dust bath amongst the garlic plants. We shooed her away from the small lettuce, radishes and pea plants in another planting bed, however.


After about an hour of exploring the area, Henny decided that her favorite spot was underneath the coop. So we decided that it was time to move onto
Stage 5 - complete the enclosed chicken run. We hoped to make it all the way around the coop with the chicken wire to catch her inside. Here we are 1/2 way around.

At 3/4 around, Denis thought we might be able to corner her into the enclosed portion and shoo her back inside the coop. He blocked the way out while I did the shooing (after taking a picture).

No good. Henny was determined to stay outside. After more than 30 days sitting on those darn eggs, she wanted to enjoy the sunshine! So we kept going. We managed to get all the way around with the chicken wire which she stayed under the coop.

Aha! We've got you Henny Penny Cluckbottom! Now you will stay inside your enclosure like a good chicken...

We had to leave Henny in her enclosure because we had a game night to attend. We left my mom in charge of checking on Henny and shutting her coop door once she finally decided to go inside for the night. We didn't find out until the next day that Mom found Mrs. Cluckbottom OUTSIDE her enclosure. That's right, she'd flown the coop! But she happily marched into the coop once the door was opened up for her. On Sunday, a tarp was added to cover the top of the chicken run. A permanent roof will be added on Saturday.

Okay, the good news is that Henny is sitting on her eggs during the night. I find her there when I close up the coop for the night and I find her there in the morning when I open it up. My coworker thinks that is a good sign as hens generally ignore their eggs entirely if they are not broody. We're hoping that Henny will still take the chicks. Just two more days, Henny. Hang in there!

A nice busy weekend.

This past weekend was really busy in a good way. Friday and Saturday, I attended our Oregon Diabetes Educator association's annual conference, which is an opportunity to get a lot of continuing education credits that I will need to renew my certification in a few years. The topics this year were quite good and I enjoyed the company of my coworkers who also attended. Some of the subjects this year were:

• Continuous Glucose Monitoring - what it is and how to use the info (This is the latest tool that we have for managing diabetes, it's not used widely yet, but we believe that it will change how we treat the disease in the coming years.)
• Why your patients hate to test their blood glucose and what you can do about it. (This was presented by a psychologist who specializes in Diabetes issues.)
• Diabetes and Exercise. (presented by a very fun physical therapist)
• Inpatient Glycemic control (This is very applicable to my job, especially the special projects that I work on)
• Current trends and controversies in nutrition
• Type 2 diabetes in children (a growing problem in the US!)

I learned a lot and came home inspired to make some changes in my own eating habits.

While I was at the conference on Saturday, Denis helped out at a disability ministry event sponsored by our local chapter of Joni and Friends. I think I heard that over 30 people from our own church volunteered at this event, which is so exciting and encouraging. It was a great opportunity for people to get some experience with this type of ministry. On Sunday, a few special guests from JAF came to our church to speak and it was great to get to speak with them afterwards to keep "picking their brains" about how to keep things growing at our church. They were asking Denis and I if we would like to go to the July family camp as the medical personnel. Please pray for us for this. We would really like to do it, but will have just used up three weeks of vacation pay for our June trip cross-country. It would be a significant financial cost to us when you consider the lost pay.

After church Sunday, we bought our last supplies for the chicks - food and water containers, chick feed and wood chips. Denis has been working on the enclosure, so I'll post pictures of the finished coop when he's all done. And of course, chick pictures will have to be posted!

Some attempts at art

Here are some pictures that I have taken in the last year. They were all taken around the Rogue River which is a world0-class fishing and rafting river here in Southern Oregon.

Adventures in cooking

One of Kristina's three questions last week was "What do you like to cook/bake?" In pondering my answer, it occurred to me that there is a difference for me between "what do you cook often?" and "what do you like to cook?"

The food that I cook often is stuff that I like to eat or whatever is easy. I get stuck in ruts and just do the same stuff over and over. But what I like to cook/bake is whatever is new and adventurous. I like experimentation. When people have company over, usually they cook something familiar so that they know it will turn out well. When I have company come, I usually pick something new to cook that I have never made. It's a good excuse to open up my cookbooks or magazines and try something new.

However, this makes me tend toward buying new cookbooks but then only making a few recipes out of it before I get tired of that particular method. Sigh... Well, my newest adventure is making yogurt and I was successful last night. It's pretty good. We'll see if I find this skill useful enough to make it a regular habit.

My last adventure was inspired by Christine Jolly. She wrote about this book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (on facebook, not on her blog). You make up the dough and store it in the fridge, then use it as desired for two weeks. Here's what the dough looks like

The yummiest creation was the sticky rolls. Here they are rising.

and the finished product!

I did learn I need a better container for storing my dough and I need a plan for how I will use up all the dough/bread. So this book is not in use at the moment.

The chicken plan progresses

After about a year of Denis researching and planning how he wanted to build our chicken coop, we got a phone call tip from my coworker who's an organic farmer and lover of chickens. She had seen a ready-made coop on the sales lot of a local company that makes backyard sheds. So we went to check it out one Sunday when we could snoop around without getting a lot of sales man pressure. The coop was very sturdily made, seemed to be pretty raccoon-proof, etc. Denis predicted it would be priced at $1200. The following day, I went to get the price. Surprisingly enough, they only wanted $800 for the finished, painted coop! Denis honestly didn't think he could do as good a job for as cheaply, so we decided to go ahead and purchase. It was delivered on Friday.

We had our custom made with just a couple of minor adjustments - our chicken door and ladder are on a different wall than the original and we had the latch changed so that it can be locked. After AM's horror encounter with a raccoon, we are particularly concerned that our coop be raccoon proof.

Here is the backside. All openings are lockable with a padlock except the ventilation window on the front. It has a sliding latch, but there is strong mesh covering the opening, so we don't think a raccoon would be able to pull it off. Still to do:

• paint the exterior to match our house. We have left-over yellow paint to match. We'll need to get more green made up.
• paint the interior for easier maintenance.
• install the roost where our gals will relax. The original had a mesh roost which is not the style recommended in our chicken books.
  
• Denis has to build a chicken run, fully enclosed so that they are protected from dogs and such during the day when we are not there.
• in the future, he will put a fence around a larger area so that they can be let out to forage - better eggs.

Here's the interior.
Denis also wants to lay VCT flooring which will make it easier to clean. Don't you think the hens will appreciate the stylish black and white flooring?

What I learned at Joni and Friends Summit

Denis and I had the privilege of attending a Joni and Friends training summit in Pasadena, CA along with 6 other folks from our church this past weekend. We went to learn from people in other churches who already have more mature disability ministry programs up and running. The days were full of different workshops with a variety of topics, so we took a "divide and conquer" strategy. These are some of the take home points for me:

• People with disabilities need the church - they need to be told that God loves them, Jesus understands their pain and that hope is only found in Him.
• The church needs people with disabilities - people who have been to the end of themselves, looked suffering and self-pity in the face and learned the long-suffering patience of putting their faith in God have a powerful testimony that we all need to be exposed to. Not only that, but we need the opportunity to give without being repaid. I don't think I really had a vision of this until one of the workshops about ministering to adults with disabilities. Sometimes, it may not be as much about the people we serve getting so much out of it from our perspective, but that we can put ourselves aside without earthly reward.
• We are VERY blessed that our pastor is the one who initiated our disability ministry. Most of the attendees were struggling to get their church's attention on the need for a disability focus. They were very envious of our position. Our church is already leaps and bounds ahead of some because our pastor is enthusiastically promoting it from the pulpit.
• It's not necessary to have all the answers or programs in place to get started - most of the mature programs started with just meeting a couple of needs as they arose, then growing from there.
• "Disability Ministry" doesn't have to be hard and intimidating. It's good to provide low-commitment opportunities for people to get involved. It's contagious and the desire to be involved will spread.

The icing on the cake was getting to hear Joni Eareckson-Tada speak in the closing session. I've admired her for many years. What a blessing!

Five Years Ago

Five years ago today, I was getting a manicure/pedicure with my matron-of-honor.

Five years ago today, Philip put a million bobby pins in my hair to keep the pretty flowers in place.Five years ago today, we had a wonderful time visiting with family and friends, some we had not seen in many years.

Five years ago today, I was this happy.

Five years ago today, Denis was this relieved that it was all over.

Five years ago today, we took vows to love and cherish each other, in good and bad, sickness and health, a serious covenant we were reminded of this week when we attended the beautiful wedding of our pastor's oldest son.

Five years ago today, we were pronounced husband and wife.

It's almost Christmas!

Well, it's Christmas Eve. The presents are all bought and (almost) all wrapped and under the tree. The cats are waiting for all the action to begin... I thought I'd put up a bit of Christmas music on the blog to get us all in the mood. These are all from Sufjan Steven's 5 disc set that we own. I love his sound - it's a nice change from the usual stuff. I hope you're having a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones around you.

Two weeks ago, we went to get our trees along with my mom.

Denis didn't have to work and it was so nice to have him along to man the saw. He's much stronger than my mom and I. We were very impressed with how quickly he muscled right through our little trees.

Here we are with our tree.

And here it is all decorated. Joey has not been messing with the tree as much this year. But he seems to really enjoy pine-scented water to drink... And a few ornaments have "fallen" off during the nights.