Happy Halloween

I love Halloween.

Love, love, love it.

I'm realizing that what started the initiation of this love for Hallow's Eve, are the very things, as a mother, I dread my own children falling in love with it for.

Seeing as my parents read this blog and I fear I've already said too much….

 I'm just going to let the pictures take it from here…

Happy Halloween!!

Duck Tales

I don't know why we have ducks… we don't even have a pond or live near water…

Picking up our chicks last spring, I got an 11th hour text from Nate asking if I would grab two ducks too. I'm not a long term, commitment making, spontaneous person, but on that day, for whatever reason, I grabbed two ducks as well.

And let me tell you what… If you haven't experienced a baby duck first hand, they are the cutes, little bits of sweetness you will ever be so lucky to lay your eyes on.

There cuteness doesn't last forever. In fact, baby ducks turn into big ducks… as our luck would have it, in this case one male duck, one female duck.

I'm going to skip through the details and jump right over to the part where our female duck started to lay eggs…. in the beginning of fall…. when in Norther Maine it starts getting cold… signs of winter's approach are being noted… and in my opinion a piss poor egg laying time.

I feed our ducks, clean the poop of our ducks, fill a kid's plastic swimming pool, as a make shift pond, for our ducks, stand for arm cramping periods of time with the hose spraying just so for them to blissfully play in the water's spray….. I love our ducks… the ducks do not love me… and now they had eggs in an area, I tend to daily.

Did you know ducks can hiss? Did you know they have it in their nature to crouch real low, spread their feathers out real wide, making them look twice their size, and are rather swift when it comes to darting in an attack for your face?

Last Thursday, I was voicing my concern about these unhatched baby eggs to a friend. The typical 22 day hatch period had long passed, the coop needed to be winterized, and these eggs very well could be just that, eggs. Friday night, these eggs hatched into six beautiful little bits of sweetness.

The kids were as excited as Christmas morning and I accepted the trust of Mother Nature to take care of ducklings born on the wrong end of the season…. Well I'm here to tell you that Mother Nature's way of taking care of things sucked and caused my boy to cry and experience one of reality's heart breaks. We were 2 ducks down with the other 4 not far behind in their fate.

This Mother did not approve and took over. I now have four ducklings in our house, two Sam hating parents outside, and a husband insulating these babies, someday, new home as I type.

We may not have a pond or even live near water, but we have ducks…. six of them… and we're all smitten.

Hasty Energy

I'm going to give you fair warning right now… I'm tired… so, so, so tired… not only am I tired, but I've misplaced my good ear buds and the ones I have in right now are killing my ears… That alone will kick the grumpy factor up a good 5.7 notches…

This last week has been both long and short… My writing tone within it wouldn't have been the most beneficial to anyone.

The words I would have compiled would have been the kind that did no good to compose, no good to read, just no good at all. They would have been a verbal ball of negative energy just thrown out there carelessly, without reason or purpose, nothing to grow from, nothing to declare a change within.

I don't want to be a hasty energy thrower, unless it's a building one. But this week, I would simply have been mirroring the exact behavior that has been thinning me the last month.. and not in that 'fitting into size 4 jeans' thinning way either…

People do what they do, year round… which unfortunately, a majority consists of throwing their negative energy out there, hastily… a majority of the time I'm good at deflecting it, but right now, I'm the most vulnerable when receiving the not so positive vibes, from the chronically not so positive people….

and I'm tired.

Random Is As Random Does

My intention was to jump on here, before leaving for the night last Friday, throw together a post with some pictures from last, last weekend's trip to the corn maze and get it off my mind.

However, the two hours before I was suppose to meet up with my group to head south, I had to throw together and drop off brownies, upload pictures for a {thankfully} patient client, participate in a mammogram texting conversation {ok, I didn't actually have to do that, but it was too funny not to}, submit a pending picture order, pack the kids for my parent's, scrub the toilets before I left {don't ask, I just always have to, it's my thing ok}, all while being turned into a frog, by the most beautiful and magical princess in the land.

And because I don't really have a good way of transitioning back to the post, I was gonna post, that I never did post, about the corn maze, I'll throw some pictures up now…. {the rest you can see HERE}… and let me add by saying, I couldn't be more in love that my kid's have a Berry side cousin… I'm pretty sure my babes love it too.

This passed weekend's Dempsey Challenge was great. I honestly didn't know how well I would do in the run, I have been sitting in front of my computer, eating bag, after bag, after bag of peanut butter M&M's editing pictures for the last month and I hadn't run in two weeks, but I'm happy to report that I ran a whole minute under my 30 minute goal and surpassed my monetary goal by $190.00, thanks to the generosity of others. If you ask me, there was no coincident Mumford's 'Lover of the Light' streamed on, crossing the finish line…. it was a good day.  

But the house's health has seen better ones, we've already had our fair share of sickness. I'm hoping we are just getting it out of the way now and will be all set and healthy the rest of the cold, wintery months… wishful thinking? perhaps.

But these cold, wintery days are pulling me back into the kitchen for longer than it takes to season some ground beef and start of the grill… I'm love, love, loving the sensory therapy it provides.

Speaking of colder weather, sessions have been busting at the seems. The air's chill has a way of panicking people into booking before the snow flies… That is not a complaint.

Right now, Wesley's camped out on the couch, Joey is still sleeping {not a good sign}, and Calvin is pounding down some waffles between coughing fits. We'll embark on another week of trying to get some leveling with it all, as basketball starts up tomorrow.

Monday morning coffee cheers to you having better luck at finding this balance, than us!