Ever since the chicken massacre last month, my poor chickens have been confined to their coop and small covered run. They haven't been able to venture out in the yard anymore because I couldn't take it if more of them were killed. And boy have they been mad at me! They were used to free-ranging from morning till night. They didn't understand why I was being mean and not letting them out anymore.


This weekend we finally got around to building them a new run. This one is about 4 times as big as their old one. It's basically just a fenced in area where they can be safe and have more room. Right now there is plenty of grass in there, but I am sure they will take care of that for me, lol!


They were so happy when we finally finished and opened the door to their new run. They can bask in the sun again, scratch in the grass, and just have tons more room to run around. The hens seemed especially happy to have more room. Probably so they could get away from the roosters! It's so wonderful for them to have the room they need now. I still wish they could free-range, but I can't take that heartache again.


This is George, he was hurt in the attack and lost all his tail feathers. They are starting to grow back and his "little" tail is so cute!

My family was given the opportunity to try Yoplait for Kids yogurt. They have several different varieties to choose from. We picked the triple cherry/wild blueberry Trix yogurt. I hate to admit this, but neither of my kids had ever tried yogurt. I always thought it was yucky. But, I hadn't had any since I was a child.


I was quite surprised by the taste of the Trix yogurt, it was actually good! My 19 month old wanted to try it, but he wanted to use the spoon by himself. He thinks he's a big boy. So, most of the yogurt got on him and the floor. But, what he got in his mouth, he did seem to like. My older son is 11 and he was very skeptical about trying it. He loved it and asked for more. This is very surprising for him because he is so picky. I guess I'll be buying more soon!


Yoplait wants kids to get more exercise, so they are letting me give 3 of these Yoplait Get Active Prize packs away. It includes a travel cooler, jump rope, water bottle and an outdoor game set with a beach ball, paddle ball, Jai-Ali, and a frisbee. Just in time for warmer weather! The winners will also receive a coupon* for any of the Yoplait for Kids yogurt products like Go-Gurt, Trix, and Yoplait Kids.

To print a coupon for Yoplait go here.

Although everyone in the US is eligible to win this awesome Get Active Prize pack-
*This coupon offer for a free six pack of Yoplait for Kids yogurt is not valid in some states, including Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota and Tennessee.



Since some people don't want to leave their email in the comments, I am trying something different this time.
The only way to enter to win is by filling out the above form. Thanks!
Giveaway ends at midnight on Thursday April 2. Winner will have 48 hours to get back in touch with me or I will have to draw again.

Thanks Yoplait and My Blog Spark!

Over the weekend, my blog received a wonderful makeover. Sara from Subjective Beauty worked her magic and came up with this new design for me. I know I worried Sara to death with my questions and changes. But, she was so sweet and helped me to get my blog just the way I wanted it. If you ever want a blog makeover of your own, please go see Sara. Her services are very affordable and every design is custom made to order. She said mine was the first blog she did with a country theme, and look what a great job she did! I love it! What about y'all, do you like my new and improved blog? I'm sorry to say the writing won't improve with the redesign, lol!

One of the winners did not get back in touch with me on the Fiber One Spa Basket Giveaway. It is very important to make sure I can contact you in the event you win. I put the numbers in again and this is the winning comment:

We got our strawberry plants just in time to plant them before the rain. And boy has it been raining here lately. Every week days of rain! I really miss the sun!



The strawberry plants came in these bags. Twenty five plants were in each bag. They are very small, with roots and just a little green on the top.


We planted them in a bed right beside the garden. It will take at least a year until they will produce strawberries. I really hope I can keep them alive that long. Strawberries are one of our favorite things. I would love to be able to make some strawberry jam for my son someday. He loves homemade jam.

I just drew the winners of my Fiber One Chocolate Mocha Chewy Bars Spa Break Gift Basket via random.org.

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

19
2
16

Timestamp: 2009-03-26 15:11:44 UTC

The Winners are:

#19 Carolina Mama
#2 Quanton
#16 Amber

Congratulations! Each person has 48 hours to get back to me, or I will have to draw another name.

My next giveaway will be a great one for kids! Come back sometime next week to enter.

Yep, you read that right! This year we are making our first garden. My family always had a garden when I was growing up. I just never really wanted to work in one since then. But, this year we are going to give it a try. I bought these seeds on special buy $25 get $25 free. The strawberries and flowers I ordered with it haven't come yet.


I have been reading up on blogs and different sites for advice on our garden. I also have great friends who have shared their knowledge to help us get started. They have 1/3 of an acre and a lot of that is their garden. They have been really wonderful answering all my strange and possibly dumb questions.


My husband borrowed a plow so he could till up the land and he made the garden bigger than I think we will need, just in case. My oldest son and I picked the weeds, roots, and rocks out of it the next day. At which point I said I don't think I want a garden anymore. That is hard work, lol! My sweet friend said at least it's exercise and you might even lose weight.


I planted some lettuce about a week and a half ago in a container that I could bring in if there was a freeze, which there was late last week. The little lettuce leaves are already starting to pop up out of the soil. Yay!


What about y'all, are you having a garden this year? If you've got any tips for me, please let me know!

****Don't forget to enter my giveaway, it ends tomorrow!

Since I don't work anymore, we don't have money to spare for car repairs. My husband has a 94 Pickup truck and I have a 94 van. As you can imagine, being so old, our cars need frequent repairs. Thankfully, my husband can do most of them for us.

He's not a real mechanic, he watched his dad work on cars growing up, and learned a few things. What he doesn't know he learns. Whenever we buy a new (really old) car, he buys a manual on fixing that particular vehicle. They aren't that expensive, maybe around $20 at the auto parts store. He has found these books invaluable to him in working on our many problems.

This weekend he changed the oil in both our cars, put in new air filters, rebuilt a carburetor for a friend, and put on back brakes for the same friend. He doesn't always get it right the first time, but he tries until he does. Best of all, I think he's fixed my van which broke down right before our Disney trip. He wasn't sure it was fixable, but he changed the thermostat, and it seems to be working now!

Thanks Ronnie! You are the best mechanic ever!

Our homeschool group had an Educational Fair last week. It was similar to an old fashioned science fair. Each student chose a state to explore in depth. Then they made a presentation on that state. They also made a dish native to the state they chose, so we could sample them.


My son, Mitchell, chose Hawaii. It was interesting to learn some new things about Hawaii that I didn't know. For instance, did you know Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in the world if measured from the base of the Pacific Ocean to it's peak? I also learned that Kilauea has been spewing lava continously since 1983. That is really cool!


I learned a lot from the displays by other children. Some of my favorites were Georgia, Florida, and Missouri. It was a very fun night. They even had a train for little ones to take a pretend trip around the country. Everyone who participated got a certificate with a blue ribbon.

While I was gone to Disney having fun, I didn't realize I had won a giveaway I entered. Carolina Mama sponsors Win It Wednesday, and I had entered to win the Whole Hearted Education Book. I was surprised and elated to find out I won!

The book comes comes from the folks at WholeHeart.org. Educating the WholeHearted Child is a book about using real books and real life in homeschooling Christian children. I can't wait to read it and find out more!

Thanks Carolina Mama and WholeHeart.org!

Do you like rich chocolate and smooth coffee flavor? Then, you'll love new Fiber One Chocolate Mocha Chewy bars! Are you getting enough fiber in your daily diet? If you're not sure, you can check out the Fiber-O-Meter and find out. Just one of these new Fiber One bars will give you 35% of the recommended daily allowance of fiber. They are also a wonderful source of calcium.

I was given the opportunity to try new Fiber One Chocolate Mocha Chewy bars for My Blog Spark. They do have a coffee like smell and taste, so if you love coffee, I'm sure you'll love these. My husband gobbled them up! I barely got one bar, he loved them so much!


Would you like to try them too? Fiber One is letting me give 3 of these Spa Break gift baskets away. Each basket will contain a bath pillow, bath salts, a coffee scented candle, chocolate scented soap and lotion, and a coupon for a free box of Fiber One Chocolate Mocha Chewy bars. How awesome does that sound?

There are 4 ways to enter-

1. Leave me a comment saying why you need a spa break.

2. Follow me on twitter and tweet about this giveaway and leave a link to your tweet.

3. Blog about this giveaway and link back to this post.

4. Follow my blog. If you already follow me, you will be automatically entered.

*For each entry you are doing, please leave a separate comment.
*Giveaway is for US residents only. I do hope to have something else for my other readers soon!
*Giveaway will end at midnight on Wednesday March 25.
*Make sure I have a way to get in touch with you if you win.

If you can't wait to try new Fiber One Chocolate Mocha Chewy Bars, you can download a coupon for $1.35 off a box here.

Good Luck!

There just has been so much going on lately. My head is still spinning!

Last week we were busy doing a school project for our homeschool group's educational fair. I hope to be able to post more about that later.

My husband's grandpa had been sick for about a month. But, this last week, he had stopped eating. So, we knew he wouldn't be here much longer. My husband has been up there a lot lately, trying to help out. He came home after midnight Saturday night and we got the call Sunday morning at 5:22 that he had passed away.

Since then we have been up there all the time. I made a picture dvd to play last night at the viewing. Everyone loved it and wanted a copy to keep for themselves. So, that is something else I will have to get to soon.

Today grandpa was buried with a military funeral. He is at peace now, after suffering for a while. I know he is happy to be with his wife who he had missed for quite some time.

I had wanted to post a giveaway yesterday, but maybe I will be able to do it sometime tomorrow.

Skeeter and the Mystery of the Lost Mosquito Treasure would be a wonderful addition to a children's church library. It's part of a series of dvds by Max Lucado, that help teach about morals to young children. I think I would enjoy seeing some of the other dvds also.

My son who is 19 months seemed to think it was cute. My older son, who is almost 12, thought it was kind of boring, though. I think it would be better suited for kids under 10.

It is the story of brothers and how different they are and how special each of them are. One of the brothers, who are mosquitoes, seems to be perfect and everyone loves him. However, the other brother has a very crooked stinger. He feels unloved and he can't even fly straight. The perfect brother is in search of a treasure, but needs help from someone. The only person who ends up being able to help him is his brother with the crooked stinger.

The story is based a couple verses from Psalms about being unique. It is a great story to watch with young kids. The dvd opens up time for discussion with kids about values and how everyone is special in their own way. I would recommend this to anyone with small children. It would especially be a great dvd for a church.

You can buy or read more about this dvd at Amazon.

I know y'all thought you were done with my vacation pictures! But, I didn't tell you about Sea World. I promise no more after this!


Sharks! That's what we saw in the underwater tunnels at the Shark Encounter.


This is me and my husband riding the Journey to Atlantis ride. It's a roller coaster and water log-type ride. Really cool, but also really wet. And it was cold first thing in the morning! We are in the front.


I love these stingrays. They feel so neat. We fed them fish, so we could pet them.


Here is the whole family for once. The Clydesdales are so beautiful!


We saw the Sea Lion and otter show, it's one of my favorites. We also visited Pacific Point Preserve, where we saw this guy.


The whale and dolphin show was interesting. They had all different kinds of birds in the show too.


Here is a video of the dolphin feeding. Hunter really loved them!



If you want to see any more videos I took in Florida, you can see them here.

Our last Disney park was Animal Kingdom. We did a few things this time that I had never done here. We saw the Finding Nemo Show and The Legend of the Lion King Show. The Nemo show bored me to tears. But, I'm not a real artsy type person. After watching it, I was worried I wouldn't like the Lion King show. I loved it, though! It was really cool with lots of dancers, songs, and gymnastics. I love gymnastics!


I love the roller coasters and Animal Kingdom has an awesome one called Expedition Everest. That's me in the front seat with Barb's daughter Alli. Barb is in the seat behind her daughter. If you'll notice, I think my mouth is wide open in all of the pictures of me on rides. Just screaming like a girl, y'all!


This is the Tree of Life. Inside is a 3-D show called It's Tough to Be a Bug. Hunter did not like this show at all. I took him out about half way through it. He is just not a fan of loud noises. Children are so different. Mitchell loved this show when he was little.


We also went on both walking trails to see different animals. I love the bats.


Check out the insanely tall bamboo. I want some of this for my yard. What a neat privacy fence.


This is my husband, Hunter, and me on the Kilimanjaro Safari ride.


Here is a video of part of the Safari. The video is kind of long and shaky since we were in a moving vehicle.

The next park we went to was Disney's Hollywood Studios. There are a lot of great rides here. The newest one is Toy Story Mania. It's a really cool ride where you shoot things carnival style, but in 3-D. Sorry, I don't have any pictures of this one.


One of my favorites is The Great Movie Ride. Here are the kids in front of it.


The kids loved Star Tours, it's about Star Wars.


Hunter thought Lightning McQueen was really cool!


Here we are in front of a New York street scene.


In the studios they have a restaurant where you can eat in a car and watch cheesy old movies. We didn't eat in the restaurant, but me and Barb did get a picture of us in the car out front.


My favorite ride of all at Disney's Hollywood Studios is The Rock 'n' Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith. It's an awesome upside down coaster where you are in a limo trying to get to an Aerosmith concert. I totally love it!


Come back tomorrow for Animal Kingdom!