A Good Start

After spending a very quiet but enjoyable evening with some friends for New Year's Eve, we have had quite a productive day. I hope that's a good predictor of the year to come.

This morning a few good friends gathered to butcher the chickens. It's been a long awaited day. This was our first time, so Glade and Jake spent some time on YouTube looking at all the different ways to kill a chicken. They ended up with the 'hang them from a tree and cut their heads off' method. Quite disgusting. John was here to guide them with his expertise. I considered taking some pictures....but......well, Jake took a few so maybe I will steal some of theirs one day. All the little kids went to play at Shelli's house to avoid exposing them to the gore. Turns out, they would have been fine, but it really was for my comfort. Anyway, they did a great job and even filet-ed them so I have a bunch of ready to cook chicken in my freezer!

After that, Glade started on planting the new trees we got for Christmas. One Cottonwood, two Sissou and two apple trees. Our neighbor let us use his digger so it's going pretty quickly.

I spent the day taking down Christmas and trying to figure out my new Ipod. I have to admit here, it's pretty dang groovy. I lecture my boys all the time about not wasting their money on an Ipod when it's exactly like any other MP3. It's kinda not. It does a lot of things including video. I had to get one to make my Nike+ chip work so I got a used one on EBay for $100. It really only cost me $50 when I did some trading and returning. Anyway, it's been a fun little toy. It's a pedometer as well so I put it in my pocket for the afternoon and I have taken over 3000 steps. It's pretty accurate as well. I counted for awhile and then checked and it was always really close. Too fun.

Glade and I are going to run to Home Depot in a little bit to get a net to cover our chicken coup. They keep flying out and we lost one to a coyote because of it. Now they should be protected from hawks and coyotes. I think we will get more little chicks when the weather is warm and we don't have to keep them inside. We'll see.

So Happy New Year, so far so good. Let's hope for a fabulous year ahead. Lot's of big things happening this year for the Smith family!