Chicks, Chickens, and Chicken Pox

A couple years ago when we visited Jayna's Grandpa Jay and Grandma Pam in Utah we got to see and hold some of the baby chickens that they had. After talking to her grandparents about how easy chickens were to keep and how nice it was to have fresh eggs all the time, Matt's wanted to get chickens ever since. We talked to some people here in Maricopa who have chickens and realized that although roosters are really loud, hens in general are pretty quiet. Everything just kind of fell into place recently, including us basically trading an old jacuzzi we had with the neighbors for a steel aviary that they were getting rid of that was perfect for a coop. We were getting rid of the jacuzzi anyways to clear space for a coop. Our house is next to a wash, so the side yard where we put the coop is at least 75 ft from our neighbor on that side.

So on Feb 1st we went and bought our first two chickens, and we bought two more on Feb 4th. Shaylin absolutely loves holding the chickens and goes in the coop with Matt whenever he's out there. Emmalyn loves to go in the coop too, but is hesitant to actually hold the chickens, although she loves to pet them when someone else is holding them.

We kept the two chicks we had inside until Matt cleared out a spot for the chicken coop and we moved it into place on Feb 4th. Here's Shaylin in the coop that fist day holding Taylor (Shaylin and Emmalyn picked all the names and Emmalyn named this one after Taylor Swift.)


Shaylin holding one of our Rhode Island Red's on Feb 5th...


Matt picked up two more chicks on Valentine's Day for the kids. The other chickens we had bought before were a little older when we bought them (between 4-6) weeks, so the kids were really excited to have some smaller ones to hold. These ones were Ameraucana's and they were less than two weeks old. Needless to say we are now done buying chickens for a long time :).

These next two pictures are the Ameraucana's on Feb 20th...


Here's our four original chickens out in the coop sitting on their roost on Feb 22nd. We have been surprised at how quickly they grow. They have already practically doubled in size since we bought them a few weeks ago.


Ironically enough Shaylin came down with the chicken pox about 10 days after we got our fist chickens. We first noticed them on Friday Feb 11th. We were really curious to see if chickens have been known to spread chicken pox, but as far as we could find there's no connection. Our kids haven't gotten the chicken pox vaccine, so we knew it would eventually spread to all three.

Here's Shaylin on Feb 12th after Jayna put calamine lotion on all of her chicken pox at night. Jayna counted over 200 spots this night. Shaylin did really well (she only had one rough night) and although we couldn't go anywhere because we didn't want to spread it she was her usual happy self for pretty much the whole time.


12-13 days later the spots started showing up on Emmalyn and Bronson as well. Although it was a little sad that they had to go through it, it was nice that they caught it and that we will hopefully be done with the chicken pox.

Here's Emmalyn's back on Feb 25th, a day after we noticed to first spots...


The calamine lotion sticks out a little less on Bronson's back since his skin is paler. This picture is from Feb 25th as well...


Both Bronson and Emmalyn did really well with the chicken pox too. Bronson had a couple bad nights and Emmalyn had one too, but other then that they were their normal happy selves like Shaylin was. These next two pictures are from Feb 25th as well...


Here's a few more pictures of Emmalyn and Bronson from Feb 28th. Bronson was a little tired when we took his picture...

2 + 2 = 4

Tuesday February 22nd-

We have hoping that baby #4 would be a boy so that Bronson could have a little brother to be his little buddy and to play with. Today was the big day when we found out, and we both got pretty nervous right before the ultrasound. Of course we would have been happy with a girl, but we were really excited to find out that we're having another boy. :0)

Here is a picture of me that night after the ultrasound at exactly 18 weeks.



We were beyond excited to find out we were having another boy. I could have shouted for joy, but kept myself contained. Matt was very excited too. We couldn't be happier and can now feel our family is complete (famous last words). We love our kids so much and can't wait to do fun things and make fun memories with all four kids. It will be so great for Bronson to have a brother and someone to play catch or "ball" (as he calls it) with, just like Shaylin and Emmalyn have each other to play with. Bronson comes up to us multiple times a day with basketballs and wants to play catch with him. We love it. We can't wait to see what this baby boy will look like. We are hoping for a brown hair-brown eyed, like Shaylin. So we can not only have 2 girls 2 boys, but 2 brown hair-brown eyed and 2 blonde hair-blue eyed kids! We will see.

Here's one of the best ultrasound pictures...

Just Dance

Shaylin has always enjoyed dancing along with her favorite songs/moves, especially Enchanted when she was younger and both her and Emmalyn love to dance along with the High School Musical movies and their 'Just Dance: Kids' Wii game that they got for Christmas. So Shaylin was really excited when we signed her up to take dance lessons from Alyssa Mangum, who is in one of the other wards here in Maricopa. She loves going to dance class (and was sad when she missed a week while she was sick with the chicken pox) and coming home and showing us all the dance moves that she learned.

Here's Shaylin before her first class with her friend Indianna and Emmalyn on Thursday Jan 6th...


Here she is before class on Feb 3rd. Jayna got ready to take her picture and Shaylin decided on her own to pose like this...


We had a little bit of a scare with Emmalyn in the middle of February. She was running around playing with Shaylin in the garage and driveway while I (Matt) was using the table saw. One of her flip flops fell off while she was running around and she fell down. She was wearing sunglasses and somehow the sunglasses ended up cutting her over her eye. There was a lot of blood, so I called Jayna, who was at the store and she came straight home. Jayna then took her up into town to her old Bishop's house, who is a plastic surgeon, to see if Emmalyn would need stitches (we've heard horror stories about stitching jobs from the local Maricopa Urgent Care). Luckily she didn't end up needing stitches after all.

We didn't get a picture of it when it looked really bad, but here it is a few days later on Feb 18th after it had a few days to heal...

The Day of Love

Sunday, February 13th-

We were watching Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network (one of our favorite channels...yes, the girls LOVE it too) and she made jello jigglers. We hadn't made jello in a very long time, so we decided to make it and have fun with it! The girls loved it. We have at least 100 cookie cutters, so the girls had fun picking out their shapes to make. It was fun to do and delicious!


Monday, February 14th-

Although Shaylin unfortunately had the Chicken Pox on Valentine's Day, she was great and felt normal. She missed her Valentine's Day party at Preschool, which we were sad about. I (Jayna), decided to get all the kids dressed even though we wouldn't be leaving the house. I knew I was going to be taking pictures of the fun V-day activities we would be doing and wanted them to be dressed. We had tons of things planned, but unfortunately didn't get through everything. We ended up stretching Valentine's Day out for a couple more days.

We made hearts to put all over the walls, we ate heart shaped food, we painted red/pink nails, the girls got to eat some V-day cupcakes that Grandma Jaylene brought over, we watched a Valentine's Day show, and made a puffy heart out of pink/purple tissue paper. We had a very fun day!

The kids LOVED their "Heart in a Holes"...I got this idea from the internet and had fun making them


The girls with their breakfast...it was hard to get a good picture! :0)


Here are the kiddos after getting dressed and ready for the fun festivities...


Hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day!!