We've Had Chickens, Coop is Finished and Eggs are Being Laid!

On a typical morning at least 1 of 7 kids put in a request for eggs for breakfast. When just one kid wants eggs we only use 2 eggs but when we make eggs for the quads it is at least 10 eggs and if we make eggs for all 7 we go through 2 dozen eggs in one meal. It is crazy. I would rather feed my kids eggs than anything else though because I prefer giving a protein over a carb, such as cereal, but 2 dozen eggs is crazy and no one is over the age of 6. Can you just imagine how many eggs we will need when we have teenagers?

When we first looked at our home in the country both Paul and I were thrilled because we knew we had space for chickens. You may remember that at the end of March we got those chickens who were residing in our house. They made it about two weeks in my dining room before they had to be moved to the garage. A momma can only handle chickens jumping onto her windowsill and using it as a bathroom for so long. They then lived in our garage for many weeks while we Paul finished their coop.

My dad came in March to help us landscape our front yard but this project got put on hold two days into it when the flood gates opened and we had down pours during the remaining time he was here. On day 3 I was so excited when my dad decided to make a change in plans and he started working on our chicken coop. Our lot already had a 2 stall horse barn when we moved in so we converted one of the stalls into a home for chicks and the other side has become our wood pile and the 'anything else we can fit in there' space. By the time my dad left the framing was up and the floor was in. It then took Paul a couple more hours to get the inside of the coop ready for its new residents. Unfortunately a couple of hours in our world turns into a couple of weeks. I can't wait for the day when we can just let kids play without worrying about making them lunch at 11 or getting them down for naps or needing to entertain them every second they are awake. But for now that is not our life so small projects become big projects and big projects never get done (hence the reason my front yard is still dirt and the chicken coop took 3 months to finish!).

Who in the world goes outside in socks? I really think my brother does this to bug me just as my sister (Nicole) refuses to take her shoes off in my house. 

"Ummm Grandpa, I think the rain is moving in. You may want to get working."

The yard had 3 dry river beds running from the top of our yard to the bottom. I did not like the look of them so Paul dug trenches to place tubes for the water to run down. Bye-Bye river beds.

We barely got the plants planted before the rain came. The next day they were spreading rock soaking wet. 

Three months later...a couple more over grown trees and shrubs removed but the yard will be waiting for cooler temps so we can seed. I can not wait to drive up next summer to a yard of green. 

Paul then started on the enclosed yard for the chickens once they had a safe place to sleep and were evicted from my garage. By the time he was half way finished he was Done with a capital "D" with this new adventure. We had a half way enclosed yard, tools scattered every where and free range chickens because they had nothing to prevent them from being free range. Thank goodness Paul's dad arrived in June and one of the first projects on his father in law-do list was the coop. I think in two days he had it done and I wasn't risking our chickens lives everyday with the predators that live in our area. Somehow we managed to start with 13 chickens and end with 12 chickens and a very noisy rooster!

This is what the stalls looked like before we started turning it into a chicken coop instead of horse stalls. 

They have now been moved to the garage. 

Part of the reason it takes us forever to complete projects is because one of us is an engineer and everything must be done to perfection. If you happened to know or be married to one of these you know exactly what I am talking about. 

The coop had to be ready because I needed these ladies OUT of my garage because they knew nothing about cleaning up after themselves. 

The first night in their completed coop. 

Doesn't everyone wear a dress and Cinderella shoes when working outside?

And this is when he completely lost all interest in finishing the task at hand. 

Just last week I went to clean the poop boards and low and behold there was the tiniest brown egg. At first I thought the kids were playing a joke on me because we had talked about playing one on dad the next day using an egg from Costco. I seriously did not know if it was a real egg or a pretend one. We kind of laughed when we saw our first egg because it is so small that instead of taking 2 dozen Costco eggs it will take 5 dozen of our own eggs to feed our family. Since I wasn't sure how long our first egg was sitting in our 100 degree weather we made up a story that one could not eat the first egg that was laid. The kids believed us nicely! Since then we get one egg about every 30 hours. Unfortunately the one chicken who is laying prefers to lay her eggs on the poop board rather than the nest boxes so hopefully the other ladies are not watching her too closely. Getting the eggs is like opening a Christmas present and all of us wonder out to the coop during the day looking for new eggs. I wonder how long it will be before the kids argue with me that it is not their turn to check for eggs?!? For now I am going to enjoy their enthusiasm and be happy that my chicken coop can be checked off the to do list. Now onto the next project...

A boy and his chickens. 

So thankful for father in laws who come and complete a project that I had given up hope of ever seeing done. 

This stroller is pushed around all the time but never with anything in it. Such silly kids!

Best trash can ever!!

Grandma Lynn who spent 7 weeks with us this summer. The babies learned when they had boo-boos to go to Grandma because she always had cuddles to give. 

The peanut had her uncle chauffeur her to the coop. 

Missing a couple tires Tate. Wonder if I can do this to your car when you are 16? Will you still be excited to just sit in it?

Our first egg. The joke between Paul and I was before it took us 2 dozen eggs to feed our family but now with our own eggs it will take 5 dozen. Hope these eggs get bigger fast. 

I HATE Head Lice

and yes I am aware that hate is a strong word but let me state it again in case you missed it...I HATE  head lice. You may remember me saying in my last post that 9 days ago (no I have not forgotten how many days I have been living this nightmare) I found lice in Natalie's hair. Today is the first day these little buggers have not consumed me and made me an emotional mess. Let me start at the beginning. There are no pictures of the first 7 days because the words blog and pictures were the last thing I was thinking about so just create your own pictures if you want.

A little before the July 4th holiday I noticed Natalie scratching at her head a little more than usual but I didn't think much of it at the time. Then she started commenting that her head was itchy and since she wears her hair up most of the time I told her to just take her pony out and maybe that would help. I also thought since it had been warmer out maybe she was just a little more sweaty than usual. Then on July 7th Natalie woke up from her nap and came out scratching her hair. It was not hot out. Her hair had been down the whole day. Could she possibly have head lice? I had her come over to the window so I could take a look and my tummy become a ball of knots when I saw all sorts of little white looking things attached to her hair. As I walked to the computer to log onto Dr. Google I prayed we were not dealing with head lice. Our kids shower daily. Their hair has never looked cleaner since we stopped using shampoo. My kids don't go anywhere to even be able to use someone else's comb, pillow or hat. Please God this can not be what I think it is.

Oh how wrong I was. Did you know that lice actually like clean hair? I didn't but I have earned a PhD in lice over the last 9 days so ask me anything and I bet I have the answer. Lice can hold their breathe for 2 hours under water. A dryer on high heat will kill lice in 10 minutes. Colored nits are eggs waiting to hatch. White nits have already hatched. Those dang nits attach themselves to hair like glue. Lice can not lay eggs immediately once hatched, they must become adults first. Lice are fast little buggers and can move along hair faster than I ever imagined. They can only live with a blood source. Once they can not feed off the scalp they die withing 24-48 hours. Pets can not carry lice. There are over the counter products to treat lice but 80% of cases are now resistant to it because of how much it is used, telling us this is a widespread problem. I am sure you are all jealous of all this new found info I have obtained but don't be because I have laid awake more nights than I care to remember in tears because I have had no idea how to eradicated these dang bugs from my house.

As soon as Dr. Google filled me in that we were dealing with a case of head lice the first thing I did was start stripping all of our bedding, pillows, towels, stuffed animals and everything went into the hottest setting on my washer and dryer. Of course I was still recovering from my surgery and not lifting anything yet and Paul was gone overnight for a work conference. Thank goodness my mother in law was here to help save us. I spoke with the pediatricians office in regards to how to treat the lice and also how to not share this with every member of our family. After I got the tuna casserole made I headed off to Target and picked up 3 boxes of Rid, a box of brownie mix and a half gallon of mint chip ice cream. The wine was already cooling in the wine fridge. I treated both Natalie and Aubrey with Rid since they shared swim caps and then checked everyone else for evidence of lice taking up residency in their hair. Thank goodness I did not find anything. Over the next day everything got washed, vacuumed and sterilized.

The beginning of the bed washing. I kept adding to this pile so for many hours it didn't look like we were making any progress.

The next day I was paranoid about these bugs I had found in my daughter's hair so I treated her hair with Rid again. I felt so creepy crawly and totally violated. I also felt like an awful mother and couldn't believe I had not caught this sooner. The only place we can figure that Natalie picked this up because of our lack of going anywhere this summer with other people is VBS. It was cowboy themed this year and there was one evening in which the kids shared bandanas back and forth. I could be wrong but that is the only thing we can come up with.

The following day I felt like I had been transformed into a monkey because all I did was constantly check kid after kid for new cases of lice, I decided I would just treat our entire family with Rid. It is amazing to me how once lice is in your house your head starts itching like crazy! Fast forward a couple days and I felt we had a control of the situation. In theory we had killed all the live lice in Natalie's hair. Combed out and picked all the unhatched nits from her hair. And treated everyone else in our family. I was just waiting until tomorrow (Thursday) when we were suppose to treat our entire family once more with the overly expensive Rid. But than last Sunday evening I noticed Natalie starting to scratch more than she had been. She was miserable and could not keep from itching during an entire family movie night so I had her tip her head into my lap and I became a momma chimp again. What I found was more white nits in her hair which meant there were more live lice that had been hatched. I was frustrated and felt like a complete failure. I found myself on the computer again and searching for anything new that I had not read already. I told Paul I needed to start nit combing her hair again and I needed him to go get a magnify glass so we could really see what was going on in her hair. We started this comb out at 8pm (she usually goes to bed at 7) and it took us two hours to comb her hair out. By going half inch sections at a time I found more colored nits than I thought could possibly be in her hair but did not see any live lice but then Paul showed up with the magnifier and a flood light and in the first area we looked a live bug stared back at me and taunted me. I was one unhappy mom at this moment. How could these f**k**s still be alive? Paul and I started going strand by strand searching for colored nits or lice the size of a sesame seed or smaller. About 1/4 of the way into her hair I started crying. I had no idea how we were going to do this. How would we know where we had searched? How would we know we got them all? Why did I have to put my daughter through this? Thankfully between the iPad and a Popsicle Natalie endured 4 hours of us combing and picking at her hair with only about 15 minutes of her wanting to throw in the towel. Finally at midnight we told her we were done. She showered for the second time, got new jammies and clean sheets and was so excited to crawl into bed. I was emotionally exhausted and so while Paul sat and had doritos with salsa I went to bed. I wish I had slept but instead I wanted to cry because I had no idea how we would ever get rid of this lice problem.

In the morning I woke to a message via facebook from my old neighbor who had a friend that had used a lice specialist when faced with this exact thing and she had given me the phone number for them. Eight o'clock could not get here fast enough so I could give her a call. In the meantime I tried to figure out how one becomes a lice specialist. Do they grow up wanting to be that? Not to sure there are many preschoolers who say when they grow up they want to be pick lice out of hair. I thought it was bad when Aubrey came home and wanted to be a garbage sanitation worker but I think lice specialist may have topped that one. Deanna, aka Super Lice Lady, from Sacramento Lice Removal Services called me back and after telling her what was going on she booked us for the next morning to come to our house to check all of us for lice and then to treat Natalie. Tuesday morning could not get here fast enough.

At the beginning of the school year I bought Fairy Tales shampoo and conditioner which is to help prevent against lice. Towards the end of the year we ran out and I never ordered more off of Amazon. I can guarantee we will never run out again.

Drew being checked for lice by Deanna.

That afternoon Aubrey came to me and told me that behind her ears and the back of her neck were itchy. I literally wanted to cry once again with those words because those two areas are the most loved places for lice to be. Sure enough she now had nits and I got to spend another two hours of my day combing nits and lice out of her and Natalie. At one point while I was being momma chimp again Aubrey started to cry and told me she had wanted lice because Natalie had gotten special privileges but she no longer wanted them. Our life at this point was miserable and by the end of the evening my own head itched like crazy and I could not wait for Deanna to arrive the next morning because I was sure I was also filled with lice.   

A head full of nits ready to be evacuated.

This girl has endured more hair combings this last week and has amazed me with her positive attitude during everything we had to do. She never once complained that it wasn't fair.

Adios lice!!

Thank goodness that when Deanna came she only found nits and lice in Aubrey and Natalie. The rest of us were clean and that was the best news I had heard in 8 days. In 3.5 hours the Super Lice Lady was able to check 9 of us and remove all nits and lice from the girls. She also left us with products to use and a good nit comb instead of the cheap plastic one we got from the Rid box. Let me just tell you that it was the best $310 I have spent in a long time. Yes it sounds like a lot of money but knowing all these nasty bugs were gone was the best feeling in the world.

The babies were more than happy to watch Deanna from a distance because no one except Kenzie thought too highly of her service.

We are not done treating the girls yet. We will still put natural products in the girls hair and use the nit comb every night this week and then every other night next week to make sure that nothing was missed. And after this experience we have decided to run the nit comb through all the kids hair every night just like a regular brush after baths. This will allow us to get out any louse that may end up  attaching themselves to any of the kids hair during the day when playing with other kids. If we get them out before they lay eggs we should never have this kind of problem again. We will also use a tea tree oil spray on the kids hair every day before they go to school. Some may say I am taking this all a little too serious but going through this once has been one of the most trying times as a mom for me and I will not be allowing those critters back into my house again.                 

Getting this did humble me though because when the girls started school we got a note home saying the kids had been exposed to someone with lice. I was floored because here we are sending our kids to a private school that is not cheap and we have to deal with these kind of problems that I would expect to see in a  public school. Oh how naive and wrong I was. I now realize this is a problem we all can find ourselves in no matter what our income or hygiene levels are. If we do find ourselves with lice again I can guarantee you I will not be wasting money on over the counter products but will be calling in the lice specialist. I never knew they existed but I am so glad someone has been called to do it. Today when I treated the girls hair I think I grinned ear to ear because it was the first time in a week and a half that I did not find a nit or lice in my daughters' hair because in case you forgot I hate those things.