Life with Chicks.....and by Chicks, I mean baby birds.

Did I mention we got some chickens? Just in case I forgot, here are a few pictures of the six new additions to our household. They are currently taking up a few feet of our garage space, but will soon be taking up residence in the backyard.

Reasons for getting chickens:

1. Eggs

2. Pest Control....apparently they love to eat fire ants and other "pestilence."

3. I always wanted to have some chickens....I would probably also get a cow if I had experience milking one.....and while were at it lets throw in a pony, heck our back yard is pretty big.

4. Bug Allergy help - You all know how Mariah has a freakish bug bite allergy, where if left untreated the bites grow to the size of an oreo cookie, followed by insomnia and a wicked diaper rash. Last summer after a few of these instances we came across Apis Mellifica (a homeopathic treatment sold at health food stores), and our lives have been much less stressful. While this stuff works almost instantly on the bug bites I consider it a band-aid. I'm hoping that by eating the eggs of the chickens that are eating our bugs, she will be able to build up some kind of immunity.....if not, well then we'll just have plentiful free range organic eggs.

Swine Flu

Well, I think it's safe to say we've had our show down of the Swine Flu (H1N1). All in all I'd have to say it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. It's been going around our development the past few months and this past week it showed up at church and Hayden brought it home with him. So far he's the only one who's had it, which also surprises me. I had thought it was so contagious that everyone it touched would get it....like the plague. At least that's how it was being portrayed on the news. Talk about melodramatic. That's why I don't watch the news anymore, if I did I would probably be terrified that my own shadow was going to abduct me.

I did stop by my favorite pharmacy for some remedy options though. They showed me several things that I could use at home:

1) Hylands Flu Tablets - which happen to work really well on pain relief.
2) Boiron's Flu Remedy - which i haven't tried, but the woman explaining told me that it's similar to a flu vaccine except that you orally take a much diluted version of the flu, and supposedly it works very well.
3) Probiotics - my own idea.

So, if you've gotten yourself all worked up about the horrible HORRIBLE plaque-like swine flu, just relax, for us it wasn't even as bad as the regular flu's....or that horrible flu I got last year. That one was WAY worse. MEMORABLY worse. Why didn't they document that one?!