Monday, October 19, 2015

Natalie's 1st Birthday and our Fall trip


Look out! I am basically just throwing a bunch of pictures your way. In an attempt to keep our humble, little blog going, I have decided to only document the highlights of the year. Celebrating Natalie's one year certainly qualified as a highlight! I can't believe she is 1 already. It seemed that the first half of her life went by slowly, but the second 6 months seemed to fly. For being only 1 year old, she adds lots of entertainment (and a good bit of yelling :) ) to our lives. She's a smart, little thing, but she is definitely on her own timetable as far as walking/talking etc. Callie and Coleman were walking at 10.5 and 11.5 months respectively. Natalie sorta took 1/4 of a step yesterday, but that's all. She says a few words on occasion (mama, dada, bye bye), but nothing regularly and on command. I have heard that 3rd babies tend to stay babies longer, and so far I am in agreement with that concerning Natalie. That is all fine with us. We are in no hurry to rush things along. Take your time and do your own thing Nat Nat. Enjoy these pics from her party (along with a random family pic outside the church that uploaded in the middle of them all). The party goers consisted of family and my sister's (brave) boyfriend, Trip. I say brave because I think he was brave to meet all of our family at once! He fit right in!

The weekend after Natalie's party, we celebrated beautiful fall weather with a trip to the mountains. We went apple picking, and then visited Charlie's uncle in a place called Big Canoe. At Big Canoe we were able to hike on trails to a little waterfall, play squash, and enjoy an indoor pool. It's a beautiful community in the mountains with lots of pretty trails and views. The weekend was a nice little getaway.

Monday, August 31, 2015

Introducing the Brooks Brood


Where to begin....We live in a neighborhood with a handful of families that have chickens. I have known this since we moved here a year ago. Our neighbors right across the street from us are very generous. They have 4 chickens, and they have frequently shared their great eggs with us. Well, one day, I asked to see their set up. I wanted to see where their chickens slept/ate etc. My neighbor friend happily showed me her chickens and their coop and run. But, I think what amazed me was when she started talking about how easy and cheap chickens are to maintain. She talked about how their food comes in bulk and is super cheap. She talked about how they love to eat weeds and table scraps, and how even their poop can be composted into amazing fertilizer for your garden. They can be fun and entertaining to watch, and to top it all off they will provide you with a great breakfast! I went home thinking I would just nonchalantly share this wonderful information with Charlie. I was in no way prepared to push him or make a hard sell on this. I think I wasn't prepared to do this because I was pretty sure there was no way he'd want to get chickens. Much much to my surprise, I had hardly begun talking about it before he said, "We can get them and I even want to build the coop!" What?! Clearly this was from God. It was meant to be! Ha.

The building stage commenced. I am Mrs. Cheapskate, so we used almost entirely reclaimed wood. We had neighbors donate some wood. My parents donated wood. Basically all we paid for were the screws, the hinges, and the wire. The wire was the most expensive by far. We used hardware cloth instead of chicken wire as we were advised that it is much stronger and safer. Charlie did a great job on the coop and run, but he could not have done it without his Dad. He was a huge help. In fact, it was 3 generation Brooks men effort. My little man Coleman put in some serious hours! Let me tell you that boy was out their with his black and decker tool set sawing, hammering, and doing lots and lots of measuring!

The big day arrived! We went to Farmer Norris's farm and picked out our chickens. We wanted 4, but because ours were still very young, we were advised to get 6. They aren't the hardiest things apparently. We are preparing the kids that there is a chance that one or two won't make it (but I will say, so far so good). We purchased (for $9 a piece), 3 golden comets, 2 barred plymouth rocks, and 1 rhode island red. Callie named two of them Cluckie and Little C. Coleman named his two Batman and Chocolate Chip. Charlie named his Julio Jones, and mine is named Mrs. Peabody.

So far, we are all having a lot of fun with the chickens. They have been easy thus far. Today ours are 2 months, so we still have a ways to go before they start laying around the 6 month mark. This last picture is a view of our backyard from our deck. I think what sealed the deal with chickens in my mind, was realizing we have the perfect back yard for it. Our yard is long and narrow. The coop is in the far back corner, quite a distance from the house. That back corner is so woodsy and buggy we never play back there. So the chickens are basically confined to a space that we never used anyway. That is nice because I love our backyard. We live outside and did not want chickens taking over our yard. We were also blessed to just find a lot of the paint we used in our garage. It turned out to be a great color for camouflaging the whole thing. And, Charlie's dad happened to have leftover green roof tin from a previous project. I am thankful because I feel like the coop doesn't just stand out. So, if anyone wants to come visit, just wait 4 more months and then maybe we'll have fresh eggs to share!

Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Beach Vacation Part 2


A few weeks back, we were blessed with being able to go on another beach vacation. Charlie was not able to attend this one, and he was missed, but the kids and I had a great time with my family at Hilton Head. We stayed at a resort right on the beach, so it was nice to not be far from the ocean. Proximity is crucial with young kids and a million things in tow! The week was hot, but great all at the same time. Here are some good pictures taken by my sister. She is becoming quite the photographer!

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Dewees Vacation


We just got home from a wonderful beach vacation. This was the second year in a row that we visited Dewees Island with our friends the Deals. All the first pictures are from our time on the "enchanting island." It really is such a neat place. Natalie was the perfect beach baby (of course she ate her fair share of sand). She loved the water, and it helped that we brought along an inflatable pool for her to sit in on the beach. Callie and Coleman loved boogie boarding, playing in the tidal pool with the kayak, and Grandpa Deal took them on a little beach kayak ride. We also collected lots of sandollars and starfish, went fishing, went shrimping, took golf cart rides around the island, and with the help of little Eliza, I caught a blue crab. After Dewees, Charlie and the kids and I spent a night in Charleston. We had dinner by the water with our friends the Hartzogs. They used to attend our church here in Atlanta before they moved to Charleston. Coleman loved seeing their son, Carter. The two boys are about a month apart in age. The next day, we walked around Charleston some and then headed over to tour the USS Yorktown. We loved it! Finally, we came back to Atlanta and finished up our vacation with a trip to Stone Mountain. The kids had never been, and we wanted to do the laser show with them. We actually decided to hike up the entire mountain with all three kids. It was a little exhausting since we didn't do it quite "right" and we first had to hike a mile just to get to the "walk-up" trail which was another mile. But, we felt proud of ourselves once we made it to the top, and you better believe we rode the cable car down! Our last picture in the post is little Miss Callie. She is sporting her new pierced ears! She had been asking about piercing her ears a lot lately, so we promised her when we returned from our vacation, we'd look into it. She did great and did not cry a bit.