The countdown has begun...

We are ever inching toward next week when our family will have a celebration. Each year on January 27th we have a party. We like to refer to the event as a D-aversary because it marks the date our son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. I know that sounds odd, diagnosed with an illness that has no cure and yet have a celebration to mark the date. Yes. That is the day our son, then only 6 years old, received his first shot of insulin. January 27th is the day our son's life was saved from what only 80 years before had been a certain death.

Our D-aversary consists of the meal we had that night, KFC. We bake a cake and decorate it however Daniel thinks it should be, last year we decorated the cake to look like his insulin pump. We hand out certificates to recognize the hard work and milestones that have been met in the past year, not only by Daniel but by his entire team of family and friends who help him live with this 24/7. We have been known to have a little air guitar and air drums at the party to evoke everyone's inner rock star. We celebrate the life, the precious gift of insulin, the tenacity it takes to live every day when your immune system has disabled your pancreas.

This year is a milestone. This year is 5 years of living with Type 1 diabetes. I feel as though we need a bit more for this celebration. I will be working on ideas for this one because I want to show my son that we appreciate every year, every moment we have been given with him. I have to say that not all tears that I shed on D-aversary day are ones of joy. I am still only a mama, I remember in such vivid detail the events leading up to, the day itself, and the time after. Traumatic really does not come close to describing what a family goes through when a child is diagnosed with an illness that has no cure. When you come so close to losing a precious little one simply because you do not see the warning signs or maybe because you are in denial that they are even there, it changes you. The disease changes your child, your family, your world. I am thankful every single day for this now 11 year old that makes me crazy and for his sisters who do so even more. I can not imagine, nor do I want to, my life without them in it. On that day there was a period of time that I believed I was losing my child to something I did not understand and until he received that first shot of insulin, I was.

News from the Roost

Redbud Roost has been rockin' so far this winter. I have to say I am a bit surprised at how well the chicks have been behaving. This is the coldest winter we have had since we have lived in Tennessee and last year the big girls had a few issues with the cold. This year both flocks have done really well with both laying and with each other.
When we moved the big girls over to the second hen house I forgot about the lighting because, well, their hen house is inside the barn and it has lights, just not that stay on for the appropriate amount of time each day. So the girls went through a molt and most stopped laying. We learned so much from the molt. We learned that Daniel's beloved Zelda is probably the worst layer we have. Zelda did a slow molt, we knew she was vain but oh gosh she took it to new levels.
Once the molt was over I installed a lamp on a timer and after a bit they got back on schedule with laying. Now we have 43 layers and we are getting 30+ eggs a day. Thank goodness we have a pretty good customer base to handle some of those eggs. ;) When we get backed up we just scramble and boil eggs to feed back to the girls. Extra protein is always a good thing and they love them. The shells get baked and fed back as well to add extra calcium to their diets.
Sarah can not wait until Spring when we will order our new flock. I can't blame her, the babies are always so much fun.

A Brand New Day!

I have not blogged in a long time. I am now ready to move forward and want to revive this blog. It started out as a way to journal our 4H project of raising chickens but we are opening it up to so much more. Our family is building a small hobby farm, one limestone at a time and we live with a number of health issues that sometimes get in the way. I hope you find your way back here on a regular basis as we grow and add new features to the blog and to Redbud. Welcome!