Table, Chickens, and other events.

Wow, so it's been 3 months since I've posted.  Things have been busy.  Lots of things going on.  After winter melted away and each day wasn't on par with an arctic expedition, we started doing some fun things.  First off, we built a table and planted some vegetables, then my dad ran a marathon, and most recently, we got some chickens.

Here are some pictures of the table that my wife and I built.  It's pretty awesome.  We got the plans from a website called knock off wood.  It's a really awesome website.  There are some benches that go with the table and we have the wood to make them, but I just haven't made them yet.

We bought the wood at home depot.  Cut it with a power saw.  Screwed it together.  And it only took about 4 hours.  Pretty cool, huh?

Now, in the same realm of coolness, but possibly even more cool, we got chickens!  2 baby roosters and 16 baby hens.

They are pretty adorable.  You can see the rest of the pictures here.  They have to stay indoors under heat lamps for a few weeks, and then we'll put them outside--which means that we need to make a chicken coop before they get too big.

In just the one week that we've had them so far, they have grown quite a bit.  At first, they were really small and fluffy.  They are still small and fluffy, but the feathers on their wings are growing a lot and they are starting to get little tail feathers (not just any little tail feathers, but probably some of the most adorable tail feathers you've ever seen).  And they are getting a little bit bigger too.  Anyway, lots of fun overall.  Kind of messy, but definitely worth it.

Also, my dad ran another marathon.  This is his 7th overall and 2nd in Champaign (Chicago twice, Champaign twice, Akron, Louisville, and Dayton).

And one more thing.  My wife planted vegetables inside.  We'll have to move them outdoors soon.  Cucumbers below:

And I think that's everything.  Now that I've gone back and looked at some photos, I'm realizing more that it has been a pretty eventful 2010 so far.  I also took an actuarial exam.  CAS exam 5.  I don't think I did well on it, but it was my first attempt and I didn't get much studying done.  Better luck next time.  We also went down to Kentucky to visit my mom for mothers' day.  It was really fun.  Oh, one more thing.  I replaced the sump pump in our basement and found out how much water I can pump with a hand pump in case the electricity goes out.  They electricity didn't go out and our basement was fine.  I just wanted to know how much I could pump manually in case I needed too.  The answer is "more water than I thought I could pump, but still not very much."

Plowing

Plow west, originally uploaded by scottomobile.

 So, I feel like I'm getting a little better at plowing. At times, it's trickier than I would have guessed. I feel pretty confident about our plow being able to handle the snow up to about a foot. After that, the snow drifts just get too big and there's just too much snow to push around. You just run out of places to push it.

Anyway, hopefully winter is almost over.

Winter not so fun anymore

So when I logged on and saw that my last post was titled, "Winter Fun", I chuckled a little bit inside.  If we didn't have to go anywhere, winter would be great.  We could just grab a blanket and a book and be fine until it was spring again.  Especially now that we have a huge freezer full of food.

But, since in the real world, we do have to go places during the winter, the fun-ness wore off rather quickly.  With a quarter mile driveway and miles of empty corn fields on every side and strong winds and lots of dry snow and gigantic snow drifts and a 4-wheel drive F-150 with an 8-ft plow that we thought could handle whatever jack frost sent our way but turns out it can't and knowing that we'll have to park at the end of the driveway and walk through a quarter mile of snow in the morning so that we can get to our car and drive to work--with all these things, the only ray of hope was knowing that our neighbors have a huge farm tractor with a snow blower, and more importantly, knowing that they have a kind heart and that just when we think it's time to trade in 5 acres of country land for a 1 bedroom condo downtown, our good neighbors will be coming down our driveway, clearing a way for us to ironically drive downtown to go to work so that we can work towards our dream of someday being able to stay at home all winter with just a blanket and book until spring comes.