With our niece Brooklynn visiting for the summer, Our Girl (foster kiddo who we plan to adopt), day trips, maintaining and growing both Rent The Chicken and The Chicken Network, plus managing the home part of The Homestead, I've been a bit busy and maybe even overwhelmed so my blog took a backseat. In fact, it may have been on the back bumper and not even on the backseat!
We drove to New Jersey to be part of a Coops for Troops presentation. It was our first time but a number of our Rent The Chicken Affiliates have participated previously. To watch last season's episodes of Coops for Troops for free online, go on over to Coops for Troops! Scroll down to "bonus features" which are the actual episodes. It was an incredible experience. A local chicken 4-H club nominated a vet to receive the package of generous sponsors including chickens from Rent The Chicken!
We made a day trip to Old Bedford Village in Bedford, PA. It's been a few years since I've been there. It's this great "village" experience that stepped us back into the 1800s with basket making, history lessons, a blacksmith, candle maker, and more! They did have some chickens but none were available for rent! :) Like Aunt like niece in these photos!
We are well into #TompkinsPalooza2018 as I mentioned a few entries back. It's really about being purposeful with friends and family. Neighbor kids from up the road have been visiting again. They used to visit when we had our last little guy and it's good to have a reason for them to be visiting again. In addition to a few trips, we've also been puzzling (probably not the right verbiage?!), swimming in the river, playing board games, creating in the kitchen, and more! We also hatched baby chicks this week! Can you believe these kids are convinced that they need three meals a day?! Yesterday, "Uncle Dad" (as Homestead Phil has been renamed around The Homestead) "made" breakfast, we went out for lunch as we were out running errands and the natives were getting restless, and we traded eggs for pizza at our favorite local pizza place - Wolfies. I didn't have to cook one meal! There was a death in our church family so I did whip up about 3 dozen eggs worth of egg salad for the meal to follow the funeral.
Our IT department (aka Homestead Phil) is backing up my phone, updating my operating system, and has big plans for a phone upgrade for me. So I've been without my cell phone for hours! It's a good thing I have a PC and a work phone all conveniently located at my desk while the updates are happening. When I talk on the phone, it sounds like the person on the other end is a little mouse in a box trying to talk to me so I've been using the speakerphone option. Even my headset isn't work well. In addition to hearing people when I'm trying to talk on the phone, I hear the emojis with the last 27 iOS updates are pretty great! I wouldn't know, they all show up as squares and question marks when people send them to me. I just use my imagination as to what emojis are being sent to me :) All in a days work, right? Hot Date plans for our Friday night include a trip to the Verizon store. Yay.
Chat soon!
-Homestead Jenn
