We are BAD bloggers....

...and we've been really busy. Here are some pictures to catch up on a few things....in no particular order since I'm not very good at moving the pictures around once I've uploaded them...here we are all set up for Christmas. I had to make two new stockings this year since Henry's mom, dad, brother and sister are all coming. We are excited to have them here!

Here is the den. The tv cabinet is from the habitat restore. Church members donated the chairs and rug. The coffee table is from Emily's maternal grandparents and has been in the family a long time. The cubby cabinet is an answer to not enough bathroom storage. The quilt is also from the habitat restore. We love the restore. We have supported them heavily lately since we bought attic insulation and insulation to go underneath the house. It was expensive, but a true bargain compared to Lowes or Home Depot!

This is the guest bedroom, so if you want to come visit, this would be where you would stay.

Here is another Habitat Restore find. We have kids over a lot and not many toys to play with. We couldn't pass up the solid wood three story dollhouse for $35 including all the people and furniture.

Here I am looking very tired on Thanksgiving with our friend Jess from college. We convinced her to hold a chicken...and she did, although you can see she is terrified!

Here is the new house covered in leaves. We are going to need to learn to LOVE to rake leaves because we will be doing a lot of it!

Here we are on Thanksgiving being goofy. We had a great day...

and a great meal. Oven roasted chicken from a local farm, homemade mashed potatoes with homemade gravy, creamed (home grown) rainbow swiss chard with fresh mushrooms, real southern style (home grown) collard greens, organic cranberry sauce, biscuits, and pecan pie with bourbon whipped cream for desert. DELICIOUS!

Mom sent me my grandmothers chicken collection. It goes great with our kitchen. You can also see our cathedral cactus and two christmas cactus plants. They have been fun!

Since Henry's mom is coming, we got a Christmas branch...a tradition she started a long time ago. The ladder is one of Henry's presents. I couldn't figure out a good way to wrap it so I just stuck a bow on it.

I hope you are all doing well. I'll try to post again before two months goes by. Merry Christmas!

Emily and Henry

A lot can happen in a month and half!

This has been a busy, but wonderful month and half. We have been bad about posting updates, but hope to catch you up some with this post. I can't really figure out how to change the order of the photos easily, so bear with me in this out of order post. It is appropriate actually, because many things are out of order these days. Our house looks like this:

Yep....those are moving boxes. We are due to close on our first house and become homeowners this Thursday. It's not done until its done, so we aren't going to post pics just yet, but will do so when things are final.

Here you see Henry with our first egg! Last Tuesday, Emily walked home for lunch and checked on the chickens and this little gift was in one of the laying boxes. They have since produce two more bringing our grand total to a fourth of a dozen!

I got my hair cut...mom requested pictures...

Here I was trying to show the size of our first egg. The first ones are smaller and eventually get to be "normal" sized, although they will always be all different colors and sizes....part of the fun of having your own chickens.

The first egg in the egg collection basket given to Henry by his mom.

Emily had shoulder surgery on Sept. 24th. The staples are now out (thank goodness) and she is doing great. She had a shoulder decompression - two bone spurs removed, bone removed that was impinging on the rotator cuff and collar bone shorted 8mm. She had a slight setback when she found out she was allergic to pain medication and has lost about 8 pounds in a week, but the stomach is getting back to normal and the physical therapist said she is a rock star with great range of motion.

I know I mentioned that I wasn't going to post any pictures of the house, but here is a teaser...this tree will be in our new backyard! They don't have trees like this in Texas and when they do, they have a fence around them and some sort of historical plaque. It is HUGE.

Here are the chickens enjoying some of our leftover corn on labor day. They really know how to clean an ear of corn.

Here is Henry being goofy with his ear of corn....delicious!

Home grown poblano pepper....

New flowers by the front door...

Every year on labor day weekend, Matthews throws a huge festival called Matthews Alive. This was held one street over and made for a fun, crowded and traffic filled weekend. Here is a shot of the street. There were THOUSANDS of people and lots of expensive food and crafts....

Instead of spending a ton of money on expensive food at the fair, we had out own picnic in the backyard....hamburgers, grilled corn and grapes! Obviously we need to invest in some outdoor furniture. Here we are using empty cat litter containers....classy!

The cats still love each other. They are sitting in the open window upstairs on their perch intrigued by the crew putting a new roof on the neighbor's house.

We turned our lower boxes into flower beds because we couldn't compete with the ants. I was so excited and then realized that I had just created a box full of food for the deer....so I had to build these covers to put on at night...the flowers are still happy a month later.

Henry also started a new job as community outreach coordinator for Covenant Presbyterian Church and has been working hard on a garden project. Check it out here: (http://www.friendshiptrays.org/Gardens/GardenMain.htm). This garden is also in the running for a huge grant from Tom's of Main. You can vote everyday for the entire month of October. Go to this website (http://www.tomsofmaine.com/community-involvement/project-sponsorships.aspx) then click on the community tab and scroll down until you see "Friendship Trays Garden: A Plot to Thicken Community." Vote EVERY day! We hope you are all doing well and we hope you will plan a trip to visit us once we are settled in the new house! Peace! Emily and Henry

spring onions, big ladies, and worm poop

Here is the spring onion crop. Or, whats left of it after a couple weeks of eating them.


The chickens are full grown now. No eggs yet but should be soon. We bought them a wooden training egg that you leave in the nesting box to show them where to lay.




































Got worm poop? The lettuce on the right was planted with some vermicompost (worm poop) added to the planting mix. The lettuce on the left hasn't sprouted yet because it is sad that it didn't get any worm poop.

Omens for the Owens

Yesterday I saw both an owl and a hawk on my way home from work. Today while mowing the grass, I stopped to watch this little incident. That's right, a serpent, in an apple tree, at the pastor's house. Meaning?

Yes, Emily has seen the pictures. She is not pleased.


And yes. The chickens are all alive and safe.

Yucatan Mission Trip

Wow, my first blog post ever. A couple of weeks ago I traveled to the Yucatan with 32 members of Covenant Pres. Our ages ranged from 17 to 58 and we had two families of four that made it their family vacation.
We flew into Cancun and then drove to a small town called Piste, which is about 2.5 miles from Chechen Itza. Our work for the week was to put a cinder block and concrete roof on a sunday school building and lay some concrete slabs. You can see the SS building in one of the pics (I didn't try to match pictures with content, too difficult for my first post). The hardest work day was sealing the roof with concrete. We built scaffolding and handed buckets of concrete up to the second floor roof. VERY hot and messy work. Cement burns hurt.


One of the pictures shows a chicken coop made with scrap materials. Our chickens are so spoiled. Almost every house there has livestock (pigs, chickens, ducks, turkey) but I was surprised that I didn't see a single vegetable garden. During bible school one day a large pig walked down the street and started rooting up someones yard. Many of our Covenant people were making a big deal out of it and a small child asked me "you don't have pigs in your country."
I told him we did but we keep them in factories, not really.

We slept as everyone does there, in hammocks. Getting used to non-nap sleep in a hammock would have alone been difficult enough, but we also had to acclimate to sweating at night, dogs fighting outside our hut, roosters crowing (not just in the morning), and one dude who snors really loudly. Luckily we worked hard during the day and I had ear plugs.

Most days followed this schedule: breakfast, work til 1pm, lunch, siesta, bible school and women's craft (I went one day and made Emily some earrings, partly because I love her and partly to rebel against the sexism), whole congregation play/hangout time, dinner, more hangout/play time, devotions, hammock. The thing that struck me most about the trip was the congregations example of Christian community and their willingness to share it with us. The pastor and many congregation members worked with us each day and the whole congregation played sports (soccer and basketball) with us (they called me Michael yordan). They also prepared a meal for us, gave us gifts, worshipped with us, and proudly showed off their Mayan history.

They took us to see Chechen Itza which is amazing and very difficult to describe. The amount of astronomy and mathematics that they not only knew but incorporated into Chechen Itza is quite astonishing. Almost the coolest part though was the way we got to see it. Since the town is so close almost the whole town works at Chechen Itza and therefore the town's economy is based almost solely on tourism (which is down 50% from last year). One congregation member and vendor at Chechen Itza told me that during the Swine Flu scare no one came for 2 months and he did not eat. Anyway back to the cool part, the congregation was proud to show us their history so they loaded us in the back of three trucks, waved us through the parking attendant (congregation member), and through the entrance. Once inside two tour guides (congregation members) gave us a tour. It was fun for us to experience such a turisty thing in a non-turisty way.

They also took us to a cenote (google pictures) one afternoon. A cenote is a cave with a deep spring fed pool that you can swim in. There are hundreds in the Yucatan. It was an amazing experience that I can't describe adequately.

The last day and a half of our 8 days we spent on a beach in Akumal (place of the turtle in Mayan). It didn't feel at all like mission work or work at all (I was getting paid and earning time off) but it was certainly restful and generally wonderful. The beach is gorgeous. I went snorkeling out on the reef and saw many fish and turtles. three other guys and I also went on a very nice boat ride and held fishing poles for a couple hours.

It was a great trip. I really enjoyed the intergenerational aspect and the hospitality and community of the Mexican people. I loved being picked up at the airport by Emily, Carson, and Collier.

Look who is getting BIG!!!!

Here is an update of the chickens...we have taken them on a few field trips outside and they really are changing fast!

They have all learned how to roost and seem to like being as high as possible.

They are still very curious and seem to enjoy being outside in the grass.

They also like shiny things...like wedding rings and camera lenses...

Here is chipmunk, affectionately called Spaz. She really is a crazy little bird and is definitely at the top of the pecking order!!!

They even have more feathers since these were taken a couple of days ago! They are really growing up!

They even tried out their coop and ramp and were old pros. They did great. We stayed outside for a while and they laid right up next to the edge closest to us. They are very social!

We hope you enjoy this Memorial Day weekend. Love, Emily and Henry