The countdown is on……our house is scheduled to close in 12 days. Twelve days…..I can hardly believe it! Stephen and I started talking about selling our house almost 2 years ago, but life happened and getting our home ready on the market didn’t……until late January. About 3 months and 20 showings later, we had a contract. Now that sentence makes selling a house seem simple…..trust me, it’s NOT! But God is faithful…..always faithful. And now we are in the last few days of living in this home that has been home for over 6 years. The only home that most of our kids have ever known! And they are really feeling sad about moving. And I can totally empathize with them…..because I feel sad too. Even though I believe that moving is best for our family, it’s still hard.
Yesterday was an especially sad day. Since we are moving into “town” and can’t take our sweet chickens with us, I decided to find them a new home via CraigsList. We had 39 people interested before I could figure out how to delete the ad!! Oh my, that was a huge response I was not prepared for!! Thankfully the second people who contacted us actually ended up being the new owners of our “pets”. Yes, our chickens have been our only “pets” to survive more than a week! We got our chickens last March as newly hatched chicks and while we did lose two this winter, 6 survived and thrived. Carlos was the main caregiver and was able to sell the extra eggs for his profit……making money always makes Carlos pretty happy. But Ben, he loved the chickens the most. I mean how many 5 year-olds do you know who randomly carry chickens around their yard just for fun!
Anyway, back to yesterday. It was a crazy adventure. When I got the call that the guy was coming to get the chickens and coop, I called the little kids and we went outside to say goodbye. I also let the chickens out for one last run and peck around the yard…….rather a mistake. The guy and his 8 year old son arrived about 30 minutes later. Stephen and Carlos were helping some friends from church move, so they weren’t there……which left me, the man and his son to move the coop……and boy is it heavy. So he decided to drive his truck and trailer down into our back yard, which is somewhat of a downward slope and the day was very overcast and wet, so the grass wasn’t exactly dry either. It made me very nervous, but I knew it would be WAY easier than carrying that huge coop all the way to the front yard……it’s super heavy. Well, in true form the truck got stuck multiple times, but thankfully we were able to load the coop and he finally got the 4 wheel drive to kick in……it was an old truck borrowed from a friend……..and pulled the trailer loaded with the coop out of the yard.
Whew, I was so happy that part was done……sadly, I think that was the easy part. We spent the next hour or so chasing down the chickens! Four we got easily, but the other two were super skittish and I’m not a chicken catcher by nature! Getting the hens into their cage is simple,you walk to the coop with a bucket and they just follow thinking that food is involved, but with the coop gone, we had to grab those babies, and they weren’t real keen on being caught!! Finally I just told the guy that we would deliver them since his son had a baseball game. I felt so lame, I couldn’t even catch my own chickens, haha. Oh yeah,when Carlos got home, he caught them in two minutes flat…..both stubborn hens!
My kids were so sad, but I think it really helped to play with the little boy and know that their pets would go to a good home and by the end of the morning they were talking about their new friend. Another random and fun thing……Jadyn was wearing her Stroll for Woman and Babies shirt which started a conversation about the Blue Ridge Woman’s Center and we found out that this family ALSO did the walk! They love children and chickens! God at work in the details!
I think I might be in trouble though…..between yesterday and today my little kids have said probably 100times, “it’s ok that our chickens had to leave, because when we get our new house, we will get a dog.” I’m not sure where they got this idea that they were getting a dog, but I’m afraid if they all gang up on me, I might just give in and get a dog.
House of Smooches 