RAPTURED

It is business as usual in the unknown future. On the highway everyone is just driving along, intent on getting to their appointment on time, or just concentrating on staying awake. Suddenly without warning a Hummer swerves out of control straight into a hapless Smart car. Fortunately the driver of the Scion xB behind them was paying attention and managed to skid to a stop without damage.The driver of the Smart car stumbles out holding his head, meanwhile there is no movement inside the Hummer...The Scion driver runs to help those who might be in the overturned Hummer, while the man in the passenger dials 911 as he goes to assist the victim in the Smart car.
To his surprise and horror, only the clothes of what must be assumed to have belonged to the driver, are to be found in the overturned car.
"There... Theres NO DRIVER! Dial 911!!"

"911 what is your emergency?"
"There's been an accident, one of the drivers seems to have a concussion, the.. the other driver is gone.."
"Ok try to relax sir, what do you mean gone?"
"He's just gone! There's no blood.. NOTHING! He's just GONE!"
"Okay sir we will get there as soon as we can..."
"We need help NOW!"
"I understand sir, but we... 'yes Chief it's another one'... sir please understand we are being overwhelmed with similar calls as we speak..."

dun dun dun duum

*BOOM*

So since my temple is finished, I again wanted to build something Biblical, but on a MUCH smaller scale. I decided on the rapture, when Jesus comes back for all the Christians, because I had wanted to make a foray into building an apocalypse type scene, and it might as well be Bible based right? Having watched the Left Behind movies, I did base some of this off a particular car wreck sequence in the first movie, soon after the rapture. I had wanted to put a plane crashing into the trees (the pilot having been raptured), but it proved to difficult. It is just frightening how much destruction will occur in those moments, the countless car wrecks, and all the airliners with Christian pilots, thinking about it makes me VERY glad that I won't be here when it happens.

Jojo and the ducks

This video shows just how much the ducks have grown. (They’re bigger than the chickens) They love roaming around outside and swimming in their pool, even though it’s not as spacious as it first seemed =(.

(Jojo's fro has grown considerably in the front, but the back is sadly bald from the hens constant plucking, I think they're just jealous ;)

Once a week we empty the pool and use the potent mixture on the chicken garden (corn, pumpkins, and sunflowers) I used to recruit my understandably reluctant brothers to help me form a bucket brigade, but then discovered the miracle of the siphon =). Now I can siphon the whole pool down to the garden without hauling a single bucket.

The big ducks have since been combined with the chickens and get along about as good as can be expected. After the first few days of annoyed squawks and quawks they seemed to have agreed to disagree. We are expecting eggs from the chickens in a few more weeks, hopefully by the end of June, and are mulling ( I like that word =) over the design and whereabouts of the nesting boxes.

Here’s a pic of Daphne the duck and the 3 little tractor supply ducklings in the pool before we emptied it. I know the water looks gross but it takes a long time to fill and the ducks don’t seem to mind:/

Baseball

The regular baseball season ended a couple of days ago. I got to play first base, center field, and pitcher. One game I threw a one hitter with eight strikeouts. I also hit an inside the park home run and my first ever over the fence home run while the bases were loaded which makes it a grand slam :D! My dad had just bought me a new bat for my birthday that he had researched a lot on. At my next game I said a little prayer that the Lord would give me the strength to get a good hit or get on base and He did! On the very first pitch, I hit it over the center field fence. At the end of the season they had a mini tournament (the reason I say “mini” is because there where only three teams). We got into the championship and won it by the slaughter rule. The next day the coach called me and said that I had made not one but two all star teams! I made a 10-11 year old team that start playing the 26th of this month and, an 11-12 year old team that play sometime in August. I am so excited because I get to play more baseball.

--Philip

Hummingbirds

Since the invention of airplanes and the ability to strap an ever increasing array of weaponry wherever possible, there has been what is known as the dogfight. However I think calling it a hummingbirdfight instead of a dogfight would be more appropriate.
click to view video.
In contrast to the blistering speed and intensity of the hummingbirdfight featured in the above video, two of the adversaries were eventually able to agree on a (very) temporary truce, and were content to sit on opposite sides of the feeder at the same time!! :o Eventually the dinner rush ended and the feeder was left alone for the night.

By holding the button part way down I found I was better able to snap pictures of them as they were buzzing around. Hummingbirds have got to be on the top ten for worst posers. >:-(

This is either a female, or an adolescent male... my guess is a female. Here is a good view of the "ruby" throat.
We used to name the hummingbirds ( red neck, red beard, red baron, spot, etc.) but I can't tell the difference anymore.So if I hadn't been taking the pictures, I wouldn't be able to tell this bird...and this bird are the same.

The Guardian.

This a perch just above the feeder, giving whichever hummingbird is currently king of the feeder, the perfect ambush position.

Well as always I hope I haven't bored you, I also thank and applaud that you have taken the time and brain cells to read this never ending post full of half-intelligent jokes and attempts at humor, ramblings and so forth.

-Thomas

Duckie Cuteness

The 10 duckies are 4 weeks old now and learning to Quack. There’s a lot of catching up to do so bear with me. Within the first week we knew just a plain old cardboard box with woodshavings was no where near capable of absorbing all the water flung around by those little balls of fluff. We needed a better brooder. So after 3 or 4 tries we landed on a cardboard box with a screen for a bottom so the water just drained right out. Once they were a week old we let them swim in the bathtub

( just pretend that little mess on the tub isn't even there ;)

as you can tell they hated every minute of it =) After two weeks they outgrew their fancy setup and made the move outside.( about time they were incredibly stinky and messy ) Now they have the entire back half of the manor. They got acquainted with the chicks through the wire and go outside to range almost everyday together now. Eating lots of grass cuts down on the feed bill right? It’s free money and they do all the work =) Their favorite treats are bananas and peas ( who woulda thought ) and will follow us around the yard looking for them. Today we got them a spacious new kiddie pool to paddle around in. Talk about cheap entertainment ;)

They love it, although they haven’t quite mastered the ramp and kind of fall out when they’ve had enough =/ Well that was the summary of the first four weeks of duckling life hopefully with many years ahead. Hope it wasn’t boring, although how could it be with such cute videos and pictures =)

God bless

---Anna

A very cute post

we have 7 more babies!!! 3 duckies and 4 more meat birds;) Wednesday we went into Tractor Supply "just to look" at their chickies and duckies. As they had told us they didn't even get the kind we were interest in, which were Cayugas since we're short one now:( but the first thing we see is a big ole tub of tiny lil assorted ducks =O long story short we walked out of there with 2 cayugas (solid black ones) 1 blue swedish (just in case the name wasn't clear enough its blue)


and 4 meat birds. The meaties are cute now but in about 6 weeks they'll look like this

A Tragic Accident

I had meant this post to be very happy and bubbly full of stories and videos about their first swims and walks outside, but sadly this is not the case those things will have to wait (stay tuned for a more light hearted and bubbly post). One of our dear Cayuga ducklings (a solid black one) now rests forevermore beneath a holly tree in the woods. We had two Cayugas and they became one of my favorites because of how friendly they were, and how pretty they were going to be. These past few days have been extremely wet and rainy the ducks area was in desperate need of more bedding, a.k.a. leaves,( They live in the chicken house now ) but because everything outside was soaked we decided to rake up the stray leaves in the back of the chicken house where we keep feed bags both empty and full, as well as other assorted junk. It was getting dark so we (me and my dad) just raked them in. The next morning everything was fine I spent too much of my morning in with them instead of doing school feeding them clover and cuddling both Cayuga’s as well as the others. I didn’t notice any of the long white strings that you pull off when opening a bag of feed. If I see any of the aforesaid strings I usually jump to remove them, but this piece must have been covered up. That afternoon when I went into their little area to take them for their daily swim they all came peeping up to me except for one. I was stunned to say the least I ran out and called Dad and Philip who were outside practicing baseball. She had tried to swallow a string about a yard long and got most of it down before it got tied around her little bill. I felt really bad knowing that I could have been prevented it so easily, but as Dad says these things happen. Needless to say the chicken house has been scoured for any bits and pieces of trash. In honor of the sweet little thing I give you this extremely cute picture with all 11 duckies on their first excursion outside. ( it is now the desktop back ground for several of our monitors)