Still can't believe she's walkin'

It is such an amazing sight to see your first child learn to walk.  Alea is so proud of herself.  Anytime she takes more than 10 steps toward her goal she gets a huge grin on her face, giggles and, at that point has to sit down due to loss of balance.  Alea has 3 teeth on top and when she gets excited you can see every inch of her pearly whites.  Wren and I can't stop smiling when we watch her explore and learn.  She shows us every day how much she understands by responding to questions we ask.  "Where is mommy's nose?", for example.  She grins, sticks her little pointer out and touches the tip of my nose.  "Where is your belly?" , is another one.  She, again, smiles and pats her tummy.  I never imagined how proud and connected I would feel toward my child until experiencing it.  I love my little girl!!

On a sad note, we lost one of our little hens this last week.  She hadn't looked very good for a few days and when I went out the day before yesterday to put them out for the day, she was laying on her side.  What do you do at that point?  I took her out of the cage, placed a towel in the bottom of a box and laid her in it.  By the end of the day she had gone.  We are now down to just two.  Today I gave them more space to run in the yard.  It was nice to see them walking around and scratching and pecking the ground or, just doin' what chickens do.  My dad has agreed to help me build a small coup for the back yard so they'll be able really settle in.  

Tomorrow we are going to start organizing for a garage sale.  It seems that we just did this not that long ago but that was before we moved.  We got rid of TONS of stuff before moving back home.  How did we end up with so much stuff? AND, did we really pay good money to actually move it cross country last year.  Hopefully we'll be able to get through a lot of it tomorrow and get rid of it.  Alea's Mimi, Aunt Natalie, Uncle "Duxtin", and cousins McKinley and Payson are coming tomorrow to hang at the house while Wren and I work.  I'm looking forward to some time with the family and Alea needs to see her Mimi.  

Jennifer