Monthly Archives: May 2011

Out and About

The baby chicks aren’t really babies anymore and really don’t belong in a (human) house all day long. So, we’ve been letting them spend most days in the greenhouse when we are at work and then we take them in at night since it can still be down in the high 30s at night

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This weekend, though, it was such a nice day that we decided to let them out in the main yard. We weren’t sure how the big chickens would treat them, and I was (am) a little overprotective of them. They are still only about 5 weeks old. But they are looking little miniature chickens now already! They grow so fast!

The chickens were much more interested in their food than they were in the chicks themselves. It does look as though we have one that will be competing with Henrietta as the top chicken. She is the barred rock (black and white one) in the video. She is still being told who’s the boss of the yard, but it will be interesting to see how that pans out as she gets bigger.

Also, here are a few pictures from around the yard. This weekend we finally got some nice weather -it has been so windy for all of April.

I think these are called grape hyacinths


The tulips have been blooming for about a month!


So have the dandelions

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The Stars Are Aligning

I don’t know about anyone else, but for me and Britton, at least from our perspective, it seems that when we are going on the right path, we know it. We get signs that encourage us along the way. These can be simple, small things, or large statements. I know it sounds super superstitious, but it’s just been the way my life has always been. I get these serendipitous events that speak to an ever greater web of connections.

This is where one decision or choice or desire impacts another and so on and so forth down the line like a ripple. It’s where Karma and Coincidence meet. Much of these we can’t see too far off in the distance, but we might understand them to be occuring even if we can’t see them. Like the idea of six degrees of separation, or that Kevin Bacon game, or It’s a Wonderful Life -how many people could we track back to us? How many people and things have we impacted? What is our butterfly effect?

Britton and I often talk about the fact that on his and my Dad’s shared birthday when we were just little kids, we were probably in the same restaurant at the same time. Who knows why, but usually you are exactly where you need to be, right now.

Lately, Britton and I have been having all sorts of good signs coming our way. The rental being rented the same day -practically the same moment- it was vacated. The application being turned in just as we were walking out the door to walk Schnoodle. (We even joked that we should go on a walk just to have it happen sooner. ) The citrus trees arriving just as we were about to call the plant company to make sure they’d get there. (I’ll have to write about these new trees!)  That we have managed to arrange JUST enough money to cover buying the place in Rincon. That we have been having the most awesome vivid dreams of living in Puerto Rico. That we have had some advertising interest on our websites. That we have already had about three people who want to rent the place in Rincon from us! That we stumbled upon a really inexpensive management company for our properties here in Colorado.

The more credence we give to these “signs”, the more we seem to receive. We even get signs when we are doing the wrong thing. For example: We had to make some minor repairs in the walls of the rental after the previous tenants gouged them moving the couch out. We patched it and painted it. The color wasn’t quite right. Being perfectionists, we tried to get a closer color. Still not right. Then we found a paint chip for the hardware store to try and match. The person behind the counter had us wait around for like 20 minutes then disappeared. Someone else finally came to help, but the computer gave an error that it couldn’t read it. He tried about 5 more times. We thought, well we could go to the next store and try again. Just at that moment, the paint clerk accidently drops the paint chip into a dark void beneath the counter, never to be seen again. Britton then exclamed “Okay, universe, we got the message. We don’t need to worry about the paint.” 

I think since we are nearing our goal and after working so hard and struggling to get here, we are finally given some slack. Maybe it’s my dad watching out for us. Maybe we’re just being silly and reading into things that aren’t there. But I don’t think it hurts to hope and feel the magic. We never know what’s going on just under the surface. Who knows what might be in the works for us, if we just let it and ask for it. So, we thank you, our Lucky Stars, Dad, Karma, Determination, Serendipity and anything else we don’t quite fully understand! And we thank all the people whose lives have intersected with ours for the better good. We do appreciate it and look forward to more in the future unknown.

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T.H.A.T Battle of the Bands

One of my jobs at work is to help coordinate a teen health coalition called T.H.A.T. The kids came up with the name because they thought it would be fun to say they are going to THAT meeting or THAT event. THAT stands for Teen Health Alliance of Today. The group does various events related to health in the community and wanted to host the 2nd annual THAT Battle of the Bands.


Me with two of the other adult coordinators of THAT

We usually meet and wanted to hold the event at Zoe’s, a cool funky warehouse style coffee shop that is run in conjunction with an area church. However, on the night they chose (this last Friday) it was already reserved. So they decided to work with another group that hosts at-risk teenagers in an indoor skate park/coffee shop that also has church ties. This organization is called Higher Grounds and they try to help intervene and prevent high risk behaviors in teens. It has a great mission and purpose and a perfect audience for health messages and music!


With some of the group (yah, THAT group -haha)

We didn’t have very many bands sign up to perform -in fact only two! So it wasn’t a big battle by any means. But they chose Britton as one of the judges (Simon Cowell!). One band was a garage band that mostly played reggae and punk reggae like Sublime. The other band was the jazz band from Eaton High School.


Jazz Band

The jazz band ultimately won the prize and will be playing at the Greeley Stampede this year on the free stage. Before and in between the bands they showed health messages on a big screen, had health trivia and handed out prizes.


The whole group afterward

Overall it was a fun night and a fun event. My work has me do some very interesting things like be an MC for a Quinceanera fashion show (in Spanish!!) and help run events like this. Pretty fun for work! I also made some headway with the coordinator of the Higher Grounds group to talk about making it a tobacco free property. Unfortunately even though it is for all underage kids, they still condone smoking in an outdoor cage area. As a health advocate,  I’ve found my work is never done. However, I was pleasantly surprised that my idea to bring “cutie” mandarin oranges and apples as a snack was a hit! No one thought these kids would eat them, but they were all gone by the end of the evening.

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Fun Spanish Words and Why Spanish is Long

There are a few words in Spanish that are just fun to say. They are long, strange and/or hard to pronounce the first time you try them, but once you’ve got them down, they are really fun -and impressive (impresionante) to your friends that you know how to say them!

For instance:

Sneeze: Estornudo (Es-Tor-Noo-Doe)
Parking: Estacionamiento (Es-Ta-See-Own-Ah-Me-En-Toe)
Unfortunately: Desafortunadamente (Des-Ah-For-Too-Nah-Dah-Men-Tay)
Early Morning/Late Night: La Madrugada (Lah Mah-Drew-Gah-Dah)
Rugrat/Squirt: Esquincle (Es-Quink-Lay)
Pants: Pantalones (Pant-ah-Loan-es) -Comes from the old word pantalooms
Regrettably: Lamentablemente (Lah-Men-Tah- Blay-Men-Tay)
Gossip (a person): Chismoso(a) (Cheese- Moh-So) If it’s a woman, it ends with the “a”
Gratitude: Agradecimiento (Ah-Grah-Day-See-Me-En-Toe)
Definitely: Definitivamente (Def-Een-Ah-Teev-Ah-Men-Tay)
Bat (the animal): Murciélago (Mur-See-A-Lah-Go) -This one is so cool they named a Lamborghini after it.
Mushrooms- Champiñones (Champ-een-yon-es) (another word for mushrooms is “Hongos”)
Sausage –Salchicha (Sahl-Chee-Cha)
Population- Población -(Poe-Blah-See-Own)


Cool Spanish Word =Cool Marketing for a Sports Car (Probably wouldn’t have seemed so cool if it were called a Lam Bat)

You’ll notice that some of the longer ones end in “mente”. This suffix is for most any adverb that ends in “ly”. Absolutely! ¡Absolutamente!

Because of things like this, on average Spanish words are just a bit longer and take a bit more space and time to say. To compensate, some people think Spanish speakers talk faster, but really, they are probably getting the information out at the same speed, but the syllables are coming out faster. For instance, here is a paragraph in English and Spanish using some of the above words.

Hello. I am calling about the pants my little squirt ordered off the Internet last night while we were sleeping. Regrettably, we can not buy the pants he ordered.

Buenos días. Estoy llamando sobre los pantalones mi esquincle ordenó por Internet ayer en la madrugada mientras estabamos dormidos. Lamentablemente, no podemos comprar los pantalones que él ordenó.

As you can see, for every two syllables, two words or two sentences in English, it takes about three in Spanish. But they are oh, so much more fun to say, so it’s worth it! 🙂

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