Shhh… Don’t tell Colleen, but I just bought a book from Amazon called, “Chicken Coops: 45 Building Plans for Housing Your Flock”.  The kids and I went over to one of Violet’s friend’s houses yesterday and bought some chicken eggs.  They house 7 chickens in the big area in their backyard.  They get about 6 – 7 eggs a day.  Their daughter sells the eggs for $3 a dozen.

I’ve been buying eggs from the Farmer’s Market for $5.50 a dozen this season.  $5.50 a dozen is a stupidly obnoxious price.  $3, I can deal with.  But, even better, after the initial cost is paid for is not paying for eggs at all.  We’ve got an acre yard, we can afford to use some of that space for chickens.

It’s my goal for the summer, build a chicken coop.  That goal trumps the building a shed goal of earlier, which trumped the finish the attic goal from even earlier.

Friday, Colleen and I got a date night, and what a nice night it was.

We saw Sean Penn as Harvey Milk. It was the best movie we saw in the theaters this year (it was the only movie we remember seeing in the theaters, thank you Violet and Mason). Sean Penn was great.

Then, we did something very touristy. Michael Symon is a chef on the Food Network, he’s on Iron Chef America and has his own show, Dinner:Impossible. He, also, has two restaurants in Cleveland and we went to one of them: Lolita. It was tremendously yummy. Even though I was fighting off a headache, I had to have a cocktail called the Beta: ginger-infused vodka, lime juice, and soda water.

For an appetizer: Bone Marrow. Doesn’t sound quite right, but it was incredibly tasty.

Dinner was Hanger Steak with a side of Polenta. The Polenta was amazing, I’m going to learn how to make it like that. Really the major thing to know was to use like a stick of butter per portion.

Okay, a bit of business first. Working in corporate America, I am worried about my job. I work for a large, building materials supplier, we have seen our business decrease drastically over the last several years, laying off thousands and closing about 100 of our locations. There’s a plan out there to help the situation; I would like you to look at the website and, if you agree with what you read, please click the link to email your congressperson.

http://www.fixhousingfirst.com/

I’m not much for corporate handouts, but, I guess if it affects my family, I’m for this one.

On to the cute baby pictures, Mason in the bathtub:

Mason wearing Violet’s Native American head-dress, made at preschool:

We constructed a gingerbread house last week, before I heard the piece on NPR today about the proper way to make a gingerbread house. This is the second year we’ve made one, last year we didn’t use Royal icing and it collapsed in on itself. This year I rolled it too thin (even though the instructions said to roll it to an 1/8th of an inch), and the roof caved in from the weight of the decoration. Anyway, here’s some pics from that awfully adorable experience:

I occasionally get a good picture of Violet:

Violet fed Daisy a “hungerburger” for lunch the other day:

The day revolved around food. It started out with pancakes, made the only way that Violet will occasionally eat them.

Then, I was walking through the kitchen and noticed the neatly organized fruit and veggies for Violet’s play kitchen. I shot the picture on the back deck for dramatic effect, that’s not actually where I noticed them.

So, the morning progressed. I was making the shopping list and decided a family outing to the farmer’s market would make for a fun morning. We all piled in to the car to make the 30 minute (at least) trek down to the Farmer’s Market.

There’s a lot of hunters in North Carolina. Today we passed four different pickup trucks, all with the dog cages in the back for the hunting dogs. As a side note, we hear shotgun blasts while sitting in our living room on a fairly regular basis. It’s weird. It’s like we’re in a war-zone. So, we drive passed the group of rednecks hunting, and get to my favorite handmade sign of the season.

Images of turkeys trapped in a pen with fat, balding, rednecks shooting at them appear in my mind. What else could it be? Where is the sport?

We keep driving and get to the Farmer’s Market. It’s such a neat place.

I used to go to the one in Kansas City, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as interesting as this one. The one in KC might be a bit bigger, but they don’t have collard greens, I betcha.

I really admire these people growing all this local food. The local stuff has so much more flavor.

The kids always have a good time. They end up snacking on all kinds of good stuff: apples, tomatoes, cookies… They are absent from my photos today, don’t know why.