Columbus Day

Today is Columbus Day.  Of course, Mike and I had forgotten that because now that we are retired all of our days are 'days off'.  But we learned it was Columbus Day when our neighbor Lynette texted Mike that she and the kids were out riding and wanted to stop by.  Apparently the kids had grown impatient waiting for a friend of the family to show up for the evening so she put the kids on horseback and rode over to our house to distract them.  The first thing four year old Hunter told us when he came over is that he had four whole 'days off' and today was one of them.  'Days off' are a novelty to Hunter as he only started preschool a month ago.

The kids asked to see our chickens.  I was surprised they wanted to see chickens as they have some of their own but I think it was a ploy to get off their horses and look around.  So I took them over to the chicken compound.  Alison wanted to catch a chicken but I distracted her by getting her to feed them corn out of her hands.  Hunter did this for awhile too but then they decided to check for eggs.  While I was showing Alison how to open the nest area of the small chicken coop to get the eggs, Hunter climbed in from the other side.  Fortunately the coop withstood this assault.  Since Hunter had an egg, I told Alison she could go in the big coop and get the other egg.  She found the egg but instead of coming out the people door, she and Hunter crawled through the chicken opening that is sized for the chickens.  It is on the floor.  They ended up in the attached run where they proceeded to lock the full people size run door from the inside.  They then crawled through the connecting tunnel to get back to the smaller coop.  I didn't know anyone besides chickens could fit through that tunnel.

I don't know how long all this exploring took but I now realized it was past time these two return to their horses.  Two kids crawling around the chicken coop are probably picking up all sorts of nasty germs.  These are farm kids with a mom who is a veterinarian but still.  Second, they have just locked me out of the main chicken run and the only way I was going to be able to lock the chickens in tonight is if I crawled through that tunnel or the chicken door in the big hen house.  So I firmly but kindly convinced them to unlock the chicken door from the inside and return to my house to wash their hands.

The rest of their visit was pretty uneventful.  Hunter did find more trash that previous workman had left there.  I didn't know it was there.  This reminded his mom about his favorite birthday present.  It was a recycling can smasher.  Now Hunter is an environmentally responsible trash collector.

The kids noticed all my Halloween decorations which was nice.  In all honesty, I had actually hung ghosts in our new landscaping for them.  We knew that they would be coming trick or treating at our house this year and I wanted them to know that Mike and I had Halloween spirit.

We told the kids to come back anytime.  They are great kids.  They are very well behaved and fun to be around.   When the kids come over they make our day.  Also, their parents Lynette and Nathan have been very nice to us and extra nice to our daughters.  Still I hope they don't have any 'days off' in the very near future.  The ducks and chickens need to recover from today's visit.