Birthdays and Chickens and Snowfall ... OH MY!

So, for a general update...

Here is a picture of Baby Monkey opening her first birthday present ever:



And here is Monkey4 and Baby Monkey celebrating:



We will have an actual birthday party with cake for the Baby Monkey this weekend...so stay tuned for those pics. :)

The chickens are doing great! They are already growing - it is amazing how fast they grow! We are enjoying watching them. They each seem to have their own little personality, it is really fun to watch. I am also reading about chickens incessantly right now [my current obsession I guess], so that's fun too!

Here is a picture from yesterday of how big they are now:



Here is Monkey2 holding Padme. She's the one that was picking on the other one. I like her though - she's really spunky and braver than the other chickens. She will come right out of the cage to me when I open it up to feed them. [Chickens are pretty smart too, they have already figured out that I am the "Food Lady" and they all like me pretty well as a result LOL!]



Here are Monkey3 and Monkey1 cuddling their chickens while they watch TV. Who knew hens like educational television?!



And the strangest thing of all this week - we got snow last night! We haven't gotten any real snow in a few years [and yeah, you Yankees go ahead and laugh at me. I know what we got doesn't even qualify as "real" snow, but it was enough to delight all the children in our great state. LOL!]

Here is the 2yo laughing at the white fluffy stuff falling from the sky. She was absolutely amazed:



Here is The Boy playing in the snow. They had a blast running around in it and trying to catch it on their tongues:



Here is Monkey1 with an *actual snowball*. She was thrilled: :)



Unfortunately, it lasted less than 12 hours on the ground and most of it had melted by this morning. Well, that's my kind of snow really. I wish it had lasted about 12 more hours and THEN gone away - just enough time to play with it and then get back to life.

You may notice since I'm writing my blog instead of sitting at the hospital that I am NOT having surgery this morning. I canceled it. I really didn't feel comfortable with the surgeon I was seeing, AND, it being the anniversary of my "near death" this week at the hands of medical incompetence... not a good week to have surgery.

I found a different urologist who is supposed to be "the best in GA" and I have an appt with him on Monday to get a second opinion.

I am in pain pretty much all the time - it just varies from "regular" pain to "writhing on the floor pain". I'm ready to get *something* done on this. It is making it very, very difficult to be a mother.

I hope that one way or another things will resolve soon and this new doctor can discover the underlying cause of this torture.

In the meantime, a friend sent me something this morning via email that said:

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass.
It's about learning to dance in the rain."

Boy, ain't that the truth?!!!