Eggs! Eggs! Eggs!

Mm mm mm

It worked. Nature, I mean. On September 8 we finally got not one, but two little brown beauties from our chickens. The whole family went a little nutso with excitement. We even attracted the neighbor girl with our egg-citement (sorry about that).

So, Ms. Samantha B. is our contest winner with a guess of September 5. Congratulations! Email me and we can figure out if you get the dozen eggs or the Eggling herb planter.

Woo hoo! Omelets for all.

Maggie checks compulsively (like we all do)

Finally, our labor pays off

That's our first prize egg next to a jumbo supermarket egg. Ours is cuter, don't you think?

Watching eggs fry is not at all like watching paint dry

Shook me all night long

Most nights these days my kids invent a hundred different ways to stall before bed. "I'm hungry." "I have to go to the bathroom." "I want the light on a little more." "I need to ask you a question." Etc, etc. until we end up having to just close the door in their little faces and wishing them goodnight.

Lately they've added a few fears to their expanding repertoire. Last week I had to go into the backyard and get rid of an imaginary rat for Maggie. Yesterday Oliver asked me to make sure there were no owls outside. Later, he called me back in to ask where the volcanoes were.

Then, tonight, Maggie called me into the room where she was sitting up in bed whimpering with fear. "Mom," she said, lips quivering. "I see a rock star outside. And I don't like rock stars."

For just a millisecond I got excited, thinking maybe, just maybe, this rather trying and exhausting day was going to end on a bright note and I would pull away the curtain and Angus Young would be standing in the backyard admiring our chickens in his little shorts and suspenders ensemble.

But no, it was only Venus, or the North Star or whatever, and I had to explain that it was just a regular star and not a rock star and there was nothing to be afraid of.

Oliver & Maggie doing a serious and avant garde "robot"

Come on, eggs!

Ahem, it's September 6th and our chickens are still no-good lay abouts intent on eating our table scraps and giving us nothing in return. They're like your belching brother-in-law who drinks all your beer and leaves a funny smell on your couch.

That's right, no eggs yet.

All the dates for the Guess the Date of the First Egg contest have come and gone. Wanna have another go? Leave your guess here. It's week 21, if you're the type to do research into these things, and we are dealing with two cuckoo morans and one barred rock.

Prizes still stand.

Ladies and gentlemen, good luck.