Chicken Update

The chicks are nearly full grown. Three are just now 3 months old and the fourth will be 3 months on the 21st of May. The chick that is furthest away in the picture is the youngest.

Amy Made the Frontier Drill Team

Amy tried out for her Middle School Drill Team this year and was very excited to hear that she had made the team. She is less excited about the uniform...lol I like the uniform.

Road Rash

For Matthew's 11th birthday he got a new bicycle. As it turns out, it doesn't make very good U-Turns. It's made for going fast, not turning around!! He has this raspberry on his elbow to prove it! We think it looks kinda like Africa....

Chicks are growing

Today was such a nice day, I thought I would let the chicks out into the run for the very first time. They were a little skeptical at first, but soon they were running around and exploring everything. As we worked in the yard, the kids kept giving the chicks worms. They loved the worms, and would try to take them away from each other. It was pretty funny.

Minnie has been keeping a very close eye on the chicks...lol

Garden progress

Matthew helped me move the garden soil from the driveway to the backyard.

Today I completed the second row of blocks. I wasn't as lucky this time, since the top row is a bit smaller in diameter than the bottom row, but I improvised with a rock from the yard to fill the gap.

Well, as I began to get closer and closer to completing the circle of retaining wall blocks, I started to get nervous that when the blocks finally met, they would be slightly out of level, or I would have way too much space for the last block, or way too little space. (or both!) Miraculously, when I got to the last block, it was perfectly level and exactly the right size to complete the circle. I was in shock! (but very, very happy!)

Now I just need to dig all of the rocks out, add the second story of retaining wall blocks, bring in some nice fertile 3-way with fertilizer and we'll be ready to plant something!

PC Build

Yesterday afternoon the UPS guy brought three boxes of goodies....When unpacked it all looked like this...



After installing the CPU on the motherboard. (Intel i7 Bloomfield 920 cpu and ASUS P6T LGA 1366 X58 ATX Intel Motherboard)


Matthew installing the bracket for the cpu cooler. (Arctic Cooling Freezer 7)


Matthew ready to install the CPU fan power cable on the Motherboard.


Matthew connecting some of the case wires to connect to the motherboard.


Making progress. Power supply is in!


Matthew connecting the HD Audio cable to the Motherboard.


Matthew installing Windows 7 Pro.


We started the build around 4:00 pm and finished around 8:00 pm. It will be moving upstairs to it's final resting place soon. Matthew did a great job with the build and we both enjoyed working on it together.

Tech Specs:

Case: Cooler Master Storm Scout
Motherboard: ASUS P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX
CPU: Intel i7 Bloomfield 920 2.66 GHz Quad Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7
Video Card: EVGA 512-P3-N871-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512 MB 256-Bit DDR3
Power Supply: Cooler Master Silent Pro 700W
Hard Drive: Wester Digital Caviar blue 1TB 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache SATAII
Memory: OCZ Gold 6GB (3 X 2GB) DDR3 Triple Channel
ASUS DVD Burner
Acer 20" LCD Widescreen display
TV Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600

Future additions: NAS device

New Computer

It's a bit embarrassing, but I have to admit that I have put off upgrading our home computer for far, far too long. It's a Dell P4, 1.8 GHz, 512 MB of RAM dinosaur! Can anyone guess how old something like that would be? If you guessed 8.5 years, you would be right on the money. (Yep, it even has a 19" CRT!!) Back in the day, this was a screaming machine, but over the years it has slowed to a crawl for even the most basic challenges. The final straw came when it was time to install Smart Music for the kids to practice their instruments with and it completely froze up before the install had barely gotten underway! Anyway, it was at that point that I started thinking it might actually be time to say goodbye to the old Dell and get something more current. I thought it would be fun for Matthew and I to buy all of the computer components and build it together. Hopefully, it will also be educational for Matthew and maybe even a little bit fun. It looks like everything should arrive on Thursday. Stay tuned for updates and pictures of the build! For those of you wanting all the details on the hardware, I will include that as well.