So Easter is coming up rather fast and a few people have asked me how you go about coloring brown eggs. My first response is, “Oh my goodness? Have you ever just loooked at them in the basket? They’re beautiful just the way they are!”

But I get it. With a dozen (or two) layers, you see that every day. And I have children, too. Children who don’t actually remember ever dyeing eggs. Somehow, that suddenly didn’t seem quite right, so we embarked on an egg coloring adventure to show you some ways you can decorate your already colorful eggs this Easter. If nothing else, it helps you remember which ones are boiled and which ones aren’t when you open the refrigerator.

For starters, you can color them just like any old white egg. You know how the yolks of those farm fresh, pastured poultry are just a richer, deeper, more satisfying color than the store bought eggs? Well, it’s kind of like that when you compare dyed white eggs to dyed brown eggs. The eggs in the top row were originally white. The eggs in the bottom row were brown eggs dyed in the same dyes for the same amount of time to show the color difference.

Those were dyed using the directions on the back of the food coloring box: one half cup water, one teaspoon vinegar and 20 drops of food coloring, in varying combinations.

If you have young children, stickers are always a treat. And can even usually be picked up for a dollar or two.

A little crayon allows for interesting designs. The egg will pick up the dye everywhere the crayon is not, allowing children to draw pictures, write their names, or sketch the Japanese symbols for love and long life.

This one didn’t turn out quite so well as we had hoped because, well, farm fresh eggs don’t always peel as nicely as store bought eggs. They take some aging and sometimes some refrigeration after boiling for the shell to come off cleanly. But we tried our version of Chinese tea eggs. Simply crack the shell of the boiled egg and then dip it in the dye. When peeled, you will have something like this.

Provided your egg white doesn’t come off with your egg shell as the whites of fresh eggs are wont to do.

And should you try that, do not throw away all that egg shell. Instead, put it in a bowl and crunch it up into little pieces. A little glue and Voila! You have a lovely selection of colors for a beautiful mosaic. My daughter isn’t finished with hers, yet, but you can see the beginnings of a very eye catching egg. As well as a nice project for the older children while the younger ones are simply slapping stickers on theirs.

And finally, there is the silk wrapped egg. I first saw this done with silk scarves, but who has a ton of silk scarves lying around? That they want to cut up and boil? Not me. But I do have scraps of recycled silk sari yarn, so I thought I’d try that to see what would happen.

First, you wrap the uncooked egg in your silk yarn. Or scarf.

Then you tie it in a sock. The only real purpose of the sock is to keep the yarn from falling off. The best way I found to do this was to stick my hand in the sock, grab hold of the egg and slowly turn the sock inside out over the egg so the yarn wouldn’t be rubbed off. Then tie it so it stays tight.

Set it in a pot to boil for ten minutes. It may take some creativity to get it to sink if your sock wants to float. I laid a pair of tongs on mine. When it finishes, you will have a lovely bit of abstract art created by the silk dyes rubbing off on your egg.

And with those few tools and a couple of hours, your children can create a few dozen masterpieces to share with friends, hide and of course eat.

How do you normally decorate your eggs?

Dishes, dishes, dishes.

There are days when it seems like all I do is dishes and yet they are never done.

Behind me, the sliding and shuffling and clanking of a baby hard at work. I want cabinet locks on all the cupboards in the kitchen because I’m tired. Tired of cleaning the same things over and over and over. Tired of trying to be patient when all I want to do is scream. Tired of overreacting and hearing the children say,

“It’s OK. Mommy just hurts because of Tiggy.”

I turn around. Three pots, four lids, two ice cube trays, the lid to the yogurt maker and all the plastic parts of the juicer are back on the floor. The floor which is now carpeted with the pages of my favorite cookbook. It was already falling apart. The pages had been stuffed in the front, out of order, with the intent of some day straightening it all out.

And there’s Micah at an open cupboard, pulling out the slide-out shelves until he finds what he is looking for. A red plastic lid. He looks up at me and sees me watching. With a smile and a giggle, he shows me his plastic lid and adds it to the growing pile of things on the floor.

“Are you working, too?”

He giggles and I can’t help but smile. I sit down on the floor and start putting the pages back in the cookbook.

“You know, someday I just might decide to cook something and I just might want to sit down and browse through my cookbook first rather than just printing it off the internet.”

He hands me some pages. I bop him on the forehead with them and he grabs his head with both hands with a smile so cute I can’t help but do it again. This time he giggles.

“Oh, Mookie, what would I ever do without all of your help?”

I put the cookbook with its loose and out of order pages in a drawer he can’t reach and hand him a spoon. He doesn’t know what to do with it so I take another one and tap a pot with it. Now he wants both spoons and bangs happily on his assortment of instruments from my cupboards. His notes join those of five siblings who all sat at my feet drumming on my pots and pans while I worked in the kitchen.

“You make such beautiful music, Mookie. And music makes work light.”

I return to my dishes and decide maybe I don’t need those cupboard locks after all.

Slicing through the plastic wrap on a frozen pizza, I look at my counter and think it is the perfect summation of my life right now. In the corner, an incubator with its second batch of eggs. They are starting to come in faster than we can eat them so we put a day’s worth of eggs in only two days after a successful test hatch yielded two little chicks.

Lined up under the cabinet are three jars of kefir culturing with my new kefir grains which are taking up as much time as the puppies sitting at my feet hoping for dropped crumbs.

And behind the dish rack, my sourdough starter, bubbling away as it prepares to produce two fresh loaves in the morning.

But it is seven in the evening and I never really thought about dinner so it is frozen pizza again tonight.

Slowly, in fits and starts, we are moving forward again with the vision of a life that drew us out here to this property. To a life of hard work, fresh air and fresh food. Last year, we did a lot but more because we didn’t know what to do other than the next thing on a list I had sketched out only weeks before Tiggy died.

But this year, as we go over our plans for the spring, I catch glimpes of that original vision. I see Tiggy’s little hand reaching up to slow me down to his pace during chores and I see little Micah holding his jacket on top of his head because he wants me to put it on him so he can come, too. And I want this for our family as we grow into this land together.

And I have been thinking a lot over the last couple of weeks about what I want for this blog. It’s going to change as our lives begin to change. There will be more about chickens, and dogs and fruit trees. There will be more about the business we are hoping to grow. And there will, of course, be the stories of our life I have been sharing for the past two years.

I just need to figure out how to organize it and then find the time to get started.

For some reason, I thought the craft show ended at three, not four. I was on my own with a six year old to break down and load the car. I had promised her Wendy’s and a frosty. I needed to stop at WalMart for glue.

And it was a two and a half hour drive home in good conditions and these roads were anything but good.

John needed me home by nine in case he got called to work. And my Bug had to climb every snow mound and jump off every hill.

“Come on, Bug.”

I felt the impatience of a dozen other things I needed to do, of places I needed to be, of tasks calling me out of this Winter Wonderland and into the world of “Hurry up.”

I felt the impatience and the whining lilt to my words before I even lent voice to them and my displeasured scowl was met with glistening eyes full of the wonder of the first real snow of the season.

And I replaced the impatient words with a deep breath and a different exclamation.

“That’s a big hill, Bug! Do you think you can climb it?”

Because ten years from now it won’t matter whether or not I had time to pick up glue on my way home from a craft show. But Bug’s memories of playing in the snow with her mom after our Big Day with just the two of us just might.

The day Hunter didn’t get up to do chores with me in the morning was the day I decided it was time to let him go. His appointment is in about an hour.

He didn’t even lift his head when I went out to do chores this morning.

It’s hard to say goodbye. Going out to brush him one last time before carrying him to the car.

It was a good weekend. My evidence of that is a funny story I have to tell. It has been a very long time since I’ve shared a funny story.

That and my daughter thinks I give way too much air time to Bear, especially in the “Funny Stories Shared on Facebook” department.

This one is about this girl (sporting a custom ordered chipped shell bracelet available from our Etsy shop):

And this place:

And a little Nebraska town of less than 25,000.

It had been a long day. We left for the Dog Expo at six in the morning, drove for three hours, showed all day and had a three hour trip back home before repeating it again the next day. And when I realized that when you figured in the cost of gas I wasn’t saving all that much by going home, I decided to check into a hotel.

But I hung up without asking where exactly the hotel I just booked a room in was.

But I also figured the lady at the Wendy’s drive thru would know. And she did. Apparently, knowing where a place is and knowing how to explain how to get there are two separate skills, however.

“Well, you go past the McDonald’s . . . um, it’s the first turn . . . well, how do I explain this. You’ll take the first turn past the McDonald’s . . . “

And she started making lots of hand signs while turning around and more showing me than telling me while asking someone else how they would explain how to get to the Quality Inn. Fortunately for us both, the cryptic information she had given me was enough. Her confidence in telling me she knew where the hotel was coupled with her confusion at telling me exactly how to get there made me suspicious I’d been to this hotel before.

“That’s OK. Did it used to be a Holiday Inn?”

“Yes!” She said with evident relief.

“Ok, thanks! I think I remember how to get there.”

And we left. And I turned left. And my daughter, ever ready to give direction, protested.

“The other way mom! The McDonald’s is the other way!”

“No. You’re right that we passed a McDonald’s but she was talking about the one up here.”

And this is where the small town girl came shining through.

“What?! This town has two McDonald’s restaurants? This place must be HUGE!”

And my steering wheel got a light shower of Coca Cola.

I should NOT have watched Grace Card.

Because other than that whole accidentally shooting his own kid thing, that’s what I fear most.

Seventeen years and the living can’t get out from under the shadow cast by the one who died.

I know it doesn’t have to be that way.

But I know it can.

And in my darkest hours, when my husband retreats and the children fight and I don’t want to deal with it anymore, it scares me.

This feeling in my chest . . .

This tickle of anticipation . . .

This vicarious excitement that makes me want to tell the whole world what my daughter accomplished . . .

She earned Grand Champion in Showmanship. Her little golden penciled Hamburg won Grand Champion in Large Fowl. Her Welsh Harlequin . . . the last survivor from my little flock, the bird I told her cost $120 since she is all I have to show for it and hence had better do well . . . her little Welsh Harlequin won Grand Champion in Waterfowl and went on to win Best of Show.

And this feeling in my chest . . .

Is it pride?

We call it that.

“Oh, honey, I am so proud of you!”

Or is it love? Love which causes us to rejoice when good comes to those close to us? To experience their joy as if it were a piece of our own?

And I think . . . Wouldn’t we all have so much more joy in our lives if we learned to truly love more?

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Don’t forget about our bracelet giveaway celebrating the opening of our Etsy shop for Tiggy’s House. Today is the last day to enter!

Sunday, Hunter went missing. Our crazy, annoying, paralyzed dog went missing.

The third lab in our area in as many days. But Hunter couldn’t have gotten far. He would have been easy prey for the coyotes, but he couldn’t have gotten far.

All day, I called for him and all day I stared at the soybean field thinking he could be lying a few feet in and we’d never find him. I thought about coyotes, and I thought about dog fight rings because I’d heard a few things about where missing dogs sometimes end up. And I called for Hunter with very little hope of ever seeing him again.

Checking on chickens in the late afternoon, I thought I heard him. I stopped and listened, but it couldn’t have been him. Hunter’s voice has changed since his paralysis. It’s raspy and quiet. If you have ever heard a debarked dog try to bark, it is very similar though there is some voice behind it. His bark is very distinctive, but he barks barely above a whisper.

And I wasn’t sure I had actually heard anything at all so after calling him and standing in the silence listening to the wind, I went back to caring for the chickens.

Until evening.  Just a little before sunset. The children were playing and I heard it again. Again, I thought I couldn’t possibly have actually heard him. The children were so loud, but this time the bark was persistent. It wasn’t a single bark I wasn’t sure whether I’d even heard.

And Jake answered.

And I KNEW it was Hunter.

“Everyone to the car NOW!” I shouted. “And someone grab a flashlight!”

This was out of the ordinary. The kids scrambled to the car with feverish excitement.

“What is it mom? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just think I heard Hunter. I’m not sure, but we only have maybe 20 minutes before sunset and he sounds far away.”

And we drove off. North to the creek near our neighbor’s because I knew he had been there last summer with Copper. The creek bed was empty.

“Hunter!” I called, and waited.

“Ararrararararararararararar!” Was the reply. Distant. To the east. But definitely Hunter.

Earlier in the day when I realized Hunter was missing, I had felt resigned to the fact that we wouldn’t see him again. I was sad, anxious, hoped somehow he would just turn up, but knew that there wasn’t much hope.

Because really, how far can a paralyzed dog go?

Apparently, pretty far. A mile away, we found him at the bottom of a steep embankment and up to his chest in mud. I couldn’t even get to him. Bear climbed down with a tow rope to attach to his collar and he didn’t even struggle as I dragged him straight up and onto dry ground.

Hunter was safe. Exhausted, freezing cold, and covered in an inch of mud, our Hunter was safe.

Dinner, a bath and time with Bear and the hair dryer and our Hunter was happy.

Our crazy, paralyzed dog who just doesn’t give up was home.

LE got a rabbit.

From a friend of a friend, my little girl received her first pet. Sally. We made her a home next to the porch, as close to having her indoors as we could without actually bringing her into the house. There she was for treats and attention on the way to the car. There she was for treats and attention on the way to the garden. There she was for a little extra something when LE left her to pick mulberries by the barn.

There she was to be read to while Mom made breakfast.

There the roof of the porch protected her hutch from the rain and the house protected her from the wind. Or so I thought.

But a storm . . . a real storm . . . with 60 mph winds and a wall of water drew me to the window where I saw the hutch on its side and pieces of it thrown about the lawn. My heart sank and I felt sick to my stomach.

“Oh, please Lord . . .”

But I didn’t get very far in the prayer. Because it is just a rabbit. And as much as I love that little bunny and as hard as it will be to tell little LE in the morning, it is hard to pray for the safety of a rabbit when my son’s grave is being soaked in the very same storm.

“Oh, please Lord . . .”

I’m not sure I got much further that night. I cried out to the Lord, but there weren’t a lot of words. My thoughts weren’t any more coherent than my speech when all I seemed to be able to tell dispatch was my address. Over and over and over.

“Oh, please Lord . . .”

Thinking of LE, I began again and stepped out into the storm. With flashes making the night as bright as day, thunder echoing in my chest and tears mixing with the deluge pouring forth from the heavens, I walked outside to pick up the hutch.

Empty. Except for the little dish of clover LE had picked her bunny before bedtime, the hutch was empty.

I was already soaked. I looked up at the storm and thought it might be smarter to go to the basement than to search for a rabbit in the dark in a storm that picked up her hutch and threw it. I thought maybe I’d bring Micah down to the basement and come back out because maybe she didn’t go far. And I had to try. So wishing things had turned out a little differently on the wings of a similar prayer, I began again.

“Oh, please Lord . . . “

Turning toward the house, I almost tripped over Sally as she climbed on my feet in the dark in a storm where all I could see was the outline of the world with every flash.

And that left me with a rabbit in a laundry basket and a weight so heavy on my chest it leaves me gasping for breath between the sobs overtaking my body.

Because really, I just want to trade.