Cruise info...finally!

I know it's old news but Jeff and I went on a cruise of the Southern Caribbean the first week in February. It was our first big vacation without the kids ever. We wanted to go on a cruise to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary (which is in June) but we couldn't wait until the summer. It's best to cruise the warm Caribbean when it's cold at home ya know!? Anywho, it was so fun! We went with Kindra & Spencer and they are hilarious! And I read 6 books so that's a successful week to me ;)

Our first day. We landed in San Juan, Puerto Rico and went straight to the ship. Our first island: Tortola, our cruise ship in the background.

Pictures of Tortola.
I normally think pictures without people in them are pointless but Tortola was my favorite island :)

Us relaxing on St. Maarten. This was the prettiest beach and the most touristy. And people kept trying to sell Spencer drugs. It was pretty funny. "Any bad habits man?"

St. Kitts is special because it's the Atlantic Ocean on the North side and the Carribean Sea to the South. We snorkeled a little on St. Kitts and Jeff accidentally stepped on a sea urchin, oops. The next picture is of our group on Dominica. We snorkeled at Champagne beach were bubbles bubble up from the bottom. There were so many beautiful fish there!

Barbados was our last island. We just snorkeled and sun bathed and then some locals brought their two horses to swim in the ocean. It was great, and kind of random haha.

I'm not a big picture taker so we have the most pictures from when we were on Barbados (our last island haha). We docked in San Juan and our flight wasn't until afternoon so we spent the day exploring some of the shops in Old San Juan and touring their military fort.

The fort was amazing! It's a very impressive structure that was built by hand in the 17th century. It's really incredible. I learned a lot about the history of the area too.

There were so many fun adventures. I have to go pick up Leah from Activity Days right now but I'll add some to this post later!

Let's see if the pics and videos from my iPhone work on here...

This one is a little to the side I think. Oh well.

Whitney LOVED to look at the chicks. And if her face was near the window your face could not be!

First moments in the brooder.

"My life gets kinda boring, need something that I can confess"

-"Secrets" by One Republic

I've been beckoned back to blogging. So. Many. Requests! Haha, okay maybe just a handful but it's enough. I will continue to document our life here at the Leavitt Estate for the world to read. So, read on:

Our big news is that I single-handedly hatched 5 chicks in a homemade incubator! BIG NEWS!
It was a proud moment for me.
It's like giving birth. It's like giving birth to adorable fluffiness. It's like giving birth to adorable fluffiness that poops everywhere! Seriously, everywhere. They are cute though. Here they are:

Davis & Grayson went to Meema & Papa's for Spring Break but Leah stayed home to see them hatch. I wasn't sure if we'd have any actually hatch since I had made the incubator (yeah, I made the incubator!)
and the thermostat didn't seem to keep a very even temperature.
But she had faith.
Our first one hatched around 5am Tuesday morning (I woke her up to see it) and the last one hatched at 8pm.
She was so excited the entire day.
And now we all love them with all our hearts. Ok, maybe not Jeff. I didn't ask. I love them with all my heart and if he says he doesn't like them it will break my heart so we are on a "don't ask don't tell" policy about the chickens. Okay?
He did however get a farmer's tan building the outside chicken coop this morning so maybe he doesn't hate them.
But to be honest we have a lot. Some teachers at the elementary school hatched eggs in their classrooms and then were going to give the chicks to the Gilcrease Sanctuary but I had a mom friend who had been taking care of some see if they'd give them to me (you know, for free!) and so we acquired 5 chicks who were about 2 weeks old. Here's a picture of them yesterday at about 3 weeks old:

And then I bought 4 more day-old chicks from the feed store because they were too cute!
So now we have 14 chicks total!
I only want about 6-10 hens but there no accurate way for a layperson such as myself to sex them until they're older
(the 10 that were hatched locally have a 50/50 chance of being female and then the 4 from the hatchery-where they do have methods of semi-accurately determining their gender- have an 80-90% chance).
We'll know for sure in about 2 months and then we'll decide what to do with the roosters or extra hens. Until then we're going to enjoy our pets. You know, our pets that will someday provide food for us :)