You know, I had a solid, “posting once a week” schedule thing going there for a while, and then work exploded under my helmet and I utterly lost the groove.

But I’m beginning a mini-vacation as of today (taking a few days off this week), which means I have a bit of extra time on my hands…so,

Hi!

How you doin’?

Good, good. Glad to hear it.

Us?

Oh…you know. Doin’ our thing.

Daphne actually has a minor cold right now, and is sniffling and coughing a bit while lying here on the couch next to me.

Hopefully it’s just a little 24-hour bug.

Since I last posted for you all, Jen’s parents have come out to visit us and stayed in nearby Burke for a week, and my mom is currently staying nearby and our plan is to catch up with her over the next couple days as well.

So there have been several grandparent reunions for Daphne, and she’s absolutely loved seeing everyone during their visits to the NEK.

And, speaking of Vermontishness, we recently made a pilgrimage up to the VT DMV in Newport to take yet another step in our quest to become real residents here.

After which we did a quick walk around Newport which, like most places we’ve seen here, is lovely in new and entirely unique ways.

Then we dropped by a park up in Derby Line to let Daph play for a little while, since she was so incredibly well behaved while we filled out 45 minutes worth of automotive paperwork earlier.

And, when we got back home, we sloughed the old Texas tags off the Nanny Car and replaced them with our fresh, green, Vermont plates:

So, while we’re clearly anything but local, we now at least appear that way at first glance. As opposed to sporting those high visibility black & white plates that instantly branded us “damn flatlander!” from 50 paces.

Oh, and the more astute of you might’ve noticed something new there in the background… A little red edifice, perhaps?

Yes, our chicken coop arrived a few weeks ago

A bit blurry, but you get the idea.

This picture also humble brags about all the sunflowers that we’ve done absolutely zero work to plant or cultivate but have popped up on their own simply to look beautiful there in our tea herb garden.

Anyway, it follows that a chicken coop would imply chickens themselves. But before you get full-grown chickens…you get baby chicks.

Six baby chicks that have indeed been ordered, and which should be hatching here in the next 12 days, give or take. At which point they’ll be crated up with some snuggly straw, provided a dollop of some bizarre hydrating goop, and will hop a flight to us. We pick them up the moment they arrive at our local post office which, all things being equal, should be sometime during the week of August 23rd.

Which means there will be a lot of chick pics here for you in very short order.

I’ll be sure to keep you all posted.