Graduation, but a little late.

Welp, as I'm sure you've all heard, I finished a degree last year. Here in the UK at my University, when you finish a degree last year, you don't actually graduate until this year. While this happened in late January, I am just now getting around to taking the very few photos off the camera. Here are a few of them. Just to prove I did it, you know.



Ashley is not in these photos because she was the photographer. We had professional pictures taken, but I actually do not know what happened with those. I'll have to look into it.

The next picture occurred like this:

Ash: "Kiss her! C'mon Stephen, kiss her!"

Amy dreamily closes her eyes and puckers up for a romantic kiss...

Stephen: "Ah -goo-goo-goo-goo!"

Amy smiles and giggles madly and feels rather silly...


Still, you might even think we were going to kiss when you look at it. :)

The Chicks' Outside Adventure!

The Chicks went outside for the first time today. The children enjoyed playing with them, and they enjoyed the sunshine, and really enjoyed pecking at the ground.

The children made them an enclosure out of wooden blocks.

They all enjoyed stroking the chicks and giving them toys to play with. The chicks, of course, had no idea what to do with toys except poop on them.

And a good time was had by all.

Birth...

We were very lucky to be able to hatch eggs in my classroom. We started out with 10 eggs. They sat in an incubator for a few days and then began to hatch.



This is the firstborn. His name is George (for St. George's Cross on the English flag) and he is a rooster. He was born on Wednesday, 23 June at 11:45 am.



After George came Defoe. She is names after Jermaine Defoe, the English player who scored a goal during the England vs. Algeria World cup, which was playing in the school hall on the Wednesday the chicks hatched. There were tons of parents that came to watch with their kids and lots of traffic looking for chick updates. She was born at 3:45, at the very moment that Defoe scored the goal. Thus, her name.


This is the third chick, June, working hard to hatch.


The very wet pathetic looking chick is June, born at 4:45.

And finally, Wednesday was born via Caesarean at 5:30. It was looking very much like he was not going to finish hatching at all, so I helped him out a bit. I like to think he still did the work, but just had a bit of a helping hand.

Out of our 10 eggs, only those 4 hatched. So we had 3 roosters and a hen. To tell them apart we coloured their heads. George we coloured red, June blue, and Wednesday green. As Defoe was the only brown chick, she didn't get a coloured spot. Yet anyway.

Not a Great Dream... but at least not a nightmare.

This morning I had a very vivid dream.

There was a spaceship going to another planet. We all decided that it was the best thing to go on the spaceship and live on the new planet, and were given a rendezvous point and a time to meet. We met the first one, but I decided that I couldn't go on that one because I /needed/ to see Tristan before I left. So Stephen went, and Ashley stayed with me. Our rendezvous was rescheduled.

I went to see Tristan, and when it was time to leave, he didn't want me to go. He clung to me, saying he wanted to go with me, but was being pulled back into the house away from me. I stayed with him until I was so late that I couldn't be sure that I would make the rendezvous, and left him screaming my name. I could hear it all the way to pick up my stuff.

I woke up before finding out if I made it to the rendezvous point on time, but I felt bitter and sick inside. I know what my brain is trying to sort through. But I would like it much better if it would not do it right when I have to get up and thus set up my day to start by feeling a bit dead inside. Just sayin'.

At least it wasn't a nightmare - unlike the time when Tristan was 1 that I dreamt I cut the head off a cow with a pair of scissors (it was a mercy killing) and then discovered that it wasn't a cow, it was Tristan - and I held his head telling him I loved him and was sorry over and over until he died. I woke myself up crying with that one. Nice one, brain. Nice.