Off With His Head

Fifty years ago at 3:30AM I entered into this world. That sure seems like a very long time. We decided that we would celebrate next week when Brandon and Serene are back in town. Actually, Sarah and I are going to both celebrate that day since we will be in Utah dropping off Alycia on Sarah's birthday. Knowing that we weren't celebrating today you can imagine my surprise when Lisa and Sarah walked into my office with 50 helium filled balloons. It was quite a surprise. Better yet, they brought me some lunch and we had lunch together. It was a great surprise. The balloons totally filled my office and everyone who walked by had to comment on the balloons. Pretty much everyone at work knows that I'm fifty now. Tonight some friends of ours are moving so I came home and then went over to help them move until 10:00. I then came home and Lisa had bought me a lemon meringue pie. My favorite. Ben and Sharley came by and gave me a present, the book about Henry Eyring. I can't wait to read it. I've never been bothered by a birthday before but I have to admit that it is weird to turn fifty. I don't like it.

------------------------------------------------Lisa has a welcome sign in the window by our door and you can change the decoration to match the season. The birthday cake is on it today. She also bought a sign with a big "50" on it. I like the cake. I don't like the 50.
------------------------------------------------Fifty balloons is a lot of balloons. Sarah was afraid she was going to float away. They had to tie four of the big weights on it to keep it down. They also had to put the back seats down so they would fit.
------------------------------------------------Where is Sarah???
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Sarah in our front entrance. I had no idea they were coming. Normally you can't come in without someone to escort you so Lisa had a friend of mine let them in.
--------------------------------------------Me and my baby, I can't believe my kids are all so old. I can't believe I'm so old.
--------------------------------------------Me and my sweetheart, she bought me four dozen balloons and then the big 50 balloon on top. That means she needed one more balloon to make an even fifty. Sarah talked her into getting one pink balloon (not normally my favorite color) and it could be specially from her. I like the pink balloon.
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My cubicle is full of balloons.

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Sometime after we moved to Rosemary Warren and Lynette Huber and their family moved into the ward. They moved onto their family farm out near highway36. We immediately became very good friends with them. He farmed in a big way using very modern equipment. All I remember is that he grew carrots. I'm sure he farmed other more conventional crops as well but I really remember the carrots. One year we went out to his field to pull carrots that were left behind in the dirt. Within five minutes we had pulled enough carrots out of the dirt to fill several five gallon buckets full. The carrots were monstrous. We really didn't know what to do with them all. We put a bunch of them in our root cellar and we ate a lot of carrots that year. One year Kira was very sick and she missed the ward Christmas party. It so happened that Warren was the Santa Claus that year and when he realized that Kira wasn't there he actually came over to our house after the party and gave Kira her bag of candy and went over her Christmas wish list with her. I'm sure she will never forget that wonderful act of kindness. We did a lot of things with the Hubers and probably my favorite was branding. I'll actually talk about branding in another blog, today I want to talk about chickens. We decided that between the two families we would order a hundred baby chicks. We split the cost but Warren raised them. We'd take the kids out to see them once in a while and they were very cute as little baby chicks. Not so cute when they got older. Finally the day came to slaughter them. The whole family went out there and of course the first thing you need to do is chop their heads off. When my Dad used to butcher chickens he'd just lay the head on the chopping block and "whack", off with their heads. He'd then throw the chicken on the ground and let it flop around. I remember one day one of those darned chickens got up and ran right towards me. I was convinced he was doing it on purpose. I was only four or five and it scared the living daylights out of me. We had a bit more of a controlled process. Warren had nailed two nails into a log and we would stick the chickens neck between the nails and pull. The nails were close enough that the head would not fit between them so we'd stretch out the chickens neck to give us a big target and then "whack"; off with it's head. We then held the chicken until he stopped struggling so we didn't have any wild headless chickens running around the yard. Well if any of you know Kira you can probably guess what happened when the first chicken lost it's head. She started crying and became physically sick. I know Sarah would do the same thing. So, Kira went into the house but Brandon was fascinated. He watched a few of the chickens go through the process (beheading, plucking, removal of pin feathers and then gutting) and then he decided that he wanted to try. He was old enough that I thought he might be able to handle the ax so I decided to let him try. I held the chicken and stretched out the poor creatures neck and Brandon swung the ax and "whack"; off went his beak. Brandon missed the head and cut off the poor creatures beak. I quickly grabbed the ax and put the poor guy out of his misery (the chicken not Brandon). We finished up the chickens and took our 50 chickens home but after a day of slaughtering chickens no one felt like eating them for about six months. They were big and fat chickens so when we did eat them they were very good. We spent a lot of time at the Huber's and I'm sure several of my blog entries will involve that family. They have been a major part in the lives of our family and we love them dearly.