Floods, spiders and frog cakes - oh my

It has been a crazy few weeks - travel for work, flooding rains, "high water" chickens rescues, my daughter's birthday party, a new smoker and some new recipes!

First - the floods. When hurricane Hermine hit the gulf coast, she kept coming inland as a tropical storm and hit San Antonio and Boerne dead on. We had two days of pouring rain and strong winds. For the most part my yard stays fairly dry, but the run off runs down the fence behind the chicken coops. The big girls were fine in their coop - most of the run stayed dry and when the wind started they could go up into the hen house and stay nice and dry. The little girls didn't do as well in their mini-coop. The water pooled up around it and the wind was blowing rain into the opening if the little house - so they were not staying dry. In the picture that is water from the fence to the edge of the driveway - a muddy little mini lake. When I realized the water was getting too deep, I tried dragging the coop forward to higher ground and turning it to avoid the wind - but it wasn't going to work, so I brought the little girls into the garage and put them in their original small dog kennel for a few days. They were crowded but at least they were dry. I was soaked but they were nice and dry :)

The yard clean up was a bit of a chore but once everything dried out I was able to get everything put back in order. In the process of pruning one of the Butterfly bushes in my front yard I ran across this lovely garden spider and I had to take her picture and bring the kids out to see her.

We also had a birthday party for my daughter over the weekend. She asked for a pond theme cake with a frog and lilly pads. I struggled a bit with the frog, but in the end I think it turned out pretty well and my daughter and her friends loved it! A few of the mom's suggested I go into the cake business - but I honestly have no idea how to charge for a cake and I'm not sure my figures are good enough, but it is something I am going to think about. Maybe I can do a few more and then hang up my shingle - kids theme cakes - get 'em here!