Vultures and an Advent Calendar

There is snowy Christmas stuff surrounding the house (as usual.) It's got that we don't even discuss the white stuff anymore, it's just there. Even the chickens are resigned to the fact that the outlook will be fairly colourless for the foreseeable future, possibly till March..... Archie Archer is getting v naughty, every time I open his coop he pops out for a quick play in the snow. It has to be a quick play; as the cats have got their greeny eyes on him, they sit outside the coop licking their lips although that might have something to do with the fact that they too love spaghetti as much as Archie does ....or fake worms as I like to call them.

Archie Archer is now 6 weeks old and getting bigger by the day. We thought he was a Barnevelder beed, born from an egg kindly donated by our neighbour, but having read up on that breed, it appears that Barnevelder chicks are initially yellow.Archie Archer arrived out of his shell as black as coal: Therefore I strongly suspect that Archie is a vulture.

The children and I visited my parents last week on the south coast. Every evening at dinner we lit the table Advent Calendar - a very nice tradition. On arriving home I felt the need to make an Archers at the Larches Calendar. I was the designer and I commissioned hubby (bribed with a home cooked ham dinner,)  to create the design: Four holes drilled into and a robin's feet nailed onto a lichen adorned log. (NO, It was not a real robin....although to be truthful, I did have that option as the cats have caught two fat ones recently..... not very Christmassy, sorry!) Anyhow now I feel right proper holy every evening at dinner. The punch-up after dinner relating to who gets to blow the candles out has, so far, not drawn blood....... What is is about kids and candles?