Taking Time Out For Fun And Chickens

I feel like I've been really overwhelmed with taking care of Josh, waiting on him, keeping on top of his pain meds, running Layton to ball practice and scouts and friends, doing housework, getting ready for Pack Meeting, caring for the new chickens, watering the lawn, etc. and yesterday I just wanted to go in my room and lay down for a while when Layton asks me if I can help him with a project. It wasn't for school or scouts or anything. He just wanted to create something. I could have easily said no. But I didn't. He wanted to make a chess board for an old set he's had that didn't have a board. So we went out to the barn and found an old board, measured it, cut it, sanded it, and brought it in the house. He sat at the table for a half an hour and measured out the squares with a ruler so that each square was exactly 2 inches. Then he chose which colors to paint it from my bins of paint. He painted all the green squares first. Then he asked me to help him with the black squares so that the edges would be really straight. Once it dried, he decided to wait till the next day to paint the edges so that he could have time to use it before he went to bed. He set it all up and invited his dad to play with him. I could hear them laughing from down the hall. It made me smile. Layton has such an awesome laugh. Vance beat him in every game they played. The board ended up looking like the picture below every time, with Layton down to 2 pieces trying to beat Vance. I ditched my plan to lay down in my room and sat at the table to watch them play.

These two chickens below are the only ones that survived the trip up from the valley. They are very sweet and follow us around when we go in to feed and water. The black one nearly died the first night and basically laid down in the dirt and wouldn't move. Josh decided to help her live. He picked her up and put her face in the water and forced her to drink. He hand fed her too. He held her in his lap and pet her. And she lived. Our 4 other chickens don't like their new coopmates so we kept them separated the first few nights but we've opened up the coop to all of them now and we'll see how it goes. The little ones hide behind the food barrels a lot. Hopefully the big ones will get bored with them and they can all be friends. Can't we all just get along?