Be Careful What You Promise

Ok so as parents we are all aware that we must be very careful what we say to our kids as we may just have to follow through. This has once again been brought to mind in the last few days. For years Brandon has wanted a pet snake. At first we thought it was a passing interest and spent extra time in the zoo reptile houses and read countless snake books to him. Over time it hasn't gone away. At first his requests were met with "your too young to have a snake, maybe when you are nine" (it seemed so far away at the time). When the requests began again last year we thought that he would grow tired of caring for a pet so gave him our cat to care for to prove that he could do it. The year is quickly drawing to a close and he has happily done a great job caring for Douglas. Once Alex and I realised that the year was about over we agreed to not mention it to Brandon and see if he brought it up. Sunday night the snake topic again resurfaced. We had also told him if he could pay for half of the snake we would pay for the other half and now he is making money selling eggs (more on that in a minute). Our only hope now is that the issue of feeding the snake will prevent him from getting one. At this point I am hoping that he will decide he can't kill the mice and so the idea will die, if not I guess he will get a snake.

Now for the chicken issue. We got 10 hens, thinking that we would end up with 8 - 9 as some might die and others might not be good layers. One morning when they were still tiny chicks we came in to find that Brandon and Travis were naming them. We decided that that might now be a good idea as they were going to end up as stew but told them that they could each pick one to be their chicken and could name it and when the year was up decide if they wanted to keep it or get a new chick. We are now getting 8 great looking eggs a day, guess which two have never layed an egg... that's right Brandon and Travis' chickens have not layed a single egg or ever been seen in the nesting boxes. What are the chances?! At least they are friendly and all the chickens get along well.