I rushed inside with my muck boots still on to check the kitchen clock. \u00a0Our family had\u00a0already celebrated the New Year with my\u00a0visiting\u00a0in-laws earlier in the evening before my husband left for his night shift in the Emergency Department. \u00a0We had pretended it was midnight and had\u00a0counted down from “10 to Happy New Year” with a balloon drop over the balcony of our\u00a0stairway. \u00a0Our children and my in-laws had soon after gone to bed. \u00a0But,\u00a0I had stayed up looking forward to relaxing\u00a0by our fireplace, reflecting on the past year, and\u00a0counting the seconds down to the real New Year. \u00a0Well,\u00a0I had decided at 11:40 p.m.\u00a0that there was still plenty of\u00a0time left in 2014 to check on our children\u2019s show chickens.\u00a0 Re-filling their waterers with fresh water and piling more feed on their feeders apparently had taken a\u00a0little longer than expected. \u00a0I had heard a flurry of fireworks exploding from distant parties. \u00a0But, I hadn’t thought\u00a020 minutes could have passed so quickly, so I had figured our neighbors were warming up for their finale. \u00a0I even lingered a bit watching the happy chickens thankful for their fresh water and food. \u00a0I had then noticed that all of a sudden the skies had become quieter and that’s when I had sprinted at world record speed\u00a0from the barn. \u00a0Standing in the kitchen\u00a0breathless with a trail of mud mixed with chicken poop and bedding flakes on the tile behind me, I stared in disbelief at the clock. \u00a012:04 a.m. \u00a0Seriously? \u00a0I had rung in the New Year in a barn with chickens. \u00a0Never again. \u00a0The next thing nailed to our barn wall will be a clock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I rushed inside with my muck boots still on to check the kitchen clock. \u00a0Our family had\u00a0already celebrated the New Year with my\u00a0visiting\u00a0in-laws earlier in the evening before my husband left for his night shift in the Emergency Department. \u00a0We had pretended it was midnight and had\u00a0counted down from “10 to Happy New Year” with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":659,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions\/659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}