Day 294

Ryan was in school and Alex was in daycare, so I had some "me time" today to do whatever I wanted. I had saved these stackable tea tins the other day when I was cleaning up and had an idea as to how I wanted to re-use them in a craft project. So today I sat down with my supplies, and made it.

After Ryan got home from school and spotted it, he said "What is that?" So I told him it was just a Halloween decoration, to which he replied "Pffft! It isn't even scary!" Well excuuuse me! I think it's cute anyways. Hmph!

After he put away his school stuff, we went to pick Alex up at daycare. When we got back home, I got out of the car and something started meowing at me under the trees. Sure enough, another stray had found it's way to our house. So once I got the kids inside, I put on a movie for them, got out some cat chow, and went to greet our new friend. She is super friendly. She was shivering a bit, and was very happy to get something to eat. I went to the barn and got out our winter cats shelter, but by the time I got back with it, she had disappeared. Oh well, she knows where the love and food is now.

Day 293

Limpy got out this afternoon, no thanks to Alex holding the door open. If you try to catch her, she just runs away in this prancy little hopping run like "Nah nah, you can't get me. " So I gave up. Eventually she ended up on the deck watching birds. She couldn't catch one so I guess she tried to make the birds come to her. Some how this reminds me of an old Sylvester cartoon where he has his mouth wide open waiting for a bird or mouse to come into it. Nice try Limpy! I was able to get her out of her and bring her back inside.

I also had some extra cream cheese and bananas in the freezer, so I decided to make some mini banana loafs. Mmmm! They were so yummy!

Day 292

The only picture I took today was of one of my fish for a fish forum I'm on. It looks exactly like a female, except it has a penis. I heard these fish can change sexes if there are too many of the same sex in a tank.

Day 291

This morning everything outside was covered in a layer of frost! It was quite beautiful, but it killed my pumpkin vine. My stupid pumpkin is still green, so I'm gonna put it in the window in the sun, and hope that it turns orange in the next week and a half.

Day 290

The weather today made me feel like making a "fall" meal, so I decided to cook up a batch of chili. Yummy!

Day 289

Today Ryan woke up and said he didn't feel well. He says this a lot even when he isn't sick so, like the boy who cried wolf, I usually just brush it off. This time though he stayed quiet all day. I checked him out, and he didn't have a fever, so I thought maybe he was just tired from his week at school, but then mid-day he fell asleep on the couch. I checked his fever again and he was burning up. Oddly enough, by the time supper rolled around, he started to perk up. By bedtime there was no trace of the fever. I have never heard of a fever that's only lasted a few hours. Weird!

Day 288

Yesterday I found one of our balloon mollies stuck to our filter intake. She was breathing hard and it didn't look like she was gonna make it. I unstuck her from it and placed her in another part of the tank so she could rest on a plant and either recover, or die in peace.

I checked back on her about 10 minutes later and she was still in the same spot but this time upside down. I saw on her poop opening a little black bubble and I knew she was giving birth and they were stuck. Giving birth is the #1 cause of death in mollies.

So I scooped her into a bowl of water and gently gave her belly a squeeze and 8 babies popped right out. Nothing else seemed to be in there and it looked like a bit of her intestines were coming so I stopped. I put the babies in a floating nursery and put momma back in the tank to rest.

Another 10 minutes passed, and when I went to check on her again, she was dead I scooped her back into the bowl and gave her tummy another squeeze to make sure all the babies were out, after a bit more of her intestines came out, suddenly a whole whack of babies squirted out.

They totally looked dead and not breathing or moving. I thought for sure I had got them out too late, and was just going to dump them into the tank to be eaten by the other fish, but at the last minute I decided to put them in the floating nursery with the others so DH could see them when he got home.

Good thing I did, because when I went back to check on them later, almost all of them had come to life! I don't know how it works for baby fish, but I'm guessing their yolk sacs kept them alive.

Here is the first batch with momma fish

and this is how many we ended up with. I counted them all on this picture and came up with 61. Some are definitely dead, but I think at least 50 survived.

Day 287

I had to make a birthday cake today so I dropped Alex of at daycare so he wouldn't be in my way today. The last thing I need is him yelling "Cake!" and trying to stick his fingers in it. On the road there we saw this trailed that fell into thew ditch and lost his load.

I got a request for a chihuahua birthday cake and this is the result. It took about 5 hours of non stop baking and decorating to make it. Sometimes I wish I could sneak a piece of these cakes...so tempting!

Day 286

These poor ignored stuffies are being given to a friend who is bringing them to sick kids at the hospital. Nobody is really attached to them, they are all in brand new shape, and all they have been doing is collecting dust. At least now someone else will love them.

Day 285

This farmer was spreading what I'm assuming was fertilizer. I don't know how much of it he actually got on his field though. It made such a mess that from far it looked like there was a bad fire going on.

Day 284

I was trying to take a picture of our cat Julien sleeping in my sweater (He's been doing this since he was a kitten) and Alex popped up and said "Chheeessee!"

Day 283

Alex got into some of the Halloween stuff. It's Count Clothespin Fingers!

Day 280

Ryan didn't have any school today so we went into town to visit my parents. The kids were quite happy sweeping up Oma and Opa's drive way and playing with the leaves.

Day 282

My new Roadrunner jeans. They are the best fitting, most comfy jeans ever! And they come with a free belt :)

Day 281

Today Ryan was off at a playdate, so Alex and I had a quiet afternoon. Here he is watching the clouds with me. We saw a dragon, an elephant, and a turtle.

When Ryan came back home, he was missing yet another tooth. Unfortunately, he lost it in his friends yard and even though everyone helped him look, they couldn't find it. He ended up writing the tooth fairy a note with a map of where he lost the tooth. The tooth fairy found it and rewarded him with 8 quarters. ;)

Day 279

Some geese resting in the still flooded fields on their way south.

Later in the afternoon we had a crazy little hail storm

Day 278

Yesterday night the motor on the dishwasher went "POW!" and blew out half of the house. This time it can't be fixed, so it's hand washing until we can go out and get a new one.

Day 277

Ennie, the stray cat we took in this winter, has finally discovered the plush luxury of the beds in the house. I was so happy to finally see her on our bed tonight. She deserves all the comfort in the world :)

Day 276

Wally and I had a kid free day so we decided to take a walk in the woods again and explore. It's just beautiful this time of the year...

The leaves this year are so much more colourful than the last few years. Check out the beautiful colouring on this one...

Day 275

Just as I was going to shut my computer off for the night, I realized I hadn't taken a picture yet, so I snuck this one of Wally sitting beside me on his computer. :)

Day 274

Ryan babying the cat. He loves having the cats sit with him, but he's hyper and flops around a lot, so the cats always take off. This way they can't get away, and after a few seconds they realize how warm and comfy it is.

Day 273

It rained so hard, and so much, yesterday that some parts of the roads around here washed out or flooded. Wally had to take an alternate route home because some parts of our road were under water. I passed by one of the roads affected today and you can see how the rain just flowed over the road and washed away some of the side as it made it's way down to the ditch.

Day 272

I put this pot down on the floor for the dogs to lick, and once they were done, Bobby thought it would make a good bed. Cats are weird. I don't know how that even looks comfortable.