Day 347

Newman insisted on going outside today, this is how I found him a few hours later. Silly cat.

I did some secret Christmas baking for Wally today. My presents for him suck this year so I figured I'd make him something he likes. This is Orange Crunch White Chocolate Bark. It's white chocolate, vanilla rice crispies, orange extract, and candied orange peel all mixed up, spread on a parchement lined cookie sheet and then broken up into pieces. the secret ingredient of course is love :)

Day 345

Tonight Wally brought home four panda corydoras for our new tank. Here is one of them resting on a rock. They are schooling fish and it's so cute to see them swimming around together.

Day 326

While Wally and Ryan waited for the bus they heard a strange noise coming from the rock garden. I saw them going over to the side of the house and wondered what was going on, so when Wally came back in I asked him what was up. He told me that there is a strange animal in the rocks making a weird noise. So I went to go look with him, and there was nothing to see. I asked him if he was trying to fool me, and just as he tapped his foot on a rock, this thing popped his head out and screamed at us. Hello heart attack! I grabbed my camera and took a few pictures and a little video as well. I got out my North American Mamal Guide and was able to ID him as a mink. Isn't he cute?

day 318

I found a new elf for my Elf on a Shelf project today. He has wire in him so I can pose him. I tried to pose the other one, but he just kept flopping over all the time, so he's not going to cut it.

 

Alex decided to decorate Julian...

Emma being a lap cat

Day 308

As I was washing up in the kitchen, I spotted these little gold finches in my black eyed susans. They're all picking out the seeds and fattening up for winter.

After I was done, I came into the back room to find that Alex had fallen asleep looking at the Sears Christmas Wish Book. I wonder if he's dreaming about what Santa will bring him?

For supper we had baked salmon steaks with a Garlic and dill lemon sauce that I made from scratch. It was to die for delicious. The steaks were huge and I ate the whole thing!

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 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 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 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 265

Found this tiny guy while pulling some dead flowers out of the garden. Isn't he adorable?

Day 260

Tonight we put out a play tube for the kids. We were pretending it was a tunnel to Jupiter. Here is Julian in the tube.

I was an alien on Jupiter. The kids kept running away from me going "Ahhhh!" I can't understand why...

Day 254

Ryan and I headed out to a near by grocery store to buy a new soy butter peanut butter alternative. I heard rave reviews about this stuff so I was anxious to try it out. We had tried a few other alternatives in the past that were all a bust, so I was really hoping that I wasn't wasting another $5. On the way there we spotted these people having a horse drawn ride, getting soaked in the rain.

We were just amazed at how much this stuff actually looked, smelled, and tasted like peanut butter. So if anyone out there is missing peanut butter after having to deal with an allergy or wished you could send you kid to school with a peanut butter sandwich, I highly recommend this. It's even made in a 100% nut free facility so it's a great safe alternative.. It's called "Tastes like peanut butter" and even Ryan, the pickiest kid on the plant gives it a huge thumbs up.

Day 253

I was woken up at 7:30 am with furious knocking on my bedroom. It was Ryan and he was yelling through the door that he had lost his tooth. This boy is starting to look like a Hillybilly with all the missing teeth in his mouth.

Later on I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye. When I went to take a closer look, I saw a tiny mouse climbing up my screen door. My cat was on the deck but hadn't spotted him, but just to be sure the mouse would be safe, I scooped him into a bucket and let him go on the far side of the yard.

Day 252

My parents dog Barkley arrived for a weekend sleepover while my parents headed to Toronto. He's 11 years old now and recently went stone deaf. It was quite strange making all kinds of hand movements in front of him when I needed to see if he wanted to go out.

Day 248

The birds are getting ready to head south. In the woods today we saw a huge flock of grackles fly into the trees above us. I took some pictures, but they all turned out blurry. This was the best of the bunch and I don't even think you can spot a single bird in it. Oh well!

Day 240

We took our last family walk of summer vacation today. It didn't last that long as the mosquitoes were nuts! Though a fence we spotted this big buck. The picture is a bit blurry because I really had to get my camera to zoom.

I also found this giant centipede.

I'm also happy to announce that Wally finally kind of finished the hall closet. After about 4 years of looking at a gaping hole full of crap, he finally put in the frame, and door. It still needs to be painted and trimmed, but at least it looks better than before!

Day 235

Today we spent a few hours de-stickering Wally's van to get it ready for sale.

As we picked and peeled, Wally decided to let the boys play inside the van. Bad move. They started fighting over the window controls. Alex was pressing the button on one door to get the window to go down, and the Ryan was using the master controls on the drivers door to bring it back up. Suddenly the whole van shut down and Wally couldn't even get it started anymore. Not really what you want to happen the day before it goes up for sale. He was really pissed and kicked the kids out to their rooms. Ryan never really sees Wally mad so he was a bit worried as to how much trouble he was in. I went inside with them while Wally tried to fix the car and Ryan asked me with great worry "Am I going to jail?" I reassured him that he would not but that maybe he should do something nice for Dad to show him that he was sorry. So he ended up making him a card with an apology and a picture inside. Thankfully all the van needed was a boost and it was good to go again.

After all the drama, I was out around the yard when I almost stepped on this guy. He's a Tomato Hornworm Caterpillar, and he is huge!

Day 232

The other day I managed to fall down the steps of the front porch. I have a fear of falling down stairs and here I have managed to do it twice in as many months. It swelled up right away and I noticed today that it is now a nice yellow greenish shade.

We also got some new inhabitants in our fish tank...a dozen ghost shrimp.

Day 229

I was sitting in the yard when this freaky bug landed on the sunflower beside me. I have never seen anything like it. It folded up its wings and I swear it looked like a Transformer. It was totally weird.

Look at the choppers on this guy!