Entwined

Yesterday was not your typical day around here. I went outside to feed the animals in the evening and heard the neighbors dogs back at the pond barking hysterically at something or someone. After listening to this for five minutes I decided to go investigate. When they saw me coming they ran off and there, in the pond, was a whitetail buck with his head down in the water. Wondering why he was just standing there I kept walking towards him. That's when I discovered he had locked antlers with another buck and they were both in the pond, the other deer was dead. The live buck was tired, I could tell he'd been wrestling for hours and he could hardly keep his head above the water.

I had no idea what to do. The pond is not on our property so I jumped in the car and drove to the neighbors behind us who do own the pond. Nobody was home so back home I went. I couldn't just watch this poor deer drown so I went down to the pond to see if I could help him. He didn't have any fight left, he was barely standing and shaking in the cold water. I rolled up my pants and waded into the pond, grabbed his antlers and attempted to pull him and his dead nemesis ashore. Turns out two bucks are very heavy.....imagine that. He wasn't fighting me but he wasn't helping either. I managed to keep his head above the water and pull him in a bit but I could tell it was a loosing battle. There wasn't much else I could do so I patted him on the head and told him to hold on.

I decided to drive back to the neighbors and put a post it note on their front door but managed to catch them on the road instead. The guy is a hunter and I knew he'd be able to help the deer somehow, even if that just meant a bullet. He and his wife jumped on their four wheeler and were able to drag both the deer out of the pond with a rope. The one was still alive when I went home at dark. I have no idea what happened to him. The neighbor was going to call the game warden to find out what to do with the deer. Hopefully it was a less painful death than freezing or drowning in the pond would have been. This goes down as one of the joys of living in the country. You just never know what you're going to find.

Cub Scouts

That's my little Cub Scout (and his sister). Wesley has decided that Scouting might be a good fit this year. So far it's been enjoyable. He has gotten to walk all over town picking up food donations for the local food pantry and this week we decorated the towns cemetery with flags for Veteran's Day. I really like the community involvement that Boy Scouts has and I'm thrilled he's part of it. Perhaps we'll get Greta involved in Girl Scouts next year.

On a side note, notice that big pot of petunia's next to Wesley in the picture? Yeah we still have big pots of blooming flowers on the deck on November 11th. That is crazy late for a first freeze. We are all enjoying this very mild Fall.

Mystery Package

Last Friday was a rather dreary, wet and rainy day. It was a chilly 50 degree day and I was expecting a package. I've never ordered something alive off of the internet before and I was worried because it was scheduled to be delivered last Friday. It was also the day that the kids had their Halloween parties and I wasn't going to be home to receive my package. So as I drove out of the driveway on my way to the school I thought I'd check the mailbox in the off chance it was sitting in there. It was! I didn't have time to make it back into the house to unbox the contents into the warmth so I tucked it into my sweater and off I went to the Halloween party.

The box and it's contents stayed warm with me until I got home and had a chance to open up the box two hours later.

Inside among the newspapers  was a small bag containing an even smaller plastic container full of water. What was in that water?

40 baby Malaysian Trumpet Snails of course! I had read all about how beneficial they are to aquariums and couldn't find them locally so I bought them off of eBay. Two days later they were sitting in my cold mailbox. I popped them into a little bowl of warm aquarium water and they perked right up. These fascinating snails burrow down in the sand and eat dead plant material and debris. They burrow out at night and clean the tank like the little janitors they are. I plopped them into the little kitchen aquarium with Baby Macy our newest betta (Greta named it).

Just thought I'd share how I wore a box of snails to my daughters Halloween party last Friday. Not often do I do that.

With the Kids

We had the most extraordinary fall day this past weekend. It was a perfect 75 degrees with sun and no wind. The kids and I had nothing planned so I took them out for pizza and the park, which is always a hit.

I'm gonna make it to the top Mom!

I did it! Woohoo!

Now how do I get down?!

Mom you're going to break it!

Halloween: This & That

We had a nice and spooky Halloween with the kids. This year Greta went as Olaf and Wesley went as a cheeseburger. He's got a food theme going, last year he was a banana.

Trick-or-treating went smoothly and we are now loaded down with sugar, sugar and more sugar. You can never have enough sugar right? Yeah right! I did the room mom gig for Greta's kindergarten class and it was fun. The parents really stepped up and helped out bringing ideas and food for the Halloween party. Greta has a really nice group of kids and parents in her class.....and her teacher is just the best!

Some years I drop the ball and forget to get pumpkins but this year I remembered! And I remembered to buy a pumpkin carving kit....because mine runs away every year. So I plunked the kids down and let them draw and carve their own pumpkins. Greta needed help with the sawing action needed to carve but for the most part they did them themselves.

Since this post if pretty random I thought I'd share a picture of our resident deer who likes to visit our backyard every fall. She usually has a set of twins on her but this year she only had a single fawn. It's nice to see her back.

We don't get a lot of the beautiful fall colors that other parts of the country get but we do get some. I love when the maples along the driveway change to yellow. Happy Fall everyone!

Fish are friends, not food.

I think I've written about this a little already but here it goes again. A couple of months ago I was up in Wesley's room and looked at his poor forgotten aquarium, the inhabitant long gone, and decided it was time to bring it back from the dead. I scrubbed it out, filled it up and got it running again. After a couple of weeks of letting it cycle we bought Sunny the betta. He's a fun and happy little fish who greets me each evening when I go feed him and give him water changes. It sparked something inside of me. The need for more aquariums.

So I went onto Craigslist and started looking for aquariums. I've always wanted a hexagon aquarium, or a hex tank as they are referred to. So that is what I looked for. Low and behold there was a nice hex tank about half an hour away. So we brought it home, painted the base and got it up and running. I've never filled up a 35 gallon aquarium before and decided it would be easier to just lug the hose into the living room. So that's what I did. I let it cycle (run without fish in it to let the water perimeters equal out) for three weeks before getting six Buenos Aires tetras to put in it. That tank is right next to the computer desk so I find myself just watching it for no other reason than because it's so peaceful. I really love it.

But apparently that wasn't enough. Sean mentioned that there was an empty 5 gallon aquarium under the stairs in the basement and of course I had to set it up. It was Wesley's old aquarium before the light assembly died.  I wanted to try my luck at a planted tank. So I brought it up stairs, bought some black gravel made for plants, stuffed it full of driftwood (thanks again mom and dad), bought a LED light strip off of Amazon and filled it up. I bought a water plant at the local pet store and am waiting on two more that I bought off of eBay (I failed to see they were coming from Malaysia...so who knows when they will arrive). I put this tank in the kitchen and it's small but it might be my favorite tank...so far. I plan to make this a shrimp tank with just a few red cherry shrimp. I might get those off of eBay too, we'll see.

But there's more. I have a 29 gallon tank that's sat unused in the basement for a couple of years now. Sean said I should set it back up, you know since I'm in "aquarium mode". But there just wasn't the perfect place for it upstairs and the basement was a bad place for a fish tank, it got neglected down there. So we moved some furniture and found a nice section of wall in our bedroom for it. I've spent the last few days buying new gravel, attaching driftwood via suction cups to the bottom of the tank (it floats!) and filling it with plants. The sound of running water is nice to fall asleep to.

It was time to buy some fish for it so off I went to the local pet store where I found three Mollies, two of which were quite rotund. Mollies are live bearers, meaning they give birth to live babies rather than eggs. They also breed like rabbits, giving birth after just one month of gestation. So I suppose I wasn't too surprised to see little baby fish fry in the aquarium not even 12 hours after bringing home the momma fish. I did my research and knew that most baby mollies get eaten by the adults, thus taking care of any over populating that might happen in a tank. I thought I was ok with this fact of nature but turns out I wasn't. So there, at 7:15 in the morning (on a school morning no less) I'm frantically trying to net out these teeny tiny fish before the mom eats them. The kids thought this was great fun and helped me find most of them. I netted them into a red Solo cup until after I dropped the kids off at school and could go buy a breeder net (a netted box that attaches to the side of the aquarium). So now we are the proud parents to 15 baby yellow Mollies. They are adorable....that is if fish can be adorable.

Since we are talking about new tanks, I can't leave out Greta's. We were at a garage sale a couple of weeks ago and found a complete 2.5 gallon aquarium set up for $5. I couldn't resist it and so I set it up in Greta's room as a night light since that is entirely too small to put a fish in (in my humble opinion). It was pretty as it was but it needed....something. Then I found the jellyfish. Apparently there is a trend right now to put fake floating jelly fish in aquariums. I found a couple and plunked them in her tiny tank. Turns out they are pretty fun to look at and float around quite peacefully with the current. It's a pretty neat night light if I do say so myself. So now you know about my latest obsession. I think I'm done.

Fall Parade

One of our fun fall traditions is the local fall festival and parade. We go every year and enjoy it all. This year my sister was down and my nephews got to enjoy it as well.

Happy Fall!

I'm writing you this blog entry as I sit with my cup of hot tea with the tv going in the background. I turn it on in the morning so there is noise in my house. Any noise will do. I'm tempted to turn on PBS so I can hear the morning cartoons like Curious George and Sesame Street. I miss those morning cartoons now that both kids are in school. It's oddly quiet in my house. It's not a bad thing, just different.

I've fallen into a nice routine now that I've got the house to myself for seven whole hours a day. It consists of replying to work emails, packaging up sculptures that have sold and sculpting when everything is done. I've been watching all sorts of interesting shows and documentaries. Shows that my kids wouldn't watch (or shouldn't watch). It's nice catching up.

Sean spent the weekend working on siding. Poor guy is ready for it to be done and I'm happy to report it nearly is. He put the last second story piece up yesterday and now all that's left is the two entry way pieces and a ton of trim. Yay for scaffolding being taken down!

The kids like to play out front while we are out there. I found Wesley nearly in the koi pond taking it upon himself to scoop out the floating algae. He did a great job!

Greta likes to ride her bike for about ten feet, that's about it. We've decided it's more about putting on the cute helmet and ringing her bell than actual transportation. She's in no rush to learn how to ride without the training wheels. In fact, she could care less. She's always done things at her own pace, that's her style.

We didn't know about the super blood moon lunar eclipse that happened last week until I saw all the alerts pop up on the weather channel we watch. So out we tromped onto the deck at 9:45 pm to see an orange moon. Pretty cool looking. We sent the kids to bed but promised to take a picture.

Birthday Festivities!

My youngest just turned six years old. It's hard to believe it's been that long since I drove myself to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning fully convinced I wasn't having contractions. Greta has been a little blessing in our lives ever since. She's such a happy, caring and kind child. Happy Birthday my not-so-little one!

Greta and my father have the privilege of being born on the same day so we got to celebrate both of their birthdays this weekend. Aunt Betsy and Uncle Blake came down and Aunt Jessica was there with Alex, Abby and Evie. It was a great time! Happy Birthday Dad!

The hat has been with us the whole time. Although she hasn't always loved the hat.

Greta wanted to go to Build-A-Bear in the mall and make a stuffed animal so we did that this week. She picked out a cute stuffed yorkie dog. She was ecstatic.

Aquariums, Siding and Minecraft

School has been going for a month now and I'd like to say I've fallen into a nice routine but alas I haven't. I've been sculpting a lot and selling a lot but I forgot how long it takes to package up sculptures and ship them out. Some days I spend the whole day doing that. And then there are days like today where I don't work at all. Today I did something I've never done before. Today I boiled driftwood in a big pot on the stove.

You might be asking yourself, why would anyone boil driftwood? Well apparently if you are wanting to put a big lovely chuck of driftwood in an aquarium you should boil it first to kill anything living in it and to release the tannin in the wood. This is all great if you happen to have a ginormous pot big enough to put the whole chunk of wood in. I do not. So I had to periodically rotate the wood so all chunks were boiled. Then it went into a Rubbermaid container with water to leech out the rest of the tannin. I will change out the water daily until the water stays clear instead of tea colored (because nobody wants tea colored water in their aquarium).

See look! You learned something new today, as did I. This is all being done so eventually I can place the wood in a 35 gallon hex tank I just bought off of craigslist. It's been cycling for a week now and I'm thinking it might be time for a couple of fish to help the cycling. My parents were kind enough to bring me driftwood and rocks from Colorado, thanks guys! Since the driftwood will take weeks to be ready I put some of the rocks they brought home in the tank. I can hardly wait to fill it with schooling fish.

Sean has been busy working on the siding in all of his spare time. It's coming along. I think he's more than ready to be done with it.

The kids are enjoying school. Greta's anxiety seems to have gone away for the time being. She was having a pretty rough time when kindergarten started but we've been working on it and she's coming out of her shell. I'm super proud of her. Each day they come home from school, do their homework and then play Minecraft together. They build some pretty fascinating stuff. That's about all that is going on around here.

Home Repairs

Our house is slowly falling into a state of disrepair. I assume everyone's house slowly falls into disrepair just like ours, I just don't realize it. It also doesn't help to move into a (then) twenty year old house. At twenty years old most things are in need of replacement. For our house it was siding. We moved in knowing we'd be replacing siding.....we just didn't know ten years later we'd still be doing it. Sean has been doing one side of the house about every four years. We started with the east side. You can't forget that side. It was not pleasant for him. Then we did the south side before putting in the new deck. Now it's the front of the house's turn.

As the years go by the motivation wavers. Could be we're getting older, could be we're lazy homeowners I don't know but neither of us want to do this project. And when I say "us" I mean Sean. I do what I can but this is his project. I paint the siding and hold what I can but he's doing the brunt of the work. Poor guy.

We had to special order the twenty four 4X9 foot sections of siding and they were delivered last week. Now we have the pleasant task of laying them all over the yard and painting the fronts and backs.

About a year ago our lovely dog Sophie was left outside in the fenced in yard while the neighbor was shooting. She goes nuts when this happens. She does everything in her power to get into the house, away from the gunfire. In this instance she jumped up on the bay windows and scraped and clawed until she broke the window. We came home to this and weren't too thrilled to say the least. It didn't break both panes, just the exterior pane. And so it's sat like this for a year. I haven't been too interested in taking the window out and driving around town finding someone to fix it. But with winter coming I felt it was time....plus it's an eye sore. Bugs were starting to go in between the panes and make nests and it looked bad. So Sean took the window out and replaced it with a piece of pink foam insulation.

The kids though this was highly entertaining and pulled up a chair to watch.

I drove to the local Andersen window store with my four and a half foot broken window in the back of my SUV. They told me they don't do that and gave me a phone number to call. I called when I got home and I must admit it was a wonderful experience. They asked if we had an account with them to which I replied no, so they looked up our address and sure enough the former owners were listed. They were able to tell us the windows were installed in 1996 and all I had to do was read off the engraved number in the corner of the window for them to order me a new one. It was manufactured and shipped UPS to our front door. Now that's some customer service!

The installed window is SO clean! Made me realize how dirty the others were.

One Goat

One goat.....

Two goats.....

Three goats.......I might need more.