Adjusting well

I think he's adjusting to indoor life well. What do you think? I bet he's wondering why he didn't gouge his eye out earlier.

Mayor for the Day

What an exciting day Wesley had yesterday. Our seven year old completed a coloring sheet that was entered into a coloring contest the city put on. He won the K-2nd grade division and was awarded "Mayor for the Day" in the Holiday parade. He got to ride in the mayors red convertible with Santa and throw candy. He had so much fun! They awarded him a plaque with his name on it and $25 (which he's super excited to spend). It was a lot of fun with the singing of carols and the lighting of the tree.

I'm sure this is a memory that will stay with him. I plan to frame his artwork and bring it out with the Christmas decorations each year. What a fun time!

Weekly Winners

The kids are doing well in school. Wesley is the class leader in Rocket Math (a timed math test). He must get his math skills from his father. :) Greta likes preschool but hates for me to leave. It's a struggle but I hope it prepares her for kindergarten next year.  She writes her name well and has even started spelling out words on her own (I'm sure it's because of her big brother). I've been blowing dry her hair after her baths and her curly hair is actually pretty long when it's straight!

We decorated for Christmas last weekend. I get just as excited as the kids to decorate the house. It's very cozy and I try to do it as early as possible (I'd do it the day after Halloween if it was socially acceptable).

I took the camera outside with me when I fed the animals on Sunday during the snow storm. The miniature horses are a bit on the crazy side normally but the snow makes them psychotic. They are entertaining little creatures.

First Snow

We got our first snow of the year yesterday. Apparently it was the earliest snow since the 1970's. Pretty impressive! It was only a few inches at most but it made for a fun day. Hubby was ecstatic that he got to try out the Range Rover on snow. It was the Rover's maiden voyage in inclement weather. We all piled into the vehicle and took it into town for a pizza lunch. It did great. Sean has done a fabulous job bringing it back from the dead and making it a reliable winter vehicle. I married quite a mechanic.

The kids were super happy about the snow too. When I got up yesterday I came into the living room to find this sweet little girl sitting and watching the snow fall outside the window.

They got bundled up and went outside with Sean to play. I then heard the John Deere garden tractor start up (it's pretty loud) and the next thing I see is the kids getting pulled around the yard on the sled. Perhaps the days of pulling the kids around by hand are over. They are getting heavy!

Frankenkitty

Poor Brother Minion had his eye removed on Wednesday. I took him in to the vet for the third time on Tuesday and the vet said we could try some more medications in the hope of saving the eye (even though it would be non functioning) or we could remove the eye. Brother Minion had been miserable and stopped eating that morning and I was getting more than a little tired of hauling him (and Greta) into the vet clinic each week so we opted for eye removal.

He's been home for a day now and he's a whole new kitty. Nearly back to his normal self.

Here is his before picture, he'd been on eye ointment and antibiotics for a week. This actually looks better than it did before antibiotics. Yuck.

Here he is now with the eye removed. He's a bit of a frankenkitty now but so much happier. He'll be resting and recuperating inside for awhile.

He might need an eye patch.

Seriously?!

"Mom, I just wet my bed."

My youngest whispered this in my ear this morning at 6:30, mere minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off.

Waking up to that sentence is not a rare event. Nor does it happen a lot. Maybe every 3 months. It's no big deal.

I trudge into her room, pushing my wild morning hair out of my face, and start collecting her wet sheets. I notice the tablet sitting on the side of her bed.

"Why is the tablet on your bed?" I asked.

"Oh don't worry Mom I put it there before I wet the bed." She replied.

My tired brain couldn't fathom why the tablet would be on her bed at all. Then it clicked. She got up and got the tablet to play games in bed before everyone woke up (like she does most mornings). But this morning she decided she didn't want to get out of her warm bed and go potty on the toilet. Instead, she closed the tablet, put it on the edge of the bed and went the bathroom in her bed. Then came and woke me up so I could clean it up.  

What the heck?!

She's FIVE years old, she knows better.

Needless to say it was not a great morning.

.....sigh.....

FitBit: A year later

It's been a year since we got our little FitBits. I wasn't sure if I would use mine regularly but I'm happy to report I still wear it a year later. It's a nice little bit of motivation in my day. I enjoy the interactive website that takes the data off of the FitBit and tally's it up into nice little charts showing when you are most active, how many calories burned and miles walked.

The other fun thing about the website is your ranking. You can invite your friends that also have FitBit's and it tells you how many steps they have walked which can in turn motivate you to try to beat them for the week. We used to have quite a few friends and family members on the leader board but over the months they've slowly dropped off (either losing their FitBit or just not wearing it anymore). It's down to just Sean and I now.

We have a friendly weekly competition to see who can out step who.

Shhh.....I'm beating him this week.

A little early

I went to the grocery store today for my weekly food shopping and was amazed at the sheer amount of people there. The parking lot was stuffed, there weren't hardly any grocery carts parked inside. It was baffling to me. So asked the check out girl and she said when the weather turns cold there is always an influx of people getting supplies. I suppose that makes sense. We are getting ready for some seriously cold weather starting tonight which I'm a little anxious about. It seems a bit early for 20 degree weather and I'm hoping all the outside animals will adjust. Dym, the older goat, is looking good weight wise going into this winter. I'm hopeful she'll do ok with the low temperatures.

We have one of the minion kitties inside in the upstairs bathroom. Brother kitty decided to screw up his eye somehow in the span of an afternoon (he was fine when I let him out that morning and it was all nasty and bulging that evening). That was two weeks ago. We've been into the vet twice now for different meds and antibiotics. The prognosis isn't good at this point. His eye is cloudy and weeping. Pretty sure he's blind in it and it will have to be removed. Poor kitty. He's going back into the vet this week to see if it's salvageable after all the medicine we've tried.

The kids and I were driving into town last week and turned on the regular easy listening radio station we listen to and discovered they had started their yearly tradition of 24 hour Christmas music. It seems rather early to me but the kids were ecstatic! They morphed into "Christmas frenzy mode" immediately. When we got home they got a pen and paper and wrote out their Christmas list while surfing Amazon for ideas. Greta dictated what to write and Wesley wrote it. Three pages later (front and back) they are done. They drew up a countdown calendar that is taped to each of their bedroom doors and excitedly cross out each day when they wake up. It's pretty funny considering they have 45 more days to go. They really wanted to decorate the house this past weekend but I pushed them off until next weekend. It will be a nice cold weekend (maybe with snow!) which will make for a lovely weekend to decorate the house for Christmas.

Creative Greta made this Santa beard for Sean.

Adventures in Goat Wrangling Volume 47

Sunday morning I went outside to feed the animals. There was a lot of bellowing going on inside the goat house. This is what I was greeted with. A giant Heston stuck in a hay rack. I could not get him out.

"Oh hi there! Mind helping a goat out here?"

I called in reinforcements. I told Sean what had happened and he said "Dumbass" which I heard as "I'll get an ax". I was thinking "we have totally different ideas on how to get the goat out of the hay feeder". Hehe....

Sean came out and tried his hand at pushing the giant head out. Heston thought this was a fun game and pushed back against our hands, in true goat fashion.

He tried prying the bars apart which was futile. He did manage to get quite a few sniffs and kisses.

He then disappeared into the shop and returned with tools. These wire cutters will cut through anything.....apparently except this rebar. It was far too strong. Rich did too well of a job constructing these, we couldn't even break the welds.

Last idea was a crowbar. It worked! The hay feeder is a little bent up but the goat is no longer stuck. Yea!

It's always an adventure owning animals.