Zoo

Please pretend I fixed all red eyes

These last 2 pics are of animals that we rarely see awake. The first is a red kangaroo and the second is a binturong.

Sporty Little Man

Adam tried a gymnastics class, a soccer camp and swimming lessons this summer. The first two have been successful, with a certain amount of stress. He's not great at separation and has a particularly tough time in new situations. Swimming lessons was just more stress than it was worth. But I was proud to see him get out there by himself in both of the other classes after 2-3 days.

The first 2 days of gymnastics, he refused to even step foot on the big trampoline. In fact, the first day he came screaming back to me when the teacher asked him to step on it. We practiced some words to say when he was scared and needed help and needless to say...

he was jumping like a crazy man by the 4th class.

And soccer ended with a smile as well.

Cool shots

These pictures showed up on the camera when I downloaded a bunch of ones I took. I like them both.

I think this one is the temporary tattoo on Adam's forearm, but I'm not positive. Can't figure out how he made it look like this.

 This one is Laura's. I really like the reflection in the water.

Pickles!

 A good friend passed on a ton of cucumbers last week. We aren't big cucumber eaters and I've never made pickles before. But there's a first time for everything! On a whim, I looked for my Grandma's cinnamon pickle recipe and there it was - in my recipe box that my Mom, Grandma and Mother-in-law made for me at my wedding shower. After consulting with Grandma to verify a few directions and literally searching all the southern suburbs for pickling lime and red hots, we have success! (The red hots were at Walgreens, the pickling lime at a Menards in Savage.) They taste just like I remember. I canned them this morning, after a 3 day process of soaking and boiling. It was so fun. These are pretty much the only pickles I would eat growing up and a great treat when I got to go to Grandma's.

And with the other half of the cucumbers, I made refrigerator pickles. This jar was full a few days ago. We'll be working on these  for a while!

Rain Lilies

For 2 years in a row, Mom has shared a pot of rain lilies with me. These have become my favorite plant in my garden. They sit quietly, with pretty green foliage, until it rains. Then, in the day or 2 after, they send up beautiful blooms. Its just so interesting to watch them respond so immediately to the weather. And you can't really trick them with a watering can. It is more than just the water, it must have to do with humidity and/or light as well. I just love checking on their progress everyday.

Hermies!

We happened to pass a mall kiosk selling hermit crabs a few weeks ago, and voila, we now have a crabitat:

No, we didn't buy them that day on a whim. That's not how we do pets around here. Laura was totally interested in them, so we helped her research how to care for them and how much everything costs. She voluntarily invested some of her own money when I wouldn't spring for the extra 3 plants or the fancy half-log. So now we have 3 hermit crabs.

Meet Laura's crab: Delilah. She's not very active in the crabitat, but the bravest when we take her out to explore.

Jim's and mine is thus far unnamed. Sometimes he's Mr. Crabby Pants, sometimes Elbert. I secretly want to call him Spongebob, but that's not a show we really encourage around here. He's the most active in the tank and the only one we've seen eating anything (here he's eating an almond and has been working on it for at least an hour).  But he seems kind of nervous outside the tank, always looking for a hidey-hole.

And Adam's crab, whose name changes daily but is most often "Clocky", promptly buried himself completely the first night under the log and we assume he is molting. We hope he's still hanging in there somewhere, but it takes at least 2 weeks, sometimes months. Not much to say about his personality yet :)

We tried to find crabs with unpainted shells because it is supposed to be better for the crab, but we could only find 2 stores in the area that have crabs. One had healthy, well cared for, painted crabs, and the other had sad, dirty dead crabs. So we picked the painted ones. We read they would change their shells immediately, but so far, no one has switched. Laura watched one try out a new shell a few times (and got a good look at his icky backside. Seriously gross!), but he opted for his previous shell. Maybe when Adam's emerges, he'll try one of our offered shells. 

Nobody has been pinched yet. We watched a crab pinch the bejeebers out of the store clerk who was helping us and we promptly returned that guy back to the tank. But so far, ours are all quite friendly and will crawl across your hand without even thinking about pinching. I hope we continue to like these guys. With proper care, they might live 10 years! Um...yeah. Hope we like them. So far, so good! 

Family Reunion

Wow, it has been a crazy, wonderful week! The last of my visitors recently left and we are back to just our little family. My parents, sister, and brother, wife, and their kids were here for 6 nights of fun fun fun. I have been thinking and planning this week for a full year and was wondering how all 13 of us would fit in our house, but it seemed to work out very well. I was so amazed at how well the cousins interacted. Laura and Adam were in heaven having all the playmates around day and night! It was fun to see them mix up the combinations of age and gender and it seems like all combinations worked well. And when anyone needed a break, it worked out for them to seek out their own quiet place to recharge, including me. I just hadn't expected to be so sorry to see them go! We went to the beach, on a hike and picnic, to the MOA, and played a lot around our house. The weather was pretty nasty, with heat indexes of 100+ every day, but we mixed up our play with Wii, sprinklers, pool, beach, and morning time outside. We invited even more family over for an ice cream party one night with the Minnesota branch of my mom's family, a total of about 30 people! All this entertaining is a big deal for me. But it all turned out well and everyone seemed to enjoy the chance to catch up with each other. On the 4th, we had some kid-friendly fireworks courtesy of Jim and a total of 80 boxes of Pop-Its. It was a week of non-stop excitement, but I was amazed at how relatively stress-free it all was for me. I think it might actually be nice (in this case, with these guests) to be the host and not be the one traveling. I always thought I would dislike that role, but this week changed my mind. Thank you all for visiting, come back anytime. I truly mean it!