"Snips and snails and puppy dog tails, that's what little boys are made of!"
Surrounded by my sweet boys (hubby Eric, sons Connor and Ramsey, and our dog, Jango), I thought this a rather befitting name for my crew's blog. To our cherished friends and family, happy viewing! We love you!
Ramsey.... LOVES... sticks. He finds them all over the yard. He collects them and puts them in his play set tunnel. If we (or anyone else, to include a dog) take them, he gets very upset.
Every time Eric and I peek out the window and watch Ramsey play with sticks in the yard, we think of [deceased] Comedian George Carlin's cynical, sarcastic, and funny (!) words from his special "It's Bad For Ya", where Carlin goes into a diatribe about kids, their parents,... and sticks.
Ramsey had been laying under the pile of sticks here. But, of course by the time I got my camera, he was already on his feet and popping twigs off of branches, trying to make the perfect "sword".
The weather was even nicer yesterday, so guess what... yup, rifling through sticks, constructing perfect weaponry!
Excerpt from Carlin's 2008 skit:
George Carlin : I'm talking about today's professional parents, these obsessive diaper sniffers who are overscheduling and overmanaging their children and robbing them of their childhoods.
[applause]
George Carlin : Even the simple act of playing has been taken away from children, and put on mommy's schedule in the form of "play dates". Something that should be spontaneous and free is now being rigidly planned. When does a kid ever get to sit in the yard with a stick anymore?
[laughter]
George Carlin : You know? Just sit there with a **** stick. Do today's kids even know what a stick is?
[laughter]
George Carlin : You sit in the yard with a ***** stick... and you dig a ***** hole. You know?
[applause]
George Carlin : And you look at the hole, and you look at the stick... and you have a little fun. But kids don't have sticks anymore. I don't think there are any sticks left; I think they've all be recalled because of lead paint!
Well George... our kid... he still plays with sticks! And rocks. ;-)
And, he also has play dates... with the little girls down the road. So... ;-)
One of these little guys is going to be part of our famiy on April 3rd!
We've missed Riggsy so much these last months, but it's time to have another little fuzzy critter in the house to be our friend and snuggle buddy.
It was my turn to get to pick out the dog. I've wanted a "silver" lab for quite some time. They're not easy to find (around here anyway) but I've been in touch (since last Fall) with a breeder that lives a few hours away. They had another litter coming up, so we put our deposit in for a silver male.
On Saturday, we had a video chat with the breeder to "choose" our pup. COVID made another thing a little more challenging this year. It would have been nice to pick our pup after holding them or seeing which one we bonded with right away. Regardless, we rolled with it. And... we picked our pup. Temporarily, the breeder named him "Tank". We have a different name picked out for him when we bring him home.
This is probably the earliest the ice has melted and been off the lake - at least that we can remember. Typically, it's gone right at the end of March. Last year, it was maybe mid April!
We had a rather mild winter with not a ton of snow this year. It was a bit ironic that the ice came off on the first day of Spring.
Last year, a little leprechan named "Lucky" completely demolished the house, tipping over chairs, throwing toys everywhere (even messing with the Duplos!). And, the little stinker left muddy footprints all of the house and up onto the kitchen counter (where he did, however, leave tons of goodies for the kids).
This year, Ramsey has been working on a ton of Lego sets. He's been working on one in the living room (General Grievous' ship) and wasn't completed yet. Ramsey did NOT want the leprechauns to mess up his Legos (or anything else for that matter).
We decided it'd be a good idea to write a nice letter to the leprechaun this year to see if he'd be nice and not trash our place.
First: the letter. Second: the bribary (in this case, green jelly beans).
Ramsey wrote away and picked out all of the green jelly beans (eating quite a few along the way). The letter was rather succinct, but the message was clear.
Ramsey then left the letter and treat by the front door, assuming the little green guy would find it there first.
In the morning, we didn't find a huge mess in the house - just a number of Minecraft swords leading the way from the downstairs to the loot the leprechaun left.
Ramsey read the letter aloud.
We took the green bag o' surprises into the kitchen to open it up.
Ramsey was pleased to find some of his favorite goodies (Oreos and Hershey's Cookies & Cream candy bars, a KitKat, and a Hershey milk chocolate bar). In addition, Lucky left a fun box of dominos!
Rather than learning to play Dominos or setting them up and tipping them, Ramsey (the math nerd) was more interested in using the dominos as learning tools and adding as many as he could.
We were lucky to have Connor home with us all week for Spring Break! Due to the downstairs reno, his bedroom is a complete wreck. (Poor kid!!!) The lower level family room is also in shambles still. But, nonetheless, he was here and we were all pleased with that.
Ramsey was lucky to have Big Brubby home to play Minecraft on the X-Box and light saber battles. One afternoon, Connor even went out with Ramsey and the neighbor girls and played tag. What a great kid!! I'm not sure if I know too many 19-year-olds who would willingly play with kids 10 and 12 years his junior.
Other highlights for Ramsey were play dates with "the Girls", playing outside, building compounds, playing with Plah-Doh, and a gazillion other crazy kid things.
So... Goldie the goldfish lived about a month and a half with us before he finally crossed the rainbow bridge for fish. With that change, we thought we'd shift gears in our current 10 gallon tank and purchase a number of tropical fish. Eric even considered getting a larger tank so he could have a tank where he'd raise shrimp and have snails, having quite the ecosystem all around for all of the fish. (The idea would be that he'd raise shrimp to be bottom feeders and clean the bottoms of the tanks and then also to be used in a food chain heirarchy to feed other tanked fish.)
He started watching YouTube videos up the wazoo (in typical OCD fashion) and he learned a LOT about having fish, raising fish, what fish are good tank mates, best ways to clean tanks, water changes/refreshes - you name it!
As it happened, I had to go to the dentist to have a tooth checked. I'd always gotten a kick out of his huge tank that he had in his reception area at the office. That visit, I learned that the dentist was moving into a brand new space with two other dentists. Assuming he may not be able to take the fish or aquarium with them (and assuming they wouldn't be going home with him), I asked him what he planned to do with the set-up. He said he really didn't know. I told him if he was planning to get rid of it, Eric might be interested. He perked up and told me that we could HAVE it! That was a Thursday. By Saturday, we had plans to go retrieve the 100-gallon tank, 100 gallons of water, and what we now counted as 17 fish.
Thankfully, Connor was able to come with us to help. We drove two vehicles to town and started the process. I had bought a ton of buckets with lids, knowing we'd be bringing gallons of fish water home with us. When we arrived, Doc showed us everything he was giving us - it was a LOT more than we'd even anticipated! He had a second 25-gallon aquarium, heaters, filters, food, test kits, cleaning tools, extra light bulbs, bubblers, tubes, siphons, plus the 100-gallon s-curve tank, mongo super duper filtration system, stand, aquarium decor, etc. It was a LOAD.
When we got home, Eric and Connor lugged most of the heavy stuff (I had a bad shoulder and such so I wasn't able to lug as much as I would have liked to). It was a huge chore. Connor had to leave for work right away, so Eric and I started the process of going through all of the boxes (both vehicles and Eric's truck bed had been FULL to the BRIM!). At one point, we couldn't even walk through the living room or kitchen - it was such a mess!
Then, it was tank-cleaning time. Ugh. But, it had to be done. I cleaned the tank while Eric continued to sort. And, he also used the new 25-gallon tank as a temporary home for our new critters.
At one point, Ramsey told me, "Our house is starting to look like a pet store!". Yup, agreed little buddy.
We have goldfish, a really cool clown loach (the black, white, and orange striped guy), two different catfish (the polka-dot guy and the one with long horizontal stripes), a small school of "silver dollars" (South American natives, closely related to pirahna and pacu), and three bluish-colored Gouramis.
We noticed that the bottom-feeding catfish were very antisocial and strange; they like to keep to themselves.
Exhausted, we continued into the late hours of the night!
Then, finally, voila! The tank was refilled and Eric placed the fish back in their permanent home and gave them some food.
Mr. Antisocial #1 and #2 both hang out inside the treasure chest and hideouts, not often seen unless it's completely dark.
The rest of the fish "play" and have personalities! The golfish are especially playful and happy.
With the fish being such beggers, they are fun to feed. Ramsey finds it fun to stick his fingers in the water and let the fish "bite" him.
When they are fed the algae chips/wafers, the fish go nuts! They actually think it's fun to play with the wafer and toss it around, almost like they're playing a game of soccer. Ramsey calls it "Where's the Wafer?". Of course when I try to get it all on video, it doesn't exactly go well. I got a little bit of it captured. After we got the big tank settled, we knew we had to get the other tanks settled. Therefore, we played "musical tanks". Or, as my Dad would have called it "The Welcome Wagon" - as in, "welcome to this new spot!" - but that was in regards to when we used to move furniture in the house on the ranch about once a week - to keep things interesting. Er... That was off-topic!
The 10-gallon tank that was stitting on the table in the dining room was moved to the kitchen counter. Then, the 25-gallon tank was moved to the spot in the dining room. All of the floating shelves in the dining room had to be removed, holes puttied and painted, with shelves being installed at about six inches higher. That was fun. :-/
Finally, we had to get enough fish for all of the tanks. We purchased more guppies, a loach, some corydoras (regulars and albino) for the medium tank and added cardinal tetras, red racer snails, and shrimp to the small tank.
Small tank on the kitchen counter:
cardinal tetras
a shrimp is lurking on the small rocks.
The medium tank in the eating area:
The guppies are SO HARD to get pictures of..... the corydoras and loach too; they're so fast!
Update: We now have baby guppies. I'm sure we'll have many more to come, as we have 7 females and a male - three more females currently have rather large tummies.
