Going, Going, GONE!

We finally did it. Our house sold. We are signed, sealed, and done with it. Thanks to all those who prayed with us to get it sold. We took this picture the day we signed the papers. Brett and I went early in the morning - about 9:00 a.m. and then I went home and loaded the children up in the car and took them over to the old house for one last photo opp.

We did have some nostalgic memories though. When we moved in, Caleb was not quite three, which means he was smaller than Claire is in the picture. Eli was just a month old, Emily and Claire were not even thought of.

Flood Fun

We had a flood in town one night, and the day following, the boys had a friend over. There was a big water/mud puddle in the back yard, and the boys decided to play baseball. Before they played baseball, they decided to play in the garden patch (still not planted), and they sunk to their knees. When I went out to help them clean off, I realized that the hose was not at this house. We had taken the hose to the other house to clean out the gutters, and we left it there. Lucky for us we have a sump pump, and the boys got to hose off in the ground water (very cold). They had a blast playing outside in the mud. Oh - when they were playing baseball, they decided that the big puddle was second base, and they slid into and through and past second almost every time. Even the neighbor boy decided to come over and "dive in."

Here we have a bridge in town, and this shows how high the water got.

This is a covered bridge out at the nature center, and the water level is normally about three feet below the bottom of the bridge.

I Did It

I cannot tell a lie... I chopped down the tree.

The other day I decided that our tree needed to come down. I went out with the only tool I had for the job, and it was not an ax or a hatchet. It took a very long time, and I wanted to quit (However, once I started the project, I knew that I couldn't stop, especially when the tree had some major cuts in it. I could just image me stopping, leaving the tree damaged, and then having a giant storm with some major winds; then the wind would blow the tree I had been working on, and it would fall over and seriously injure someone or something. I couldn't have that on my conscience.), but I continued until the job was finished. After the tree fell, Eli and I cut off the loose branches. Emily helped to take pictures of the event.

Small Fry

Caleb bought fish last Friday, so we got them set up in the tank. We brought them home and he thought that one of his fish was pregnant. He borrowed a V-trap from his friend, because Marigold Swordtails have live births, and they - as well as the other fish in the tank - eat their babies. We did not realize that the mama was ready to have her babies, and yesterday Eli came up and saw a baby in the tank. Caleb and his friend said it was poop floating around, and they decided that it was really a baby. Oops! Someone ate it. We quickly put mama in the trap, and during the couple of hours she was there - NO BABIES. We had to leave, and when we came home there were 5 babies in the trap. VERY EXCITING. We watched for about three hours, off-and-on, and no more babies. We decided to take mama out of the trap and this morning Brett found 3 more babies. He rescued one and I rescued the other 2. They are tiny little things and they occupy too much of our time, but it is a fun adventure... especially since I won't have a dog or a cat.

The pictures are of the fry in the seperated tank, and then to give an idea of how small the holes are I took a picture of a ruler. The holes are about 1/16" and the babies can fit through them.