Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

We started things early this year. We opened our stockings last night, then did the traditional reading of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

We also played with the watercolors Cathy got at the dollar store.

This morning was filled with the gifts from under the tree. Santa heard that Jeremy likes The
Simpsons.

Kirk liked both the shirts he got this year!

Also: Salmon. Yum Yum!

Cathy will no longer get lost every time she walks out of the house. (Hopefully.)

Sarah enjoyed opening her present from Vanessa...

...and was even more thrilled when she saw what was inside!

She also liked opening her present from Grandma and Grandpa!

We imagine that she will squeak this until the squeeker breaks.

We had egg dish for breakfast, and will be having ham for Christmas dinner. Merry Christmas everyone!

It's Christmas Time!

Sarah loves Christmas time! :)

It means Cathy tries to decorate with whatever happens to be laying around.

Sarah really likes the tree. She sniffs the presents every single day. We've given up trying to keep the bags upright.

There's also a lot of treats being made. She can't have these chocolate peanut butter balls that Kirk made for work, but it did not stop her from laying at his feet while he made them!

Out With the Old

We finally decided that it was time for Kirk's 1989 Honda to go. This car has served us very well.

Kirk decided awhile ago that he wanted to replace it with a Honda Fit. We finally got the price we were willing to pay, and the rest is history.

It's a nice little car. We named it "Go Time" because, according to the ads, "The Fit is Go."

For such a tiny car, it's pretty roomy. This is the back seat.

They fold down, so you can slide things in. (The passenger side folds all the way down too- you can fit a surfboard in! Clearly, this is an important feature in landlocked Kansas.)

This is Cathy's favorite part...the seats fold UP too! :)

Sarah's Halloween Costume

She thought the hot dog was a giant toy strapped to her back and wanted to play with it.

Sarah's New Pajamas!

Cathy saw these at Target for under 10 bucks, and she just *had* to get them for Sarah. Sarah LOVES them and does not want us to take them off. It must be keeping her toasty! Bonus: The white part glows in the dark, which has kept us from tripping on her in the middle of the night.

Guinea Pig Update

The pigs seem to be doing fine, despite the bag incident. We just watched them carefully for several days, and nothing seems to be wrong. The vet is as surprised as we are. He asked if we were absolutely sure that they ate the bag.

Unless the Boogieman or a Gremlin came in, ate it, and framed the pigs, the PIGS ATE THE BAG.

I'm just relieved that we did not have to get the fancy vet treatment. I hope the pigs learned their lesson! (But I somehow doubt it...:)

Guinea Crisis 2009: Bag Edition

So the guinea pigs ate aproxomity half a Dillon's plastic bag sometime between 10 PM and 6 AM this morning...awesome. We'd put the bag by the door, filled with things that Kirk needed for work today.

A panicked call to the vet revealed that we could get a guinea pig's stomach pumped for *insert obscenely high figure here*, so we're doing the "watch and wait" method. The vet said that it's entirely possible they'll pass it on their own, as guinea pigs chew things down pretty small. They're in separate cages- we'll be watching for signs of distress over the next few days.

Sometimes I wish that our employers had a direct deposit to the vet option- it'd be very convenient for us! :)

Cross your fingers that everything goes well and does not involve costly vet intervention.

Boston Flee Party is GO!

We've started our Boston Blog. Check it out!

RIP Zippy (2004-2009)

We had to put down Zippy this afternoon.

She had another stone in her urethra, and the doctor said that when they come back that quickly, it will likely be an ongoing issue. She was in a lot of pain, so we decided to let her go.

They gave her an anesthetic so she would go to sleep, and let me pet her until she fell asleep. Then they took her in the back for the final part, where she would actually die.

Zippy was one of our "surprise" pigs from Pitter Pat, who we had not realized was pregnant when we brought her home. She's also one of the first pigs we were able to name. She zoomed around the cage so much that we just had to name her "Zippy!" She zipped.

We are glad that we were with her the day she was born, and we were sad to let her go on today. She was a good pig.

Boston Flee Party

We're heading to Boston this Friday, and we'll be blogging about our adventure here. We hope to see you there! :)

The Great Siding Project: Phase One

We started our siding project on Saturday. We got pretty far into it, but we're not done yet. Here's Scott (Kirk's coworker who is helping/teaching us) taking off the first board.

Scott was impressed with the stuff underneath our boards. He said it was high quality and whoever had put up our original stuff did it right. We did not have to replace the stuff underneath, which was a relief.

Kirk and Jeremy have the whole bottom off. Scott is watching from the background.

Kirk and Scott pulled off almost all of the top themselves! (We only had two ladders.)

Go Kirk Go!

Everything's off!

Scott helps Kirk saw the new boards.

Kirk and Scott putting on the new boards. (Jeremy and I were pulling off the stuff from the other side, with breaks for Cathy to run take pictures!)

Lunchtime! Papa John's was having a $5 pizza day. Score!

Side One Done! We still need to paint, of course, but the boards are up! Even unpainted it looks a million times better.

Sarah insisted on supervising.

The old siding.

A view of the unpainted but fabulous anyway siding.

Jeremy and Cathy had been pulling off siding over here, but it was slow going due to all the plants (including a rosebush) and...

The gas leak! Our meter smelled STRONGLY of gas, so Cathy called the gas people to have a look. They told us to stop working in that area until they could check it out. Good thing...

We did have a leak. Here's our old IRON meter. They replaced it with a much lighter and less leak prone one. (no picture, sorry!) Our old one looked pretty cruddy, so it's nice to have a new shiny meter to go with our new siding!

We only went partway up- we'll go back and do the rest next weekend. Everything is covered up, so it should be fine.

Sarah got tuckered out from all the supervising.

We're thinking this will be a Three Phase operation. Hopefully everything will be done next weekend so we can start painting!

The Siding Project

Our $900 pile of boards

For those of you who don't know, we're residing our house. After getting some quotes ranging from $16,000 to $31,000, we decided to do it ourselves. We estimate that we'll be saving $13,500-$29,500, One of Kirk's coworkers used to do siding as a side job, and he's coming over to help us get started.

We start tomorrow at the crack 'o dawn, and hope to be done with the hanging the siding part of our project by the end of the weekend. We lucked out- it's only going to be in the '80's this weekend! Yay!

Happy 29th Birthday to Cathy!

We started the day by getting Sarah groomed for her second (and last) haircut of the season. She got such rave reviews by her groomers that I used my $4 PetSmart Birthday Club card on a little treat for her.

It's an eco-friendly toy made of hemp- supposedly super strong. Since Sarah usually destroys her soft toys in a day or so, I'm eager to see if this toy lives up to its claims.

We'd already celebrated with my parents this past weekend, but still had a birthday dinner today. The steaks, sweet corn, fruit salad, and zucchini were delicious- followed by "dirt cups" for dessert. Yum!

Garden 2009

I know, I know, it's been awhile. I'll make up for it with some garden pictures! We're growing lettuce, zucchini, yellow squash, watermelon, tomatoes, Tabasco peppers, jalapenos, basil, mint, and onions this year. We'll see how it turns out. The Tabasco peppers and the watermelon are my "experimental" crops this year.

The whole garden. The hose/sprinkler is set up with our automatic sprinkler system. There's a dedicated water line in the garden- whoever set this up did us a major favor.
I was unsure of the watermelon. It cost $1.50 and consisted of two tiny leaves. It's doing fine now!
Our lettuce finally looks like lettuce.
We've planted a ton of tomatoes, but I'm really excited about our upside down tomatoes. Thanks for the planter, Uncle Don!
Mint. It's coming back just fine from last year. We mostly put it in our tea, but I'm looking for other uses this year.
The basil has been very successful as well. So far I've just added it to tomato sauce, and plan to have a lot of tomato basil salads when the tomatoes come in. Any other ideas would be appreciated!
Our front- I just planted the flowers in the boxes today.
A close up of the pretty flower thing I picked up at yard sale two years ago.
My newest yard sale find- the birdhouse was on the pole, but Kirk took it off so it will be easier for me to paint. I was going to paint it today, but it was WAY too hot. Tomorrow it will be painted, and this weekend I will fill it with geraniums.

This is not the garden, but it's still pretty neat. That's Kirk holding Charlotte. Her mother Amber is by him, and she's petting Snapple, her new mini-horse. He's pretty funny and likes to be brushed.