Blueberry Muffin's babies

When Noah and I quit our part-time job as rabbit caretakers back in August, our last week held a fun surprise! One of the rabbits who had just come to us from another shelter gave birth to a litter in the bunny barn, and Noah and I found the babies. I posted the story and photos of the newborns on my blog here. Well, now they're almost three months old, and look! So big and gorgeous! They are all healthy and happy. (I couldn't get photos of all of them; my camera phone can't capture then when they're moving, and baby bunnies move a lot!)

So true!

Funny Blogs

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Menu Planning

I'm trying to get more organized, and also save money, so I'm getting back into menu planning, as opposed to flying by the seat of my pants. Here are the plans for this week's dinners (items with an * are new recipes I'm trying):

Monday: Baked Potato Soup*, salad, garlic bread

Tuesday: Going out to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes for Noah's birthday

Wednesday: Chicken with Spanish Rice, broccoli

Thursday; Twice-Baked Potatoes, salad

Friday: Spaghetti, garlic bread, salad

Saturday: Ginger-and-Spice Chicken Thighs*, Roasted Garlic Potatoes*, salad

Sunday: Cheddar Chicken Chowder, cornbread

Lunches will be the usual variety: peanut butter and jelly, grilled cheese, turkey sandwiches, canned soup, quesadillas, macaroni & cheese, leftover pasta with butter and parmesan, leftover soup, etc.

I'd love to find some new cookbooks with cheap, fast, and healthy recipes. Any suggestions?

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What I'm reading

I got this book through inter-library loan, and I'm glad I did! It would probably be a great book for Noah to study in high school. I should probably buy my own copy; I have found myself jotting notes and quotes on index cards as I read. Here are a couple of intriguing quotes:

"The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry." (Ralph Waldo Emerson in "The Poet")

And from Veith himself:

"And yet Christians, especially those schooled by the Reformation, would insist that in real life we are saved by a deus ex machina -- our lives are hopelessly tangled and filled with sin until God intervenes by His grace. Christ is a God let down from Heaven; the Holy Spirit does break into our lives."

Added to my "to-be-read" list as a result of this book:

Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
A.N. Wilson, Gentlemen in England
Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities

And to re-read:

everything by Flannery O'Connor

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The Kind of OCD Steven wishes I had.

When I was considering the possibility that I might have OCD, about 7 years ago now, Steven basically laughed. "You can't have OCD! You're a lousy housekeeper!" was his comment, or words to that effect. I had to agree. But it turned out I did have OCD, although unfortunately for my family, not the kind of OCD that keeps everything supernaturally shipshape and organized. My psychiatrist thinks I've got ADD as well, and the combination means I worry about how everything should be, but can't seem to get it organized! :-)

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Stargazing fun

Google Image Result for http://www.kidscosmos.org/kid-stuff/graphics/jupiter-moons-1.jpg

Saturday evening, we went to a Stargazing for Everyone event at Lake Pleasant. We were running a little late, so we missed the ranger-led hike, but enjoyed fresh-grilled hamburgers and hot dogs while we watched a slide presentation about the night sky. Then we looked at various objects through high-powered telescopes. We saw Jupiter with her four largest moons, the Ring Nebula, the owl cluster, a binary star system, the Andromeda Galaxy, and more. It was lots of fun. We also found out that there will be an Orionid meteor shower tonight from after midnight to just before dawn. I'm not sure if I'll have the energy to get up and check it out, but if I do, I'll let you know!

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Hopefully Noah will remember more than this...

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I just think this is funny.

This is Noah's writing assignment on a type of fungus. He actually did do a plain, basic paragraph, but then he couldn't resist letting his creative side show.

Boy Sopranos

I admit it, I (not so secretly) dreamed that Noah would be a boy soprano in a boys' choir. He has a nice voice, and a good ear. Singing's just not really his cup of tea.  So I console myself by watching videos like this on Youtube.

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Smoky Corn Chowder

I spend more time than I should hanging around on a message board for homeschoolers. I like it because the women (and a few men) are so diverse, and I get to hear opinions and experiences I might not hear from people I see regularly. And, sometimes, I get great recipes there!

Here's one I made a few weeks ago for a friend's family, to welcome their new baby. I made a double batch, and froze half. We had it tonight, with some cornbread (Trader Joe's). Mmmm. Very satisfying.

1 pkg. frozen sweet corn
4 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
2 Tbsp butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup each, chopped celery, carrot and red bell pepper (I omitted the celery, because I forgot to buy it)
1 TBsp thyme
1 tsp ground cumin
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
3 large potatoes,peeled, cut into bite-size pieces (I actually left the peels on)
28 oz. chicken broth
1/2-3/4 cup half-and-half

Cook bacon until crisp. Remove bacon to paper towels to cook and then crumble. Melt butter in pot and and add onion, celery, carrot and pepper. Cook until tender, about 10 min. Stir in thyme, cumin, salt and pepper. Add potatoes, chicken broth, water, and corn. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer. Stir as needed. Use a blender to puree mixture for 2 minutes and then add half-and-half and remove from heat. Crumble bacon bits on top and serve with corn bread...

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So true!

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Snow in the mountains!

This dusting of snow on Agassiz Peak is the first hint of winter. Eventually, there will be enough snow for sledding and skiing! I can't wait! I am going to be much more careful when I go sledding this year; no hurtling over ramps. I'm too old for that.

Weekly Report (well, not exactly weekly, I guess)

Here's what we've been up to at The Shire Academy:

Music: Reading about and listening to Baroque composers Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach. (Noah's opinion on Bach's "Brandenburg Concertos": "That's pretty good music!")

Writing: Still working on key word outlines. Once he has the outline done, his writing is fine. It's just that doing the outline is like pulling teeth.

History: More sad tales. Slavery in the south, and the Cherokee Trail of Tears. We did watch a really good DVD from the History Channel about the Underground Railroad, which prompted a discussion about what we would have done if we had lived then. (I like to think I'd have been a station master on the underground railroad, but would I have let fear of arrest get the best of me?)

Math: Decided to try a free month's trial of the online math program, ALEKS.

Latin: Doing some review of the first three chapters.

Logic: I think the Mind Benders book has been very helpful. At first, Noah struggled with some of the deductive thinking required, but now he's doing great! He's almost done with the first book.

Science: He's still feeling overwhelmed at the amount of work required in his new junior high science class at co-op, but I think he'll be fine when he gets used to it. He's learning about the sun, the stars, the planets, etc. We're hoping to attend an outdoor stargazing event soon, hosted by a group who brings along their high-powered telescopes and expertise to share with the public. We haven't done anything like that in awhile, and we're looking forward to it.

Big news: Noah's computer class is going to be taking a field trip to the Apple Store!

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Book List

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

The Rules:
 

1) Look at the list and put one * by those you have read.
2) Put a % by those you intend to read.
3) Put two ** by the books you LOVE.
4) Put # by the books you HATE.
5) Post.
 

**1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
**2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
**3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
4 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
**5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

**6 The Bible
*7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
*8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
*10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
*11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
*12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
*13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
**14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
*15 Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
**16 The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
*18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
*19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
%20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
%21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
*22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
%24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
**25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
%26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -
*27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
*28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
*29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
%30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
**31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
**32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
**33 Chronicles of Narnia- C.S. Lewis
**34 Emma - Jane Austen
**35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
**36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis -
%37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (have it from the library, but haven't started it yet)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernières -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
*40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
*41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
%45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
**46 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (pretty heavy propaganda)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
*50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
*52 Dune - Frank Herbert
%53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
**54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
**57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
*58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
*59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
%67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
*68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
*71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
*72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
**73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
*74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
%77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile Zola
*79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A.S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
*83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
*84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
*87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
%91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
%94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
%95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
*98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
**99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
**100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

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Can't get this song out of my head!

Embedded Video

Noah is studying the sun in science this week. We can't get this song out of our heads. Enjoy.

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The Tucson Herpetological Society

Noah is having trouble getting his work done, since we are at the library sitting by the floor-to-ceiling windows, and there are numerous Sonoran Tiger Whiptails running around outside. They are pretty cool.

The Tucson Herpetological Society

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Facebook is fun!

GraphJam: Music and Pop Culture in Charts and Graphs. Let us explain them.

I've been having so much fun on Facebook, catching up with old friends and keeping in touch with those I don't get to see as often as I'd like. You should try it!

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Hope Deferred

I am really struggling right now with disappointment, disillusionment, discouragement, and a lot of other dis- words. (Disgruntled? Dysfunctional?)

We are having to deal with some serious issues that, a year ago, we thought were on the wane. This means our adoption dream is put on hold, indefinitely.

This feels like a kick in the stomach. I am struggling with those old feelings of, "Of course you're not going to adopt. Why would God bless you? He doesn't really like you that much. Basically, you need to just get used to pain and disappointment and stop thinking that any of your dreams will ever come true." Not Biblical, and not true. But that's how I'm feeling these days.

Has anyone else ever felt that way?

Apple - iPod touch

Apple - iPod touch

Noah and I went to the new Apple store in the mall to play with the new toys. I have been wanting an iPod Touch for awhile now, and they just made it BETTER and CHEAPER!! I will be able to listen to music and audiobooks, watch videos, check and send email, surf the web, sync my calendar and contacts instantly with my laptop at home, even play games, etc. Such a cool thing!

So here's my plan: Save up my money, ask for Apple gift cards for Christmas, and then sell my current iPod.

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Weekly Report 8/22/08

Our second week of "easing into school" has gone fairly well. We didn't get everything done that was planned, but that's okay. Yesterday was my last day of work at the rabbit rescue; from now on, we will not be in such a rush.

The highlight of this week was our literature selection, Hoggee by Anna Myers. A hoggee was a boy who worked on the Erie Canal, leading the mules along the towpath. (Did you know the boats were pulled by mules who walked alongside the canal?) Good character development, moral lessons, and even information about sign language (the main character meets a "deaf and dumb" girl, and finds out how to help her). I read this book aloud to Noah, and he even asked me to read it one evening instead of our current bedtime read-aloud, The Enchanted Castle. (We LOVE E. Nesbit!)

History and writing this week were about the Erie Canal. In addition, we continued in Megawords, Winston Grammar, our catechism study, and Building Thinking Skills. We also added Mind Benders. His geography work again concerned colonial America. I decided to drop music until September, as we didn't have the time to devote to it this week.

We are really enjoying the songs for learning the catechism. The CD is by Holly Dutton. She's really talented. We are walking around, bursting into, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy-oy Him fo-or-ever!"

Next week will be a "short" week, as we'll be off Thurs. and Friday. I'm not sure if I'll have time to post a weekly report. We'll be studying Andrew Jackson's presidency.

Aren't they cute?

Oreo and Lanah are really snuggling a lot together this afternoon. We even saw Lanah grooming Oreo, which is almost as rare as Halley's Comet!

First Week of School

So, our first week of 6th grade is almost over. It's a "light schedule", since we're still working in the afternoons. In September, we'll start the full schedule (including poetry, Latin, science, civics, and art). Here's the recap:

Bible...We're using Training Hearts, Teaching Minds by Starr Meade. This week was catechism question 1: "What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."

Math...We're using manipulatives to work on multiplication facts, a weak area for ds.

History...The Monroe Doctrine. In addition to the worksheet, test, and project, ds read a short biography of Monroe, and filled in a book report sheet. We also listened to several chapters of History of US in the car.

Geography...Physical features (mountains, bays, rivers, coastal plains, plateau) of the original thirteen colonies. This one was frustrating, because our little atlas was no help. I checked out two different atlases from the library yesterday.

Writing...As usual, my creative ds turned a writing assignment into something more. He used powerpoint to create a presentation on the Monroe Doctrine. My favorite part is the page talking about Spain losing Florida. He used a photo of a baby crying, and labeled it "Spain".

Music...Ancient music and the Middle Ages. Today, we'll be looking at some videos of Gregorian chant on youtube.

Grammar...Started Winston Grammar. I think the hands-on and visual aspects will be very helpful.

Vocabulary...Megawords 2. I think this will be fairly easy for him, except spelling the words. I think this will be good for him.

Other...Buiilding Thinking Skills.

Oh, wow! Brand-new bunnies!

Today was a day of surprises at the rabbit rescue. When we arrived, I went to the garage to load up the wagon with litter (Wednesday is Litter Box Day). As I pulled the wagon up to the bunny barn, Noah came out, saying, "Mom, there's something crawling around on the floor; it's creeping me out!" I expected it to be a bug; hopefully not another huge spider (which I still think was a baby tarantula).
What he had found was a little mammal, dusty, squirming on the floor, half under the cabinet where we keep medical supplies. It was gray, about 4" long. At first I thought it might be a squirrel or even a mole. Yes, I was INSIDE a rabbit rescue, but my first thought was NOT "baby rabbit". We weren't aware of any of our rabbits being in the family way; we get them all spayed and neutered ASAP. But as I stooped to pick up the creature, I saw distinctive ears and tail. Sure enough, it was a newborn rabbit!
When Erika got there, a few minutes later, we found another five babies stashed behind the litter box in a cage. She handed the babies to me as she took them out of the cage; one was cold, so she told me to put it inside my shirt, next to my skin. The residents of the cage are two female rabbits who arrived just this week from another shelter. They were scheduled to be spayed tomorrow. Oops.
So Blueberry Muffin is a mommy now! She's a gorgeous and very nice gray and white Rex rabbit, and her babies appear to be some gray, and some gray and white spotted like their mom. (No fur yet, but their skin is spotted.)

Back to School!

It's time to Someone to start sixth grade tomorrow! Woohoo! I spent a lot of time agonizing over curriculum choices, and I'm pretty happy with my plans.

We'll be using:
Veritas Press History
Megawords 2, then Vocabulary from Classical Roots
Phonetic Zoo
Latin for Children
Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization
Training Hearts, Teaching Minds
Winston Grammar
Building Thinking Skills
Young Scholars' Guide to Composers
Artistic Pursuits
Information, Please!
How Government Works
Lyrical Life Science
Read and Understand Poetry
Institute for Excellence in Writing

Whew! It looks like a LOT, but some of those subjects will be done only weekly. We won't be starting a full schedule until Sept. 8th; we're easing into things.

Ridiculous Cuteness!

We have new bunnies at the shelter. They're Harlequin bunnies, four weeks old. So tiny and unbelievably adorable! Don't you agree?

Our Latest Adventure

Well, there's never a dull moment around here! Wednesday, we took ds to the children's hospital for a sleep-deprived EEG. We had to keep him up ALL NIGHT the night before!! Thanks to our dear friends who loaned us a Playstation 3, it wasn't too bad. We should get the results soon.

Sunday afternoon siesta

So I was taking my usual Sunday afternoon siesta in the recliner when Noah decided I needed some rabbits. Tubby and The Princess snuggled in for awhile. Aren't they the cutest? Awww.

(Note that I am wearing the perfect Sunday afternoon laziness ensemble: yoga pants and an oversized "Frodo Lives" t-shirt.)

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Well, now that I think about it, I don't think there were any bears. But definitely lions and tigers. And Madagascar hissing cockroaches, meerkats, a leopard, many different parrots and macaws, and even a hairless guinea pig.

We went to Wildlife World Zoo with friends from church. It was stinkin' hot, but other than that, we had a great time. Here's a video of Noah feeding a giraffe.



The highlight of the zoo for me, as usual, was seeing the big cats. I have a lifelong fascination with them, especially the tigers. They have four "baby" tigers at this zoo right now. (About a year old now, I think.) Beautiful.

For Noah, the highlight was the meerkats. He adores them. Also any baby animals. Babies we saw (besides the tigers) included: warthog, hamsters, porcupines, prairie dogs, ducks...

Oh boy, does this bring back memories!

I just found out about www.hulu.com, where you can view movies and Tv shows. Look what I found! This really takes me back. This was one of my FAVORITE shows! I wanted to be Penny Robinson! And thought Don was handsome. Sigh.

Every 25 years

Twenty-five years ago, I was a junior in high school. I had braces on my teeth, and a boyfriend named Tim. He took me to the Rock Superbowl at the stadium to see The Police, my favorite band. It was my first rock concert. It was a big deal, too; The Police were huge superstars, and Martha Quinn from MTV was there. The opening acts were Eric Burdon and the Animals (did I spell that right?) and Bryan Adams, but everyone was really there to see The Police.

There were over ten thousand people there, I'm sure. The stadium was packed. People were singing along and holding up their cigarette lighters. I was thrilled. I bought a T-shirt, which I still hung on to until just a few years ago, when it was disintegrating.

Well, The Police reunited a couple of years ago, and did a world tour. When they came to town then, the tickets were way too expensive, so we didn't go. But this time, apparently their final tour together, the tickets were a bit more affordable (at least the cheap seats), so we went. It was my Mother's Day present.

Very similar. An outdoor venue, with over ten thousand people in attendance. People singing along and holding up their cigarette lighters. All the old songs. The band was amazing.

I never imagined THEN that I'd see The Police again in 25 years, as a homeschooling mom. (I happened to have a homeschool catalog in my purse last night. I thought it was funny when the security person had to look through my purse. I bet I was the only one there with a Veritas Press catalog.) Twenty-five years is a long time. How did it go by already?

We joked about seeing The Police again in another 25 years. Stewart Copeland will be 90 years old then, and I think Sting will be 80. We'll see if my new T-shirt is still in good condition then.

Hmm...I wonder if this is true.

Take the Quiz here!

I would have thought I'm more of a Marianne-Dashwood-after-she's-learned-her-lesson-and-fallen-for-Col.-Brandon-type, but who knows? I've never been in Anne Eliot's position.

Which one are you?

My singing career

One of my passions is singing. Has been my whole life. Shortly after we moved to AZ, I saw a notice in the newspaper that a choral group was performing Mozart's "Requiem". I couldn't make the concert, but the group's website was mentioned in the paper. So I checked out their website, and emailed the group's president. A month or so later, I was performing John Rutter's "Requiem" with them in a music festival. I stayed.

Over the years, we've performed Haydn's "Creation", Handel's "Messiah" and "Judas Maccabeus", Vivaldi's "Gloria", Bach's "Magnificat", Mendelssohn's "Elijah", and many others.

This past weekend, we did three performances of Cathedral Classics, an overview of cathedral music beginning in the medieval era and continuing to the 20th century. It was, as usual, a blast. I loved the Renaissance pieces by Giovanni Gabrieli the best. During the instrumental (organ and brass) pieces, I enjoyed imagining all of us in Renaissance attire, sitting at a banquet in a great hall. "Gloria" by John Rutter was fun, too, especially the third movement, which is bouncy and jazzy.

Next on our calendar: Schubert's "Mass in G". I've never even heard this before, as far as I know.

If you're in the valley, please consider coming to one of our concerts.

Today's Hike

It was a lovely, breezy day today, with a high of about 80. We took a hike, and snapped a few pictures. (We would have snapped more, but I left the digital camera unplugged, and the battery died.) That's my hubby above.
That's me below. (The fanny pack makes my dupa look MUCH bigger than it really is, okay?

Here's my son. He found that walking stick at Lake Tahoe last summer.

We saw lots and lots of wildflowers: lupines, owl's clover, fiddleneck, desert mallow, brittlebush, scorpionweed, and more. It's hard to believe how different these hills will look a few months from now.

Quote of the Day

I saw this quote in a signature line on my favorite homeschooling message board. It fits me so well!

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
A. A. Milne

Feeling Thankful

I thought I'd mention a few things I'm thankful for this weekend...

1. That dh and ds had safe travel to and from a church men's retreat in Prescott.

2. That ds emailed me on his dad's Blackberry an hour after they left, saying he loves me and he missed me already!

3. That I got a good haircut today. Boy, did I need it! I was looking very frumpy.

Wildflowers coming soon!

We went for a family hike on the waterfall trail today. Gorgeous weather, about 70 degrees at the most, blue skies. Lots of people on the trail, of course.

There were so many green plants and weeds everywhere! This will be a great wildflower season, I think. We saw some flowers today, actually. A few Mexican gold poppies, and even fewer fiddlenecks and scorpionweeds.

In a few weeks, I'll start taking my camera out to capture the flowers.

My other blog

I have another blog now, with photos and info about some of my rabbit friends. Check it out!

Bunnies AZ

Please leave some comments!

They're bonding!

After a rocky start, the bunnies' relationship is going really well. After the first week or so, Oreo started grooming Lanah sometimes when she demanded it. She stopped chasing him around, and stopped demanding to be groomed every five minutes (both of which behaviors were driving Oreo bonkers!). They started lying down next to each other of their own accord. Finally, we also glimpsed Lanah grooming Oreo. We started putting them in a cage together, first for a few hours at a time, then longer. Now, they are sharing a cage and doing very well. They snuggle, groom each other, and get along great. No more chasing or annoying.

It's very sweet to see them being friends, and we're glad Oreo is no longer lonely when we're out of the house or busy. When we went to Flagstaff, we loaded them up with lots of food, hay, treats, water, and new toys. They were fine.

Snow Days

My mom generously gave us a check for Christmas, to use for anything we wanted. We immediately decided to use it for a trip up to Flagstaff to play in the snow. We considered using it for a day of skiing, but ended up deciding we'd rather go for a whole weekend of sledding instead. It was a great weekend!

Of course, whenever you have a klutz (me) doing anything active, there is great potential for injury, and I didn't disappoint. (The very first time we went up to Wing Mountain, I slipped in an icy patch walking down the hill, and cracked my tailbone.)

Saturday morning at Crowley, Noah started playing with a boy about his age. The boy's dad and I chatted briefly, during which time he pointed out a nearby sled run with a "ramp" near the bottom, and said, "That one's fun." I had never dared to go down one of these runs where someone had built up the icy snow to make a ramp. For some reason, I dared this time. The snow was wet, and I was going at a high rate of speed when I hit the "ramp". I became airborne, tightened my grip on the handles, and experienced a jarring impact. I lay on my side for a few moments, assessing the damage. My back and shoulders hurt in a number of places. I tasted blood in my mouth; I had bit my lip. Thankfully, I found I could get up and walk, and nothing seemed to be broken. When Steven reached me, he demanded, "Why did you go down that run?" Stupidly, I replied, "That guy said it would be fun." As we trudged up the hill, I noticed my pants were a little wet. Inside. I wet my pants when I crashed! Oy. Not very dignified for a 40-year-old. Seriously.

The poor guy felt really bad; he apologized and explained, "I was being facetious." Well. Now he tells me.

Steven took this photo shortly after my crash.


This is where we were sledding. It's an area of volcanic rock, where the city digs up cinders to scatter on the roads in the winter.

Our new foster bunny!

We decided to foster Lanah, a lionhead bunny. She seems to have a very sweet disposition, and we wanted Oreo to have a friend to snuggle with when we're not around or busy. We took him over to have a "date" with her. At first, they seemed to be getting along great, even cuddling next to each other in my lap. Soon, however, she started displaying some dominance behaviors, which really bugged him. He started grunting and stamping his foot at her whenever she came near him, and even sometimes when she wasn't anywhere close by!

At home, things are about the same. They'll cuddle right next to each other if we put them side-by-side, and they'll hang out in the same room. Sometimes they will approach each other and sniff with no problems, but other times, Lanah starts pestering him again. He fled from her in a panic right onto the couch where we were sitting! It's funny to see him run from a smaller, younger rabbit.

We're hoping they'll bond, but we'll see.. here's her picture.