thanksgiving, a couple of days late.

there is always so much to be thankful for. it seems that every year, when thanksgiving rolls around, i think more seriously about my gratitude, and family always tops my list.

this year, we were with meemer's family. we had 21 people there enjoying an incredible spread. a complete thanksgiving dinner, plus several other sides and garnishes, and of course, 5 kinds of pie! of course, on top of all the food, it is always fun to be together with family, watching the cousins play.

2007 was also the first thanksgiving for the two baby cousins. our fussy, who was renamed scooter on this day, was enjoying time with his slightly younger, far more girl cousin. competition? maybe. she can crawl? he can scoot on his butt. she's a girl? he whacked her in the face. on and on it went.

i know meemer has video of scooter (aka fussy) on her blog doing his little scoot, but i'm putting some video here too. this was on thanksgiving, and he was enjoying his cousin.



since scooter is currently my largest single source of joy, i get a kick out of it. even if you don't enjoy it as much as i do, you gotta admit, the kid is cute! now don't get me wrong, i love meemer more than anything, and i truly love and enjoy my older boys too, but right now, something about my baby's bright personality just clicks with me, and makes me happy. even when he isn't sleeping. even when he fusses for me. even when i'm cleaning up a blowout. (yes, he's that lovable!) i just hope it keeps up when he's older, and into other kinds of trouble!

see d run...

this morning, the annual city "turkey trot" 5k became my first race. granted it's more of a fun run, but the winner finished somewhere after sixteen minutes. if you run, you know that's pretty fast! i didn't win. i didn't place. but i surprised myself with a time of 22:09.

of course, since our town is pretty flat, there wasn't much up and down. it was only an elevation change of about 58 feet, but on a graph of the run it looks impressive.


anyway to put this in context, it means that over the 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) i averaged 8.4mph! that's more than a full mph faster than i average on my regular runs. needless to say, i was shocked when i crossed the finish line!


what made it more fun, was that our niece came over to watch the boys, so meemer ran too! or more accurately, it allowed me to run the race too, since meemer was planning on it first. she was much closer to the front of her group with a time of 24:14. she put several more pix on her blog.

http://meemersworld.blogspot.com/

well, i was thrilled, but i was wiped! it took me quite a while to catch my breath. i am still excited, but i'm done for the day! meemer, on the other hand, went out to run another four and a half miles! (she's my hero!)

if you love ssssomething, sssset it free!

as you probably learned from meemer's blog, harry caught a snake, fondly named "reggie" who was living in our aquarium. a day or two later, reggie had new tank-mates. aside from the fact that our aquarium was too small for a snake that size, (let alone 3) we couldn't figure out what to feed reggie, freddy, and stumpy.


meemer looked online, and found suggestions of worms, slugs, or small fish. harry and chilly happily took to worm-hunting. there were soon several worms per snake. maybe too many. we had no way of knowing if the snakes ever ate any! we never saw them show any interest anyway. so one day, we stopped by the pet store to ask advice. we were told quite positively that they would eat goldfish. "just put them in the water dish." can you see goldy floating in the water in the above picture?

so the snakes have slithered through the water, right past the goldfish, again showing no interest. they ignored the fish that died in the bowl, so i left it on the land in their tank to see if they would go for that. there was a third fish, swimming in the standing water under the rock where the snakes like to spend time. still nothing.

so last night, (remember what i felt like based on my previous post) harry and i came down to find one of the snakes on the lamp housing, and a second one part-way out of the door! they had managed to push themselves up, and lift the lid! the one was easy. i opened the lid, and gave him a nudge, and he dropped back down into the tank. the second one, fell off the tank and in the struggle to capture him he then dropped to the floor. About 2/3 of him was into a hole under our kitchen island, before i grabbed his tail, and pulled him back out. harry grabbed him, and we got him back home just as mom walked in...

today, after weighing chilly's request for a home for his fish (at least the 2 surviving goldfish) with harry's fondness for his "pets," i decided, (bearing in mind the first escape noted in meemer's blog, and the second one noted here) that we should free them. i asked harry, and since we didn't know if they had eaten anything, and we didn't want them to die, he agreed to free them.


so on a beautiful fall day, harry took each snake out, and carefully put it back, just where he had found it a few days earlier. chilly kept the dog at bay, and we got some video and some pictures of them slithering away, to remember the brief time when we had snakes.


oddly enough, when i cleaned out the aquarium, i could only find 2 fish...

halloween = puking?

our harry has a pretty poor average on halloween. he has now been sick 4 of his 7 halloweens. when i say sick, i don't mean a little cough or runny nose, i mean violently puking every 15-70 minutes all day long.

we thought since he was off track this year, he'd have a better shot. unfortunately, his little bro brought something home from preschool. so chilly spends most of monday with his head in a bucket, but poor harry, who has been looking forward to halloween for months, missed out on the whole thing. he was fine all morning. a little less active after lunch, and about 4:30pm, with trick-or-treating in sight, he starts chucking.

lest we forget the baby, who while not technically hurling, is so congested that mom and dad got very little sleep for three nights in a row. last night being the best, when meemer and i both had it! lets just say that i lost 9 pounds yesterday. yeah, it was bad.

anyway, to lighten up the post a bit, here are our jack-o-lanterns: