Busy days...

It has been very busy lately, I guess it is a good thing that I haven't had much computer time, that means we've been doing lots of cool stuff.


The kittens are all comfortable in the new house, enjoying every inch of it.



Richard's favorite car is the Fort GT, so when the local Ford dealership got one in we went down to take a look. Richard was so excited! He was a little jealous that his uncle (who works for Ford) got to drive it, but he was still excited.


While in Albuquerque a while back we went to the Unser Racing Museum. Richard was really excited about it, and who do we see when we walk in the gift shop but Al Unser himself! He was really nice, talked to Richard for a few minutes and took a picture with him.

We had a good Christmas, though it seemed like it went really quickly. Richard loved hanging out with his Uncle Vince, they went to see Eragon at the movie theater and have been cruising around town all weekend. Richard will be sad when he and Alison head back to Colorado.

Cleo

I haven't been keeping up with this at all. I have so many pictures to put up, new kitten pictures (2 months old now), pictures of the new house, from the Live and Learn Conference, TKD, etc. But I didn't really feel right putting up any pictures of happy stuff until I talked about Cleo.

Cleo died suddenly while Richard and I were in Albuquerque for the Live & Learn Unschooling Conference. Before we left for Albuquerque, I took Richard's cat Tut to the vet because I knew he wasn't feeling well. He had a dental infection, and was great with some antibiotics and pain pills. I didn't realize though, that Cleo was sick too. She was a fairly reclusive cat anyway, and wasn't adjusting to the kittens well, so I didn't worry about her hanging out in the bedroom alone. I found out during the big dinner that she had died. Thankfully mom found her so she didn't die alone. Dr. Staley kept her frozen for us, and Richard and I buried her in the backyard of our new house when we got home. Richard felt strongly that we take her to the new house even though she never lived there, so she didn't think we just abandoned her.

1701

Well, I have been a home-owner for 4 days now! It feels like a month though, since I have been working on the house for almost that long. My loan (FHA) required that the house be painted and the owners wanted to sell as-is..... so......
I painted the house. Tim helped a lot, replacing boards and scraping and such. I did all of the painting over about a week. I did have a friend come by and help a little, but I pretty much did it all myself. The house was white before, now it is Holly Green. Now I have to start on the inside which is also all white!

First though, off to Albuquerque for the Live and Learn Conference. We are driving up Wednesday as soon as I get off of work, and staying until the following Tuesday. Should be fun!

Bailey

We lost Bailey on Friday. She was fine when we went to bed Wednesday night, but Thursday morning she was bloated and groaning in pain. The vet said that she must have drank a bunch of water, then rolled around or something causing her stomach to flip over. They opened her up and drained a gallon and a half of water out of her stomach, then pinned her stomach to the sides of her abdomen so that it wouldn't flip again. He said that they have had really good luck with the surgery in the past, but she was just too old (13 or so). She made it through the surgery, and even was sitting up later, but the next morning (Friday) she had a heart attack. They were able to revive her once, but then she had another one and was gone.

She loved her stuffed "babies," she didn't chew them at all, just carried them everywhere.

Black Dog is lonely now. She has never been alone before. She has been spending lots of time with us, but I don't think it is the same.
We got a sympathy card from our vet today, that was really sweet. We lost Ginger, our 22 year old calico cat, in February. That makes losing Bailey harder, I think. There is always new life though, our new kittens are 3 weeks old and getting pretty mobile.

We'll miss you Bailey!

Dirty dish art...

One of the (many) things that I love about Richard is his ability to find beauty anywhere. He came to get me saying that there was art in the dirty dishes. Sure enough, a beautiful spiral with a yin-yang in the middle, right in a soaking cereal bowl. I bet it was a crunchy, laid back cereal, like Kashi. I wonder if a more intellectual cereal like Boo Berry or Peanut Butter Captain Crunch would produce a more Fibonacci-like spiral...

Wasps in the window...

There is a wasp nest in one of the bedroom windows, and one in the back yard. They really don't bother us at all, the only time we see them away from their nest is at the fish pond. They land on the algae to drink the water. Oh, and at the new hummingbird feeder, they love that. I need to get some pictures of that, but here is the nest through a very dirty window.



Uh, yeah that is a spiderweb going across the window... I just hate getting rid of spiderwebs.

The Kittens are 11 days old now, they are so cute! They still are basically just sleeping and eating, but a few are trying to open their eyes.

Bastet (mommy) keeps moving them. The first time was probably just to get them away from their birth place. The second time was right after our male (Tut) came into the room and saw their hiding place. Tut was scared silly of Bastet, and ran, but she wasn't taking any chances and moved the kittens to the closet.


These pictures are from a few days ago, they are probably about a week old in them.


They are all piled up in the corner of the closet, under a shelf.


We tried to get pictures of all 5 kittens seperately. This one was mewling LOUDLY for mom, she came quickly!


This one didn't even wake up.


Their ears are still folded over, according to the books they probably are just starting to hear.


This one seems to be the most active of them, she also looks a lot like the male down the street! The rest look like mom and the male that I saw with mom the night that she snuck out.


This one looks the most like mom.

Kittens!

Our cat, Bastet, gave birth to a litter of kittens Monday evening (July 31). I had been meaning to get her spaid, but on Memorial Day she was in heat, and snuck out, oops! Bastet is the bottom kitty in the above picture, the top one is King Tut. We have one other kitty, they all have Egyptian names, the one not pictured is Cleopatra.
Tut thinks he is the dad, he tried to mount her when she was in heat, but since he is neutered, well, it didn't exactly work. But since she turned up pregnant soon after he seems to think that he was able to accomplish something!


She is looking tired after the first kitten, you can just see it's head next to her body.


She looks like she wants to be left alone, but she would cry and chase us when we would walk away even for a moment.


She is eating the placenta and amniotic sac from the second kitten.


We could tell when the next one was coming by her panting, I don't know the history of Lamaze, but this sure looked like it.




She cleaned herself up between each kitten.


She is cutting the umbilical cord.






Here they are all cleaned up, there are 5 of them. At first we thought they were all black, but only one is black, with white markings. The rest are gray tabbys like mom.




Bastet was starving afterwards.


They are so cute!


Sweet dreams, kitties!

Shuttle Camp

Richard attends Shuttle Camp every year, it is a week-long space camp put on by the New Mexico Museum of Space History (the former Space Hall of Fame).


They build a rocket during the week. Last year Richard's looked like a giant pencil! This year it is a red, blue, silver, and gold rocket based on one of the X-Prize rockets that we saw launched last year. Richard was first to fire his rocket.


Waiting anxiously...




They fire the rockets in the parking lot of the museum. It is on the side of the mountain with lots of desert surrounding it.


Making sure that it is all hooked up correctly...




I guess you can't see it, the rocket is in those shots somewhere. Richard made it a little crooked, but that made it launch so cool. It went straight up, but did this awesome spiral all the way to the top!


John, figuring out why one of the kid's rockets didn't launch.


It worked this time.


This is Richard's group. The man on the far left is Daniel, he was a leader of Richard's group last year too. The man on the far right is John, he has done space camps in Alabama (where he is from) too. Richard is almost dead center in the back row. Next to him on the left (with the orange hat) is a boy named Ian whom Richard got to be friends with.

So much going on!

Things have been so busy lately...

Lauren hanging out on a guardrail by the tunnel.

Richard, looking cool.

Enjoying the beautiful New Mexico views.

A few weeks ago some members of the TKD academy did a demo at the Renaissance Faire in Cloudcroft. It was Richard's first demo as a black belt.

Mrs. Anna Scott, the certified instructor who ran the demo, asked Richard to do the red belt form instead of his current one. She said that it is one of the most difficult forms and that he does it beautifully. :-)

Richard's Aunt Dianna, Uncle Richard, and Lauren took my Richard with them to a TKD tournament in Mobile, Alabama. I don't have many pictures of the trip yet, but they sent this one to my cell phone. On the way to Mobile they stopped at both Six Flags and Sea World. Richard has been on roller coasters before, but I think now he is just totally in love with them. The higher and faster the better!
At the tournament Richard won a bronze medal in forms, a gold medal in sparring, and an honorable compeditor medal for his free design form.
Before heading home they went down to the coast and rode the "world's biggest speedboat." They had a great time, and got to see dolphins swimming in the Gulf.
Richard had so much fun on the trip, he is lucky to have such a generous aunt and uncle.

We've been up to the lake a few times, once when everyone went. That was a lot of fun. It is nice to have everyone down on the beach like when we were little. I didn't take the camera, I really just planned to take Richard up and drop him off, then come back home since I had to work Sunday night. Richard and Grandma talked me into going up just for Friday night. I ended up staying all weekend and coming home Sunday not long before I had to be at work. It was a lot of fun.

A lot of the plans that we had for the summer have been put on hold because we are buying a house, yay! That has been a lot of work, but I can't wait to close and get the keys! We will end up closing right before the Live and Learn Conference, so we will get the keys and then be gone for almost a week! It will be worth it though.

Katy