Hop Recovered!!

Hallelujah! Hop recovered! For many, many weeks now, Hop has been looking and feeling quite old. Some of you may recall when we took him to the vet, and he told us all we could do was wait. Only time would tell whether Hop would re-discover his youth, or whether he would die and be buried in our virtual backyard. It appears that the latter is not meant to be yet! Yea! Long live Hop!

"I want a Ocopus!"

At Kylee's school, the kid's have to wear pull-ups so that they can work on potty-training, so we decided to make her a potty chart so that she'll want to go potty at home too. We told her that if she went on the potty, she could get a sticker, and when she got 10 stickers, she could get a new toy. About a week into it, she told me that when she got her 10 stickers, she was going to get an "Ocopus Game". I said, "An Octopus?" And she said, "Yes! A Ocopus Game!" I was at a loss. She wants an octopus game? What the heck? I figured she would forget about it, but every time she got a new sticker, she would tell me how many more she needed until she could get that much-anticipated Ocopus game. I began to worry that she would be disappointed and never want to use the potty again. Finally, Andy enlightened me. A few months ago, Kylee's grandmother got her one of those little kick-board things that kids use in pools. They had four different ones: Crab, Turtle, Alligator and Octopus. She had debated between the Alligator and Octopus, and finally ended up with the Alligator. She loves it to pieces and plays with it in the bathtub all the time. Apparently, even though it's been awhile, she remembered that they had an "Ocopus", and she wanted it next.
She now has her Ocopus, and is working on earning 10 more stickers so she can get the crab. I assume after that we'll be getting the turtle. What are we going to do with FOUR swimming kick-boards? I guess have a pool party!!

Going on a Safari

The other day Kylee made "noculars" at school, and went on a Safari. She then brought them home, and we went on a safari at our house as well.
After she found me and daddy over and over and over again, she "found" the wooden moose I have on our fireplace 4-5 times as well. I thought maybe we should create some different animals for her to find.

I proceeded to spend like a 1/2 hour making this really cool snake that was over 3 feet long...and then Kylee wanted to hold it and within seconds it was ruined. We never even got to find it with her "noculars". Oh well!

March of Dimes

Every year I volunteer at the Provo March of Dimes walk. I usually drag some of my family members along (this time it was Tiffany, Mom and Bruce), and this year I even managed to drag some of my co-workers along...since the March of Dimes is one of the charities our company sponsors. You would think that by the end of May, we could get some nice weather for the walk, but this is the second year in a row that it has been rainy and cold! We showed up at 6am to start setting up, and it was a steady drizzle. By the time the walk was getting ready to start, it had stopped raining, but you could see that it was still snowing not too far away, a little bit higher up the mountains. Andy had to come drop off Kid around 9:30 so he could go take a test, and I called to tell him, "Dress her warm! It's freezing!" (As in: I had on a long-sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt, my winter coat, and a hat, and was still cold). His interpretation of that was: Drop her off in a short-sleeve shirt in her coat w/out the liner, and hair still wet from morning bath. Luckily...the sun had peeked out a little bit by then, so I made her stay in the sunny spots, and she seemed okay. Plus, she got her face painted like a butterfly AND got a butterfly balloon, so to her, I think the cold was worth it.

R.I.P. Bob

On Friday night Andy and I were sitting in the living room discussing how big our fish were getting, and how surprised we were that they had been alive for THREE WHOLE WEEKS, and I realized that I hadn't posted a blog about them yet, so I grabbed my camera and took some photos. We got these fish for Kylee on the day Andy graduated. She named them "Bob", and "Other Bob". For three weeks we've fed them, cared for them, and watched them grow bigger. Amazing! Then, last night, I went to feed them, and I said to Andy, "Do fish sleep?" Bob (white tummy, top of photo) wasn't moving when I tapped the tank, and Other Bob, (orange and black, bottom of photo), was swimming weird. I immediately tried to think what had gone wrong, and realized...Kid fed them too much. On Friday night, she had accidentally dumped about 1/4 of the bottle of food into the tank. Andy cleaned out as much as he could...but we should have cleaned the water. By this morning, Bob was a goner. Andy flushed him down the toilet, and told Kylee he was gone to live in heaven with Jesus. She said, "No, mommy. Him in the white toilet." I said, "Oh. Yeah, well, after he went in the toilet, he went to see Jesus in heaven." We then told her that Other Bob, who was hanging on for dear life, was really sick. I looked up everything I could find online, and we tried it all. Sprinkle some salt in a bowl of water and put him in there for a few minutes; feed him a de-shelled pea; don't feed him anymore flakes...etc. It doesn't look good. As of now, he's still alive, but barely. Kylee keeps asking him, "Other Bob, you wanna go in the white toilet and see heaven?" At least she's too young to cry over dead fish. R.I.P. Bob! I think Other Bob might join you by morning! Poor little guys.