Zeke

Yesterday we welcomed Zeke as a new addition to our family. He's about 3 yrs old and is a boxer mix. We had planned on getting a dog when we got our own place again. We wanted to be careful though and make sure we got the right dog for our family. We had been looking on line at several different dogs. Chase called on one but the lady was never there that could help us with it. Then we found Zeke and really liked his profile, so we emailed and set up a day that we could meet him. Anne, his foster mom, was kind enough to drive him here from Helotes (probably spelled that wrong) which was about an hour away. We had purchased dogs from a rescue shelter in the past and had a horrible experience with it, so I was very happy that they were being careful about meeting us and seeing if the dog was a good fit for our family. Also, I was excited that he had been placed in a foster home so we would know about his personality from the foster family and know what kind of dog we were getting. Anne talked to us for quite a while and answered any questions we might have and explained Zeke's personality to us more.

Zeke roamed our property for a while and let us all pet him and then we took him inside to investigate the house. He is such a sweet and well behaved dog. He was a little nervous about going to bed last night, especially since there was a lightning and thunder storm, so we brought his bed into our room. He got up and paced around a couple times, but eventually settled down and slept the whole night. Even after I got up in the middle of the night to help Emery who was screaming for a tissue and get Joelle who had been woken up by it, he stayed in his bed. So far the only problem we've had has been with Joelle. She was all excited and happy and petting him, until he full on licked her in the face and ever since then she has been leery of him and fusses if he gets up and walks around. Joelle has also taken a liking to his dog food. Anyway, we're very excited to have Zeke as part of our family and hope to have many fun times with him!

Freaky Bird

We pulled up to our new house to move in and found this weird looking bird on our front yard after it had just caught something. I'd seen it before at the rental, but from a distance and wondered what the heck it was. This bird is freakishly big and very different looking. Chase's mom looked it up and was able to find out what it was. I guess it's called a Crested Caracara or a Mexican Eagle.

Dead Hog

This is what we found near our house on the way to the park a few days ago. Wild hogs live around here, and I'd never seen one until this day, unfortunately it was dead, maybe hit by a car. These disgusting birds though take care of everything dead around here. They are huge buzzards or vultures, and are very ugly. Our friend told us the hogs bed down by the creeks and rivers and then usually come out at night and eat corn in the fields. Some people go hunting for them as well.

More Stuff...

Well, this post was supposed to come before my last one, but I can't figure out how to change that. So, if you're confused on any references, just read the previous post. By the way, can you tell I'm having a hard time coming up with more titles for my blog? Anyway, been trying to stay on top of my blog, but it's been difficult with crappy internet, moving, illness, etc. Hopefully, I will be better in the upcoming weeks. We have more reliable internet now, hopefully. We just moved into our new home and are still unpacking, but hopefully once we get more settled I'll be able to knock out a whole bunch of posts. So a quick update on us...

Cam got sick right before we moved, then I felt crappy, then Chase got sick which delayed further moving, and Joelle has been sick for over a week so it has been really hard to move and get anything done. We are still trying to put things away, but it's hard to do that with a sick little girl and trying to keep up on laundry and everything like that. In fact things would have been much worse if my visiting teacher hadn't come over to help me pack and then brought us dinner the next day. Joelle is on her 5th ear infection since Thanks Giving of last year. Our doctor said they usually refer for ear tubes when you've had 3 in 6 months and Joelle's on her 5th. The pattern is she usually gets sick and then gets an ear infection, this time was no different. Since she's been on so many antibiotics and her fever seemed to go down, we both decided to wait and see if she got better and was just on the mend. I had waited several days before actually taking her in to see the doctor in hopes that the fever and crankiness was just teething from molars coming in. Well, the next morning her fever was on its way back up and she was miserable so the Dr. called in a prescription and she's on antibiotics again. Chase and I need to figure out if we want her to get tubes or not or give it a wait to see if it's just bad luck and living in a filthy mouse poop house and that she might start doing better living here...I hope that's the case. I really don't want her to get tubes.

My parents flew in on Wed. to visit with us. My dad has a conference in Austin next week so they came in early to see us. The first day here we decided to go to Sea World since kids would be in school still and the weather was supposed to be cool because of some rain. We've had a drought here forever and every time they warn us of a storm, the sky gets dark and then it sprinkles a little and is done. I had seen the forecasts for rain in the morning and that was supposed to be it, so I wasn't worried. We headed out and the skies were dark, and it was raining a bit, but I wasn't worried. As we got closer to San Antonio, the skies started to get darker, and more rain... still not worried, it was supposed to blow over soon. Then as we were almost there it got darker than I had ever experienced in a storm. It was about 9 in the morning and it was completely dark like it was night time. Huge dark clouds loomed and the flood gates opened... we're talking scary stuff, like doom and gloom apoccolyptic storm stuff. I have never been in a storm like that before. Then my friend texted me and said there was dangerous wind and storm advisory in effect for where we were going and we already were in the middle of it so we decided to turn around and go home. I am so thankful Chase was driving, it was pretty scary. The freeways and roads were flooding. We saw an on ramp where cars were backing up because it was flooded and they couldn't get through. At one point we were off the freeway and a truck drove by hurling a wave of water on our windshield temporarily blinding us, so thankful that didn't cause an accident. Chase got us safely home and we ended up making the Sea World trip yesterday.

When I took the kids and my mom today to get away from the house during the snake hunt we went downtown to check out "market days". It was pretty fun when the kids were behaving and not doing anything stupid like blowing on horns with their mouths that we ended up having to buy because they contaminated the seller's item with their saliva, or fighting, etc. Then we went to a chocolate gift store and we were almost done when the kids decided that the free samples of soap were candy and began to eat them. I looked over as my mom was checking out and noticed the kids taking bites of something. I asked what they were eating and the cashier and my mom said it was soap. So, some of them finished eating it, I think Emery and Cam, Bailey spit hers out into her hand and what does Addie do...runs out the door and spits up everything on their porch right in front of the entrance door. So, I grabbed some tissues from my mom and mopped up Addie's mess while profusely apologizing to the store owner. I love my kids, but some times I think I'm raising 5 monkeys instead of 5 children. I've decided I can't take my kids anywhere any more. Every time I try to take them somewhere, especially by myself, something stupid or embarrassing happens. I'm a walking circus most days. My mom just laughed and said she thought it was funny and that we'd laugh about it some day, probably. But I told her it was only funny because they weren't her kids. I'll laugh about it some day I'm sure.

Well, not much else left to update. I have some pictures later I will put up. Just trying to unpack and will be driving the kids to and from school every day now. It's a sad day when the bus doesn't come any more, but no point in traumatizing the kids by starting a new school a month before school gets out.

Unwelcome Guest

We lived in the nightmare rental house and were finally able to get out of there due to health reasons and were able to break our lease early. We were very blessed to find the perfect home for our family. It will need some work, but it was the perfect size, location, school district, etc. that we needed. We moved in about a week ago. We would have moved in sooner, but we cleaned out the house since it had been vacant, but it was so easy to clean compared to the monster poop house we just came from. If I didn't have kids and sick kids at that, I could have knocked out the house in one day. I still have to do a little deeper cleaning like windows and light fictures, but for the most part I'm just trying to put things away. Also, the day after we signed on the house Chase had to work, so I headed over to do some cleaning with the kids. I pulled up to the house and the whole front yard was flooded with water pouring out of our connection in the front. So, I panicked and texted Chase and tried to figure out what was wrong. Finally our friend came over and helped me turn the water off, so we had no water until Chase fixed it, which delayed our move in as well. So far we love the house, it is very quiet and dark at night which is really weird. The corn and wheat fields that surround our house are beautiful and awesome. Except for the random dog in the distance barking or a cow mooing, it is very quiet during the day as well.

My biggest hang up right now is stressing me out. We seem to have a resident snake that lives in the attic, pretty good sized too it seems. When Chase met with the guy who installed our internet he was told that he found an unusual amount of snake skin in our attic and that we might want to be careful and hire an exterminator. Well, I was all on board to call someone asap, but Chase seemed to think it was old and probably gone and we couldn't afford that right now, so we didn't do anything. All seemed fine, until last night. We got home late after spending the day at Sea World with my parents who are visiting. Bailey said she heard something crawling around in her room. It was shrugged off at first, but I told Chase to go check it out. I heard some repeated banging by Chase as he tried to see what might be in the ceiling. I came down the hall and he informed that something was definitely in the attic and that we might want to call someone. He told me it was definitely bigger than a mouse. After questions of..."Does it sound like a squirrel?", etc. I could tell from the look on Chase's face it was much worse so I went over to have a listen for myself.

After some banging on the ceiling to initiate some movement on the intruder's part, I could tell it was probably a large snake up there slithering around. I can hardly bring myself to type this part as my fingers are becoming numb and jello like. I'm getting chills up and down just thinking about it and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Let's just say it was very hard for me to sleep last night. We let Bailey sleep on the couch. For those of you who don't know I have had a primal fear of snakes all my life and used to have night terrors as a kid. Well, so we called animal control this morning. I was going to let Chase and my dad head up there to take a look, but felt more comfortable with someone who did this proffessionally, especially since we didn't know if it was poisonous. The animal control guy came and I left with my mom and the kids, I didn't want to be any where near the house when they caught the thing. Well, they couldn't find it, but Chase told me he saw the snake skins and they were good sized which was a good thing because then it couldn't get through the vents. I'm still trying to figure out how this is a good thing. I guess it's better that it's up in the attic and not down here, but it doesn't help me sleep at night. He said it's most likely a rat snake and has been living up there taking care of rodents. There was evidence of mice and squirrels.

When we bought the house some roof panels underneath had fallen off leaving a huge gap, our home inspector fixed it, but anything and everything could have crawled in to make a home for itself. The animal control guy said if we saw it again, call and they'd come out. Supposedly, it's not poisonous and is probably a rat snake which Chase told me can get about 2-4 ft. long, again chills and stomach convulsions. I love my house, but is it too much to ask that we have no animal residents, especially snakes in my attic?! I don't care if it was taking care of existing vermin, it can live outside far away from the house and eat the vermin before they get to the house, that's how it should be anyway for my sanity's sake. Oh, the same night Bailey found a scorpion on the toy chest-super! I guess I should be grateful Bailey, the sensible one, is the kid that discovered it instead of Addie who probably would have wanted to collect it and keep it in her dresser, or Joelle who would have tried to pick it up and play with it or eat it.

I knew when we moved here I would have to deal with more wildlife stuff, I just wish it was the type of wildlife peskiness like deer, squirrels, birds, and rabbits eating my garden or pooping on the car...stuff like that. I know that even if we had lived in town we'd still have issues. Our friends in the ward frequently get possums, and also had a snake in their business' attic. It's the nature of living here I guess. A guy at church mentioned mothballs keeping snakes away,at least I think that's what he said, maybe we'll try that. Where the heck do you buy moth balls? Well, this post has gone on entirely too long, I feel ill just writing it. Any suggestions on getting rid of or keeping out animals like our little roommate are more than welcome! I really need a nap now. I still love our home, I know Heavenly Father blessed us by helping us get into this home and I know he will help me keep it together and keep our family safe. Maybe, I'm supposed to grow and learn something from all of this. I am trying to keep things in better perspective, just like everything I went through at the nasty poop house. That house was disgusting, but it was cheap and big enough for our family, which was extremely difficult to come by. Also, we were able to get out of our lease early which wouldn't have happened in a normal house and we would have missed the opportunity to get into our current home, so in other words the nasty poop house was a blessing. I don't like some of these trials I've been given, but I know I wouldn't want anyone else's trials either, so I am going to try to make the best of it. I am blessed with a beautiful home, wonderful kids, and an awesome husband who has a terrific job, I'm focusing on that.