Bubbles the Fish

At the end of the school year in June Brookes teacher wanted the class fish to go home with one of the kids. The kids have class money that they can use so they had an auction. Well Brooke won Bubbles and brought him home. Last week Brooke came to me and said she thinks Bubbles is dying, so I go into the room and sure enough Bubbles is lying on his side at the top gasping for air. I told her I was sorry and that their was nothing we could do for him. I thought by the end of the day he would be gone but no! This went on for days. I told her to just let daddy put him out of pain but she didn't want that. She was on the phone with my mom and my mom told her we should just pray that he dies soon and he won't be in pain anymore. Well my daughter prays that he will be ok. I was worried because I knew this little fish was a goner. Well the next morning Brooke comes running out and says to me that Bubbles is swimming and just Fine! Sure enough I go in there and Bubbles acts like nothing was ever wrong! He is swimming around and eating just fine.I am glad I didn't flush poor Bubbles like I wanted to do!

No A/C

Do all of you remember what it was like to not have a/c at one point in your life? I really hope you do because until I was 16 years old we never had a/c. I really can't live without it now. If I ever have to cut anything out of my budget, the cable, phone and internet will have to go before the a/c does. Anyway our a/c broke and I don't know how I ever lived without it! We came home about 9 Saturday night and it was 85 degrees in the house. Tony worked for an hour trying to fix but we needed parts so we needed a repair man. We were going to have to wait till Sunday to do that. As a kid I can remember having all our windows open, laying on the bed with nothing but a sheet on it, fan going as fast as it can go, no pajamas and wet towels laying on me to keep cool while I sleep! I was not going to to this Saturday night! As much as I wanted to teach my kids about how lucky they are to have a/c I was not going to even have my windows open. So we did the next best thing, we pulled out the window a/c we have for hurricanes when we loose power! We stuck that baby right in the kitchen window and camped in the living room. It worked ok, it kept it about 80 in there. We could have put it in the bedroom but trying to put 2 kids, 2 dogs, a hamster and a guinea pig in the room would have sent me over the edge! We got it fixed the next day (thanks to John, Billy and Timmy)and we are back to having cold air in the house. So everyone be very thankful for the a/c, especially when you live in Florida!

Meet the Teacher Day!

This week has been terribly crazy! Brooke has had sewing and cooking camp all week. I have to take her to deland in the morning and go back and pick her up in the afternoon. Not only is a it a long drive but the gas in my gas hog truck is getting crazy! She is having a blast so thats all that matters. Anyway today was meet the teacher on top of camp. I was really praying the morning would go smoothly since we really need to be 2 places at once. But SURPRISE, it didn't! Brooke comes screaming out of the bathroom this morning at 7 AM that "Hammy is gone"! Not only is she gone but she thinks she went down the bathroom sink drain. What? I go in there and sure enough that little rodent has pulled the drain stopper out of the sink. I am now shocked because I know that if indeed she is down that drain she cannot turn around to get out! I call Tony to ask him how to start taking the drain apart and he says " I am coming home". He had planned on clocking out to come to meet the teacher but just hadn't planned this part! i happened to look down at the garbage and the bag was pulled down so I asked Brooke if she had done that and she said no, so she pulled the bag up and there was Hammy! I was so happy that I did not have to do construction on the bathroom to find this little rat! I called tony and told him we found her but he said he was coming home anyway. That was the fastest we ever found hammy and didn't need hammy Hunter! Brooke and Ashlyn got to meet there teachers and are really happy. Brooke got safety patrol and is helping a teacher with kindergarten kids so that should keep her busy. I hope tomorrow goes well, we have a 5 hour chicken day for 4-H!

Chicken wash

We started our day out this morning washing chickens! They are all done having lice so I wanted to get them washed and free of any poison. It is very challenging to get 6 chickens washed and blow dried! First we have to wash them with soap in the first bucket and them we have to transfer them to the second bucket that has water and vinegar in it. The vinegar helps to get all the soap off. When we show them we transfer them to a third bucket that has conditioner in it. We then wrap them up in towels for them to dry. We leave our chicken burritos wrapped up while we start blow drying the first one. We then put them in a cage in the sun to dry and they prune their feathers to put them all back into place. This took all morning. We are now soaked with sweat and water from all the wing flapping that went on.Hopefully we will not have to do this again till November for the fair!

The Ladies' New House

We made the lovely ladies a new house. They were very cramped in their old house and were not getting along. They better be happy with this one because it was way too hot to be building chicken coops for sure! We started at 7 in the morning and by noon it was about 106 degrees and was so hot we were all not very nice to each other. I really don't know why the building projects we take on begin in the dead of heat, we always seem to do this! Hopefully they love this house so much that they will start laying again. I hate buy eggs from the store!