New foster kittens

Beauty, with Dustin in the background

Pepper and Grace
Callie and Camo
Dustin

YAY, we have new foster kittens, 6 of them!!! They are 5 weeks old and so cute. 3 girls, and 3 boys. They are all doing really well, gaining weight at a steady pace, using the litter box and being very sociable. We named them Callie, Camo, Grace, Dustin, Beauty and Pepper.

Sky and Matt's Fairy Hotel

Skylar and Matt have been building a Fairy Hotel out of left over pieces of wood they found in the basement. Sky loves being able to use the real tools. They put a door on hinges on one side and a glass jar on the other end, Sky hopes to catch a fairy in the jar, she hasn't caught any fairies yet, she checks almost everyday to see. Sky and her friend Misa cut out small squares from white paper resembling teeth and put them in the jar hoping to entice the tooth fairy!!

Our trip to Grandma and Grampa's house

We had a great time on our visit to Matt's parent's house in Mass. On the way we stopped by and saw my grandparents for a while, my grandfather just celebrated his 90Th birthday!! Happy Birthday Grampy!!! It was nice to see them, and I know they enjoyed seeing the kids. Then we were on the road again, heading to Matt's family in upstate Mass. The first thing Skylar did when we got there, was check to see if the giant trampoline was set up and ready for jumping, she LOVES it. Matt and Sky had to sweep it off, and put up the protective fence around it, then it was all set. She jumped for a while and had a blast, Lilly on the other hand was really scared every time it moved, so she didn't spend as much time on it as Sky.

We got to have the best turkey burgers in the world, we all loved them, thanks Grandma! they are delish. And the cheesecake for dessert was awesome. The kids had a great time golfing with their cousin Christian and Aunt Jess, and they even tried out the driving range, leaving much to be desired.

It was a really nice time, we all had fun and can't wait to see them again soon.

Our trip to the Trash Museum

Tish, Skylar and Lilly in the trash temple
Matt outside the trash temple
Recycling truck dropping off its load
Inside a landfill

Its been a while since I last posted, so here goes... About two weeks ago, we went to the trash museum in Hartford. It was so cool!! I was really impressed with all the exhibits they had, and the views of the recycling plant. The best thing was that it was FREE. While we were at the trash museum, we saw a vermicompost bin, which is indoor composting using red wiggler worms, it was really neat, so we are planning to make our own in the near future. here are some pics.

ASPCA Day and the rescued dog

Today is ASPCA Day. We made our own orange shirts with the ASPCA logo on the front, they didn't come out as good as we had hoped, but we wore them anyway. The image above is the one we have on our shirts.

Yesterday, while we were eating breakfast, Skylar noticed a dog wandering around the street without anyone with it. So being the animal lovers we are, we went outside to investigate further. We found out that he was wearing a collar, so we knew he must have got out of his yard and decided to go for a walk. It was a little tricky to get him to come to us, but he finally did when we offered him a bowl of water, at this time we grabbed his collar so he wouldn't get away. I called the animal control and they were on the way to pick up the dog, when I noticed he had a tag with his home phone number, so I called the owner to let them know we had found the dog. They get to our house at the same time animal control get here. The dog was very excited to see his owner, when the car came down the street the dog started whining right away. The owner told us that she was having yard work done, and the workers left the gate open and the dog ran out.

Once everything was settled, and the dog was in the car headed home, Sky was extremely proud of herself for helping to "save the dogs life". We watch animal cop shows of the animal planet all the time, so I think she felt like a real animal cop yesterday. She is so proud of herself, and we are as well.

Kittens

Our kittens will be going back to the Humane Society sooner then we thought. We brought them in today to get a distemper vaccine, and the foster care coordinator said they look really good, and that two of the kittens weigh enough to have their spay and neuter surgeries, and the female only needs to gain a quarter of a pound to have hers. She asked if we wanted to leave them there today!! That sure caught me off guard. I said that we were not ready to bring them back yet, since we didn't have a chance to say goodbye to them, and Matt wasn't with us. So, we will drop them off on Sunday, they will have there surgeries on Monday and go up for adoption on Tuesday. Our time with the kittens seemed to go by very quickly, it kind of makes me sad to have to bring them back, but I know we will be getting another batch of kittens a week later, and the kittens we fostered will be getting great homes. I really love fostering, it makes me very happy to be helping out these animals in need, its very fullfilling for me, and they are just sooo cute! Well thats all for now. Adios

Udate on the foster kittens

Matt and I made this cat chair :) we are talanted!!
Kittens going to be dewormed at the Humane Society

Its been two and a half weeks since we got our foster kittens. So we are half way through our first assignment. I'm proud to announce that they are doing great!! They went to have deworming done 3 days ago, and the vet tech that treated them said they look wonderful. Its so cool to see them growing right in front of your eyes. They are getting bigger and a bit heavier, and much more use to loud sounds and yelling kids. I'm sure they will get adopted the second they go back. Its going to be hard to have them leave at the end of the five weeks, but we will know that we have done our part in these cats lives to help them become wonderful pets for somebody.

Our new trees

We planted out new fruit trees in the backyard a few days ago. We have one apple tree and a pear tree. Sky and Matt dug the holes and planted them. Hopefully we will have some yummy homegrown fruit this coming fall. We loved the new trees so much that we got another for our front yard. Its a flowering cherry tree called a Yoshino. We decided to call the tree "Yoshimitso" in honor of one of Skylar's favorite video game fighters from the game Tekken 2. Which by the way, she has been playing everyday for the past week, her gaming skills are improving immensely.

While I'm on the subject of planting things... I started the seeds for out milkweed plants. We plan on having a butterfly garden this spring, and Monarch butterflies will only lay eggs on the milkweed plant, its not the most beautiful plant, but the butterflies it will bring to our yard will be. If all goes as planned, they should be big enough to go outsede in about 8 weeks. I will post more on that later. :)

Jen's party fire

Happy birthday Jen!! We had an eventful time at Jen's party. Everything was going fine, we were eating out grinders and talking, when the neighbors knocked on the door saying that they saw some teenagers start a fire in their back yard!! We ran out back, and saw a small fire in the wooded area behind the house. Jen and I ran back there with buckets of water, and my dad got his shovel to throw dirt on the fire. We had it almost all the way out when the firefighters finally arrived. Once the fire was out we came back inside to have cake, it was very delicious.