Category: Family

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Turtles – Red Ear Sliders to be exact.

Nice, what a wonderful idea this was, and my wife is reminding me that it was my idea. Someone at gymnastics had posted a flyer about three free turtles complete with aquariums 20 gallons each. I asked Molly about it because Michael has a fish tank already and the girls have wanted one for a while. Molly and I talked about it but it was late in the day and there are 1.2 million gymast at CGA so I figured they were probably gone.

The next day Michael found the flyer and called, of course the weren’t gone. He adopted 3 turtles. Nice. So we had to explain to him that the girls get at least two for their room.

So we think we know what we should know about aquatic turtles, and attempt to set up the habitat. Apparently we don’t know squat. The tanks are 10 gallon not 20 and are too small for even the smallest turtle we have.

It’s nice that there are sites like Red Ear Slider.

Now we’re on the quest to build the perfect or as near perfect little habitat as our budget will allow. More updates later.

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What a busy day…

Quite a few updates in the Gallery

The morning started off with Maggies first basketball game. A few snapshots of which are in the gallery:

Her team only had 5 show up which wasn’t good, and they didn’t have real refs. They scored the first 6 points in the game. Then took a slight beating. It was very chaotic. One of the refs was the son of the opposing teams coach because the refs didn’t show. They didn’t have whistles, nor did they call a good game. It was madness. Not good for Maggies first game. But she played well considering.

We look forward to the next game.

After that we had Molly’s first Gymnastics meet, er rather a Mock Meet. To get us newbie gymnastics parents ready for all the excitement that is gymnastics and to get the newer girls ready for what a meet is like. We had real judges and the ran it like a meet. We had a Q&A session with the judges, etc, etc.

Photos of Molly’s first outing are also in the Gallery. One thing is clear: I need a faster lens 🙂

I took quite a few photos of other girls in Molly’s rotation and I’ll post them too for the parents at a later date.


Note: I know the photo gallery can be sloooow at times. The dishers.com server is dealing with a lot of stuff. Dealing with large photos is processor intensive and the server is an ancient 1ghz Athalon.

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Home improvement

Ugh,

Today we start the quest. The quest for getting bids. We have a fair amount of home improvement that needs to be done to our home.

Well that’s not exactly true. We’ve talked to my cousin’s husband, he does work on the side, but he can only do the work on weekends and lives about 2 and a half hours away. It’s not exactly convenient for him.

We have an older farm home originally built in the 1850’s. It’s been well taken care of and for the most part has been updated. We’ve lived here almost 7 years now. But it’s time to take care of some things. The list is rather long.

1) We need a roof (bad) it is leaking.
2) We need to finish the half finished attic to turn it into a bedroom for one of the kids.
3) We need new windows through out 26 of them (ouch).
4) New front and rear doors.
5) The electric service needs updating. Just the service mind you not all the wiring. I can run circuits as needed.
6) We’d eventually like hardwood floors and will probably do this one ourselves.

There are other maintenance things that need done to the barn too. It also needs some new doors but those can wait.

It’s not that I’m not handy, I just _hate_ doing this stuff.

Let the estimates begin.

First up, is a local guy. He should be here in oh, 15 minutes (if he shows). We’ve already blown off one window and door company because the demanded that both of us (my wife and I) be home for the estimate and that we’re in a position to make a decision that night. What the hell?

We’d like an estimate thank you.

We have a general contractor scheduled for Friday afternoon as well, and another roofer/window company for next week.

My wallet hurts just thinking about this.

More later.

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Oooh, I so have my wife where I want her!

I have ordered something for her for Christmas that she wants and has wanted for a long time and I’ve always said, no, that’s dumb. I would never have one of those.

It’s killing her to not know what it is. Normally the situation is reversed and she teases me from now until Christmas.

But not this time. 🙂