Brianna's Victim

We really like having flower beds! Memorial Day weekend Jake, Brianna, and I cleared out the white rock in the front yard beds, and put mulch and a path. Since I work for a landscaping company, when there are plants that homeowners want pulled off a job and disposed of, sometimes I get them. Hence, the starting of our garden! Sharlyn, Brae's mom, sent us home the seeds from her Zennia's, and those are starting to bloom now as well.

Black Eyed Susan

Not sure what this is, all I know is after this picture my dog ate all the little blue flowers : (



Zennia's!And then the find. Last night we had a new roommate move in. We were sitting on the front porch talking when Brianna pointed out with disgust...her victim. Sure enough the remains of a little garder snake, which I presume must have been enjoying the pleasant shade and smell of the flowers when his life was prematurely ended, was lying in the bed! Dork!

Bernice...aka Stew

Seize the opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
- a Bulgarian Proverb

Sunday afternoon, the Wiegand girls and I were getting restless at church waiting for nursing home singing. I decided I would take them to Orange Julius to pass the time. Unfortunately, I did not have my wallet, so upon arrival we had a choice to make. Go back to church or head to the nursing home. In fact, we did neither. Instead, we decided to go to the boys' house and consume some of their pop and maybe some snacks if there were some to be found. Upon arrival, I recalled a certain instance where the entire store of toilet paper from our house was walked off with by the occupants of said household. Duly noted was Brae and I's conquest to "run off" with Stew, their beloved mascot.

Bernice with her captors!

Upon arrival:
"I think it looks like a french fry...no I mean a chicken nugget." - Kate

Upon execution:
"Yuck! I touched one of it's things!" - Gabri

Upon recognition:
"Kidnapper!" - Jake
"He means an 'it'-napper!" - Gabri

"You must have offered him Twizzlers, it's his favorite candy. But I know he will come back because he loves me more." - Jake
"Who...Jared?" - Bub

Upon a story retold:
"He was so heavy Tifani couldn't even pick him up!" - Kate

So, what is Bernice up to these days you may ask? Monday, she decided that my bed looked kinda comfy and made her way in to hang out under the covers.

Tuesday, she thought a change of style was due. She was a bit self conscious after hearing me groan when picking her up, and decided to take up swimming to rid herself of some of her rolls. Her she was patiently waiting for Tara to get home so she could ask thoughts on this new look.

All in all, I would say she is adapting well to her new environment. You can find her most of the time chilling in the living room singing along to her favorite Musicals. You never know where she is going to end up though, she definitely has a mind of her own.

: )

Seven!

Seven would be the number of mice we have killed in my house/garage in a three day span! Yuck! Then again...I shouldn't say we...I should say me. My roommates have not been involved. It all goes back to blame on Chelsie, who chased a mouse up my dryer shoot. Yes Chelsie, I blame you. The mice were living in our air ducts all last summer and in to the fall. Brae discovered their poop and heard them skampering around. When we turned on the air this winter, they moved in to our cupboards and such. Brae's mom sent back some of that poison that is supposed to kill them but not make them smell, I think it worked. But then I had our ducts cleaned and I think they vaccumed it up! A couple weeks back we were having World Relief at our house where we found all our dish talls covered in poop. The guys' brought us over a mousetrap that we set under there. And the next morning....OH! The mouse must have been sniffing his way in to the cupboard because the trap was right down on his brain. YUCK! It gives me the begeebies just typing that. It made a blood mess. So this recent madness started up with me washing more of our H2B guys' work shirts. I had a box of them in the garage. When I opened the box, a little mouse ran out and along the wall. I tried to grab a BOOT and kill it, but it was too quick for me. I went back to my work and another one hopped out. This one I was able to smash...with no blood : ) After that, I kept setting the same trap in the same spot, shown below.

Then, to release the dead ones, I would dump them over my neighbors fence. Shhhhh! Don't tell.

The burial ground.

I haven't caught anymore since Sunday afternoon. The one in the picture above with the blood was the last one and bigger than the others by quite a bit. I'm HOPING, that all the little mice are gone. They are just disgusting rodents to me.

On another note, my volleyball team has won one game. Out of maybe 8 games. ouch. Tuesday night we played a team that has some reallly reallly really good spikers. The below is my hand two days after playing. One of the spikes was so hard that it jammed my thumb. Actually I felt kinda bad because after the play a girl from their team was trying to make me feel better by saying, "The last time he hit it, it knocked a guy over." I was being sarcastic and said, "so...you're saying I'm manlier than a man?" She got this really taken aback look on her face and her team mate said, "No, she's not condescending like that." OOOPs! I apologized and felt bad for being dumb! Not the right time apparently!

Update: Two more mice were caught yesterday. One's head was mutilated!! In fact, he pretty much had a non-existent head.

My Little Buddies

Right now I have two little shadows. Kate and Crista. I have them in my sunday school class and they love me a lot right now. More than usual. Both of these pictures are from an evening when we went ice skating...One on each side of me the whole time I was skating. It's nice to feel loved...although I definitely had sore arms the next morning : ) I was leaving bible study with Gabri and Kana the other morning, Kate yelled from the couch, "Bye Inafit!" Then this small voice I thought said "bye inafit" but there was a burst of hysteria from Naomi. Apparently Tiana was trying to say the above but instead said, "Bye Elephant!" In church on Sunday when I was talking with Naomi, she was holding T and asked her if I was Elephant. T said, "she's not an elephant" : )

Hydrogen Peroxide...the cure all

Slate and I went, me rollerblading him running alongside me, to the Wiegands house on Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful day with prolly 60 degree weather. On the way there, he decided he needed to chase some geese and swim in a "don't drink, conservation efforts in practice" fountain pond next to Aurora's Court House. I'm thinking now that it was a bad idea to let him get really wet then run on concrete, because he now has a huge piece of missing pad on the bottom of his paw. : \ To make up for myself, I doctored it up for him. Ya know...so it wouldn't get infected and such. He didn't like it very much. In fact, he kept trying to tear the bandage off. So I put a sock over it : ) Here is my patient.

I think he was embarrassed to be bandaged.

On another note, we were doing some ear doctoring as well this past weekend. I remember growing up thinking it was really fun to put hydrogen peroxide in dad's ears and watch it bubble up from the nasties inside. Tucker said he had an ear infection so I pulled out they hydrogen peroxide for him to try. Besides giggling like a girl because of the tickling bubbles, only a small clump of nasties came out. Disappointing to say the least. One by one however, the rest of the groupie decided they needed to try it. And then the excitement began. Both Jake and Jared's ears were those of a working man. They bubbled up to a dad-worthy nastiness and the q-tip used after Jake's was enough to make a sailor sick! But...for some reason I find it highly fascinating and so of course loved every minute of it : )

Can you hear a bit better boys?

We spent Sunday evening in my basement around a very pathetic little fire. But it was warm and cozy. Good job pretending you were asleep Tyler...the smirk on your face doesn't give anything away : )

Pirates VBS

So Bethanne gave me a USB drive of 2010's VBS pictures. It was a Pirates Who Don't Do Anything Veggie Tales theme. I was Bones and Kristy was Bumpo, two loser pirates who couldn't quite make the big leagues and tormented every child on that thar deck. Jake was the commador who kids ran away from screaming and running in to things. One of our acts I was supposed to drink a potent liquid and it was supposed to make me go in to a crazed frenzy. I in fact practiced this many times only to be thrown off my beat during the real deal by kicking a poor child in the face. OOPS!

This was the said child BEFORE getting kicked in the face!

In Character!


My unsuspecting crew members! And the reason everyone was scared of the Commador!

In other news, we ventured to the great North to visit friends from Minneapolis! Snow tubing, Hockey, Singing, food, cold weather...who could ask for more : ) Chel and I stayed with friend Karee and Sean who had moved their in August from Belgium where they had been for a year. If you want some beer advice, try the dark Chimay. They brought it back with them and it had been brewed by monks in a closed community. I'm not a big beer fan, so I wouldn't know if it was good or not, but everyone else seemed to think so!

We had below zero temperatures from Monday until Today. What does this mean? ICE SKATING ON THE POND BEHIND MY HOUSE! YAY! Tuesday night I spent a couple hours getting started shoveling off the ice so that we could go ice skating. So then Wednesday I left work early and about 10 of us played hockey or sat around the homemade fire we set up : ) The ice wasn't terribly smooth, some scaring at times with the huge cracks that kept magically appearing : ) Fred made it very clear that we were to not send the puck in to the air, and then NAILED me in both knees with it! OUCH! and I got this text from Domo:

"I love hockey...got some sweet bruises on my knee and ankle, blister on my leg and sore legs lol. Gotta love it : ]" she might have wiped out a tad more than the rest of us!

: )