Keeping things interesting...

The ferrets are a lot of fun, but lately they have become obsessed with climbing the back of the computer (where all the cords plug in) to get onto Brian's desk. Eve even got up there and knocked a glass of water onto Brian's keyboard, which meant we were off to the store to get a new keyboard soon after. Now we try to remember that no place is safe from climbing ferrets.


Brian was feeling a little pips last week, so here he is snuggled under a blanket. The ferrets love to explore blankets, so they are coming up to see what he is doing. You can see it was a beautiful day, and we had the windows open.


Here Brussels and Rex are playing with the tube. Brussels has just leapt over the tube (center of picture), and Rex is zipping out of it (to the right).


Brian decided to clean out his closet this week, so here is the result (the closet is clean, but the clothes are on the futon). He did do some good sorting and pulled out a lot of items to go to Goodwill. The rest will (eventually) make it back into the closet. The ferrets enjoy climbing the pile of clothes and burrowing into it. I can see three of them in this picture. Can you?

Pumpkin Carving Party

Last Friday, we had some people over from the Supreme Court to carve pumpkins. Here are 4 of the resulting jack-o-lanterns.


Here I am, in the middle of carving out all the teeth on my skull. We cleared out a lot of the family room (easier because we don't have our couch yet) and put down newspaper. Then everyone sat on the floor to carve.


Here you can see Brian getting into the detail work on his second pumpkin.


Brian's coworker, Vincent, had never carved a pumpkin before. Here is his first jack-o-lantern ever. It was a little scary to watch him with the knife (I guess I didn't describe the proper technique very well) and I thought he might cut open his hand, but there was no blood spilt.

Pumpkin Patch

Before our pumpkin party, we had to get ourselves some pumpkins. There were some at the grocery store and Walmart, but I really wanted to get our pumpkins at a pumpkin patch (better atmosphere).


The pumpkin patch we found was to the north of town a little (on the way to Tim and Carla's, for those of you who know where that is). It was on the large lawn of a church, and the proceeds were going to their youth group (which is good, b/c they were a little expensive). They had the pumpkins grouped on the lawn and there were wagons you could use to gather your pumpkins in.


Once we chose our pumpkins, we took them up to the tent and they were compared to the priced pumpkins in front to determine their cost (by size). Overall, it was nice to get outside and select our pumpkins from a big field.

The tank is here!

This fish tank is in our house (pause for applause). It took us many hours, since we had to drive out to Pensacola to pick it up, but it was a lot cheaper to buy a used one than to buy a new one. It is currently sitting in our house with some tap water in it, to make sure there are no leaks. Brian has plans for this tank that include a lot of invertebrates and a few actual swimmy things. I'm sure he will update as things progress.

Dog et al.

This weekend, Brian and I had the chance to finally go to a restaurant we had been meaning to try for a while now: Dog et al. It is a hot dog restaurant close to our house that boasts many different types of hot dogs (diff. sizes and meats) and lots of free toppings (mustard, ketchup, mayo, relish, onions, chili, cheese, sauerkraut, etc). Brian especially likes hot dogs, so it was cool to go and get some special hot dogs. They also have fries, chips, and apple pie.

http://www.dogetal.com/Home/tabid/294/Default.aspx

Gardening

Today Brian and I headed to Home Depot to start spending his birthday gift card and find some things for our garden area. Brian insists that these bulbs he is holding up will look really cool in our yard.


Although we already have solar lights outside, we still stop by to look at the selection and compare different models.


As we headed to the car to go to Home Depot, I noticed that the bulbs I planted a couple weeks ago had come up! This was unexpected, to say the least. Here you can see the bulb plants.


Brian is planting the bulbs he got at the store, behind the bulbs that have already sprouted.


One major item we bought was soil to raise the level of the yard up to the level of the driveway (there is a major drop in most places. We just wanted to get started in the area closest to our front garden, since the rest will be done when our yard gets sodded (or so our landlady says). We also removed the assorted rock border and experimented with brick placement for a new border between the garden area and the area that will one day be a lawn. To finish it off, we got some mulch to go around the bulbs in an attempt to discourage the weeds. This is the finished scene, at least for today.