Setting Up Christmas

We always set up Christmas the Friday after Thanksgiving and this year was no different. It was easier this year as the kids are all older and actually capable of doing all the decorating (tree, lights outside, Christmas card holder, house decor, etc). They have a great time doing the tree. 

This year's ornament commemorated Brendan's graduation. We also got some new decor for the living room. I bought white houses and tiny Christmas trees. Yukon Cornelius has begun his annual hide-n-seek as well. The girls put a Santa hat on Stella. She was still enough for one picture before she shook it off.

That evening we watched A Muppet Christmas Carol. It was a fun way to start off our Christmas season while still giving Thanksgiving its' due.  I put the tree on a smart plug and now it is nice to ask Alexa to "turn on the Christmas tree". 

Thanksgiving

Because so many people were out of town, Jason was in charge of the Thanksgiving Parade cleanup for our ward downtown. He took the kids this morning and I stayed back to start to cook. They were home a little later than I expected and I found out that they had trouble fining the car again after the parade and that they had done a lot of walking. 

At home Jason, Darby and Elder McDaniel played Mario golf. They decided to make top silly rules regarding which club you could use and they were having a great time. 

Eva helped me in the kitchen the most but Paige helped as well. The dinner was yummy and Jason's turkey was the best ever. I don't even like turkey but this one was good. 

After dinner and some digesting we went over to the bishop's house. We had been invited for dessert. The Packers and Marshalls were there too as they had all had Thanksgiving dinner together (we opted to have a family one). Darby and Eva made Swedish apple pie and I brought a pumpkin one. Sister Marshall had made homemade gingerbread house kits for every youth. Elder McDaniel's was very silly. He decided to make a volcano out of part of it and the whole things was drowning in lava. The girls went the more traditional route. We ate all the desserts including the homemade ice cream brought by the Packers. It was fun to sit and visit. 

All in all it was a good day filled with family, friends and food. We have lots of leftovers as well. ;)

Happy Thanksgiving!

New Pets

Because it is not good for rats to live alone I set out to find another rat friend for Darby. I was hesitant to go for another feeder rat so I looked online for any ratteries nearby. The closest one is in San Antonio. So no luck. I joined a rat group on Facebook to see if anyone closer had any rats to adopt. As luck would have it, a lady who is in El Paso had an accidental litter and had three females she was trying to adopt out. She sent me pictures so I could choose. One of them even looked like Millie! So I arranged with her for Jason to pick up the rat that day after work as the lady lived on post. Darby was so excited when I showed her the picture. 

She named her Cleoratra (Cleo for short). She is about the same age as Suki and they got along from the start. She very hyper though and not at all cuddly like Millie was. She seems quite smart though.

Jason and I talked about it and thought it might be a good idea to get third rat so that the remaining one would have a friend if one passes away. Otherwise we would have one old rat and a new adolescent and those don't always get along. It's best to have them all around the same age. He wanted to go back to the exotic animal store and get another rat. We went on Friday as part of our date night. 

It was quite eye opening for me. There was indeed about fifteen rats in this plastic drawer in the back. It was a little unsettling if I am being honest. I felt bad for these animals knowing that they were to be chosen and fed to some snake any day now. Jason chose a little chubby black rat. We talked about names on the way home and settled on Shadow. It fits her too because she is super scared of us and hides all the time. We now need to work on gaining her trust and the best way to do that is through food. 

Parade of Choirs

Parade of Choirs was this week. Darby stayed after school and rode the bus with her choir to Bowie High School for the performance. She had to wear the formal choir dress, curl her hair and wear some makeup. I think she kind of enjoyed dressing up. They have been practicing for weeks now. Franklin has a top tier choir.

We arrived early so we could get good seats and stayed through most of the schools. A few elementary schools even performed and it was adorable. Franklin has two choirs - Women's Chorus and Concert Choir. Darby is in both. The Women's Chorus sang first. They sang an old folk song called Cross the Wide Missouri, which Elder McDaniel later said was his favorite. Then they sang a jazz number called Orange Colored Sky complete with some dance moves. Darby was a little worried about that but it went off without a hitch.

Later the Concert Choir sang. That choir is the whole group, including the men. They first sang Fire, Fire My Heart which Darby says that she hates singing. But they sounded great. She says it's really hard to sing. Then they sang a song from the 1960's called It Had Better Be Tonight. It's a little cheeky and a wee bit risqué (but not really - it just talks about hugging and kissing). I know Darby was nervous/embarrassed to be singing and dancing to the song but it was really fun to watch the choir perform it. 

She had to ride the bus home with the choir so we didn't see her again until I picked her up closer to 8:30pm. It was a long day but she enjoyed performing and is glad to have her first major high school choir performance done. Next is the Christmas Concert. 

 

Funeral

This morning, Millie was acting strangely. She seemed to be struggling to breathe. I thought maybe had a cold so I did a quick internet search and found a suggestion. I filled up the bathroom with steam from the shower and brought her in. She sat on my lap and snuggled. After a while she seems better so I brought her back to her cage. Then I went out of the room to do the laundry and when I came back she was making another weird sound. It sounded like hiccups. When I looked it up I saw that rats can have hiccups so I thought everything was okay. But then she started to have seizures. Then she fell over and twitched and then was gone. She died in front of me. It was a shock. She had never been really healthy but we had no clue this was coming. I cried and cried. I told Jason and removed her from the cage, laying her body in a box in the garage so that Stella wouldn't be interested in it.

Brendan was home first and I told him. He actually liked the little rat and thought she was sweet so he was kind of sad. When the girls got home I had to break the news. Paige hugged me and cried but Darby was devastated. We had a little funeral service at the top of a hill near out house overlooking the city. It is where Jason runs frequently. Everyone said some words, cried and then we put her in a grave and added rocks to it so nothing could strut her. Elder McDaniel's words for her were actually very tender and spiritual in nature. He even quoted a scripture. Jason read a poem. We walked back home in a solemn mood. 

RIP Millie. She was sweet, cuddly little girl whose life was short but her last days were filled with love.

Furry Friends

Paige has been campaigning for pet rats for over six months now. Her dad put it in her head that they were super fun pets. I had been concerned about getting them for a two main reasons - that Paige would not be responsible enough for their care and it would fall to me and that our dog would hurt them. I felt like the bad guy for months as she (and sometimes Jason) would talk about getting rats and I wouldn't agree. So she and her dad came up with a plan. She did research and made a presentation to me. Jason said he would put a self closing hinge on their door so the dog couldn't come in (because the door can't be left open), that she would keep her room spotless for one month and be very responsible, and that they would fashion a doorway to their bathroom (which is attached to the bedroom) so that the rat could have the needed free time space while remaining safe. I agreed that it was a solid plan and she set to work proving she was responsible.

It took more than a month as she had to start over (probably not understanding how hard it would be to keep her room clean to mom's standards). However, in the end she did it. She also read books about rat care and tried to make herself as prepared as possible. We bought the rat supplies and found a pet store that could order them. However, we found out that the pet store was having supply issues as their source did not have female rats available and didn't know when they would. So Paige could wait, but really didn't want to, or we found a place that had feeder rats for snakes. The second option has the potential of picking out unhealthy rats with genetic diseases but the girls did not want to wait. So last Thursday Jason took Paige and Darby (rats need to be purchased in pairs as they are social animals) to pick out the new pets. 

They came home with two little girl rats that they named Suki and Millie. Suki is Paige's rat and she is gray and quite pretty. Millie was chosen by Darby as she was one who wandered up to her. Jason said she didn't look healthy and had poo on her but that was the one Darby wanted. They came home and started to befriend the rats. Seeing as how these are feeder rats and basically lived in a drawer waiting to be eaten, they would need some care, attention and patience. But the girls were up to the task and have been spending all their spare moments with these little rats.

I know many people cannot fathom the thought of rats as pets but they don't bother me. I'd rather have a pet rat than a pet snake any day. So far, they are cute and a lot of fun for the family. Even Elder McDaniel seems to like them.

Election Results

Well this was as tense an election as I can remember. I mean, there was even an assassination attempt on one candidate, showing how crazy things have become lately. I did not care for either candidate but Trump's views for the country are closer to my own than Harris's. Politics usually get so nasty and mean that I dislike them altogether but voting is important so I try to understand the issues that matter most to me.

Brendan, Jason and I all voted early so now we were able to just sit back and see what the results were.I was almost scared to check as I knew media coverage would be super contentious. In the end it was surprising but not overly so. The media all said that Trump would lose. However, knowing the media is bias I couldn't put much stock in that but still I wondered. Midway through the day it was clear that he was not trailing behind. In the end Donald Trump won and the Republicans retook the senate. The people are clearly showing that they want a change in how this country is going. There were threats of violence and rioting if Trump won but they have yet to be carried out. It might all be bluster and bravado and desperate attempts to sway others through fear. 

As for local politics I am much more disappointed. Most of the bonds were passed meaning more money out of taxpayer pockets for things we don't need. These are things we may want but do not need, at least until the essentials are taken care of (like the horrible roads here and the lack of police). The same sort of people were voted in which means more spending, more corruption and more empty promises. However, the run for our district rep and the mayor are still up for grabs in a runoff election next month. So there is some hope. But it is disheartening when only ONE item on the ballot you vote for in your community is elected. It makes me feel very out of place here and I see El Paso going down a path that is fiscally and socially unsustainable. I wonder what EP will look like in ten years. 

Science Fair Experiment

It's been like pulling teeth this year to get Paige to work on her science fair project. She doesn't want to do it and frankly I don't either. This is child number four and must be at least the 9th project I've done with my children. But it needs to get done so we decided it would happen on the day she had off. 

This year she when pretty simple and is exploring how temperature affects chemical reactions. She was testing how long it took an alkaline seltzer tablet to dissolve in hot, warm and cold water. 

There was one thing that surprised me about this experiment and that was juts how long it took the tablet to dissolve in cold water. It was several minutes whereas the hot water was less than 30 seconds. We used an app to measure the sound of the bubbles popping so we could get an accurate measurement of the length of the chemical reactions. 

It's good to have that done. Now she needs to write up the experiment and results along with a research paper. She chose not to be in the science fair this year since she was in the campus and district one last year. She only needs to do a slideshow presentation instead of a trifold display. Phew! That's one less thing to do.

Halloween 2024

This year Halloween was on a Thursday. Elder McDaniel and Eva stayed home to help pass out candy. 

Darby and Paige were invited by Paige's friend Julia to go to her neighborhood to trick-or-treat. I asked Julia's mom if I should come get them afterwards but she told me that she would bring them home.

Our neighborhood was packed with trick-or-treaters. We had kids and teens from 6 to 8pm when there were still more but we ran out of candy. Jason only gave out two packs of Splenda and they were to boys from our church. One of them whose family we are friends with. Sigh. 

Costumes were great this year and we saw so many scary costumes and even more adorable ones. One guy was dressed in a Star Trek uniform and gave Eva the Vulcan hand sign. It was funny. One of our neighbors had a haunted house in his garage too. 

We went inside after the candy was gone and waited for the younger two. We waited quite a while. We finally just started the Legend of Sleepy Hollow (a Halloween tradition). I figured they must have just been staying out for a long time trying to get candy. But then it was 8:30 and then it got closer to 9pm. That was three hours and seemed way too long. I started to get worried because they were out by themselves (Darby was the oldest kid in the group and she had no cell phone) and they were in a neighborhood they didn't know well in the dark on a night with a bunch of cars. I tried texting the mom and got no response. I texted Julia and got no response.  I waited a little longer, past 9pm and then I finally just called her. She told me that they were done a while ago and that they were watching a movie. I politely asked if she could bring them home. They were home by 9:20, well after bedtime.

When they got home I had a talk with them. I was not angry that they stayed at Julia's. If they had asked I would've said yes. But they never contacted me about the change in plans and I was left to worry. That was irresponsible and I expected more from them. Darby was contrite and apologetic. Paige was unashamed and defensive. I can see that changes will need to be made next year.