Hey everyone!

I’m alive! And I know I’ve been horrible and not updated. I got so overwhelmed at the end of moving. Nikki and I had a completely horrible day that was made worse and more complicated by different people and the circumstances we were in. But none of that matters because we are fine now. We’re better than fine. I think we’re doing really well. Being out of Ashland has really helped. Saying goodbye to the dogs was really hard, though. I actually cried at work when I was alone and saying bye to them all. It was so hard. And some of them seemed sad as well – especially Abby. I think she somehow knew. On my last day Lily’s mom looked like she was going to cry and gave me a big hug and said I’d better come back to visit. Abby’s mom said she’d miss me too and when I told Abby I loved her, her owner said “She loves you too.” Made my heart melt. Damn do I miss those dogs. Harder than leaving people for me. That’s just how I am.

Enjoying His Last Snow Days

Leaving Ashland was hard and took forever. We wouldn’t have made it if my dad hadn’t come up with a trailer for us to fill up or if Nikki’s mom hadn’t brought their van. We have a LOT of stuff! You always just underestimate how long packing those little things will take. On top of that, the weather kept changing on us and we were told “You can’t leave.” “LEAVE NOW!” “No, wait, stay!” “Hurry up and come!” several times. Yeah, it sucked and we ended up staying a couple days past when we wanted to. Then when we finally did get set to leave, we go to start my car and it won’t. *bangs head into desk* It took us a long time to jump it – close to an hour in all. What a perfect start to the trip, huh? It was like 5 at night and we drove through a snow storm at like 40 mph because we couldn’t go any further and still see. Yeah. So it took us 3 hours to get somewhere that normally takes us 1.5 hours to get to. Then my dad told us that we couldn’t go any further because the weather was only going to get worse. Great. So we drive around the town for an hour buying hats and gloves and then finding a place to stay. We stopped 2 places and the woman at the second one was so nice. She took pity on us since she said she had 5 kids spread out over 5 different colleges so she gave us a great rate! In the end she gave us a $78 double bed room for $35! Isn’t that great? We felt bad since we had to lie to her – you know, since there was way more than a dog with us in that room. We darted around in the freezing dark bringing everyone in and they were loud and we barely slept, but it was nice to stop and have a comfy bed. The next morning we had to sneak everyone out in the daylight with the owners walking back in forth! I don’t know how we did it – we’re just that good.

*sigh* So that day we drove down to Nikki’s house, unloaded everyone again, and pretty much opened presents and everyone else went to bed. Nikki got some of the books she really wanted which made me happy. I got some stainless steel cups (which I hope to picnic with), a really cute book on wild puppies, some crayons and paper, and chocolate. The kids got some presents too – treats for the rats and bones for Spunky. I watched a really cool show on the Bible and the Garden of Eden on the History Channel. I love the History Channel!

So Happy About His Present!

We went to bed later than we should have and got like no sleep because Nikki’s dad woke us up at like 6. Ick. We went to see Nikki’s Oma and Opa and then went back to her house to pack everyone up and then we headed to Chicago. The drive down was nice and short (yeah, 3 hours is short) and when we got there we unloaded everything from the van and Nikki’s dad left. We sorted through the stuff to decide what should stay and what needed to go and when my dad got back we loaded most of it up into the back of the trailer and some in his truck and left. I kid you not. We were in Chicago for about 5 hours before we headed off on the drive down to Tennessee around 7. It was nice to see Becky and Hooch and Gracie but I wish we’d had more time with them. Also, I got some great pictures in Chicago because there had been an ice storm the night before. It was beautiful!

Icy Branches

The drive down went okay. Nikki and I took turns being middle and last in the train of cars. Oh, we’re also total nerds because we stopped at an “oasis” near Chicago so LS and I could do our Advent Calendars on Neopets. We missed 2 days this time, but we still got lots of cool stuff. Anyway, it got stressful being in the car so much. The cats drove me insane and I don’t know how many times I got clawed. I also had a hard time keeping the snake’s temperature regulated but everyone made it okay. We had to stop a few times to sleep at a rest stop for a few hours so we finally made it in to Crossville about 9 in the morning. >_< Exhaustion! Of course, being me, we had to eat before we could go sleep.

That night was a good night but I think we’re going to save those stories for tomorrow. This is long enough and I can’t think anymore. Plus we’re trying to help my mom with her paper for one of her Harvard classes. I’ll talk about the Tennessee Christmas tomorrow and then the Texas one the next day and we’ll be pretty caught up. Sound okay with you? Good. Now I get to be rewarded with WoW because Nikki said so. Go me! And in case you’re wondering what it looks like here, I’ll post an old picture from when we visited last spring.

Tennessee!

Filed under: Dogs, Furry Kids, Landscapes on January 6th, 2009 | 4 Comments »

Ah yes, ferret medicine. It is one of those things that just makes you sit back and recall a special time from long ago involving a roaring fire and much merriment. Ha! Or not! I repeat, I would much rather give Drake a shot twice a day than to be shooting liquid antibiotics down his throat. However, since I must, I feel like I should share my experiences with you in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation. The first time we tried giving it to him it was just straight antibiotic and he foamed and spat and shook his head and pretty much didn’t get any of it down. That night we tried sucking up a bit of honey into the syringe with it but I didn’t want to use much at all since ferrets cannot tolerate sugar very well. That didn’t go over very well either. More foaming and spitting up. Still, it was better than straight up bitterness. The next day we tried sucking some ferretvite up into the syringe with it because Drake loves ferretvite – all of my ferrets always have. I figured it had a strong flavor that he enjoyed and I didn’t have to worry about giving him too much. It worked okay but he could still taste the antibiotics and still drooled quite a bit of it out. Blah. Finally, yesterday, I decided to try just feeding him the ferretvite and then sneaking bits of the meds into the back of his mouth while he’s swallowing the nummy stuff. Of course, he realizes this and tries to spit it back up but if I can get him to start lapping up the ferretvite fast enough, he gets distracted and keeps it down. This is by far the most effective way we’ve come across to get the meds down him. So there, if you ever have a ferret that requires antibiotics, give it a try. Who knows, maybe you could transfer this knowledge to other animals. We’ll see a little later on when I give dewormer to all the different furry kids (minus the rats). As for the ear mites, Drake definitely has them worse than Nate and he’s definitely a bigger baby about them too. We can just barely scruff Nate and clean out his ears with cotton swabs and then drop in the drops and he doesn’t like it but it’s no real fight. Trouble, on the other hand, squirms and makes his unhappy little noises and tries to kick us away with his back feet and tries to push us away with his front ones. And he’s got less scruff to grab so it’s really hard to do him. Plus, on top of all of that, he’s got extra hairy ears which, trust me, makes it extremely difficult to get one little drop of Tresaderm into an ear canal the size of, well, a ferret’s ear canal. Wish us luck that all of this medicine is making our boy better – both of them, actually.

And now for some pictures from our new camera! I think I’ll show one kid per day, just to stretch it out and make choosing what picture to post over the next few, very busy days. But today I’ll show you a nice landscape picture too because it’s pretty!

Handsome Boy

Sunset Over Wetlands

Do you see the detail in that picture of Zane? Look at his eyes and his whiskers! You can see every hair! That’s amazing, don’t you think?

Oh, and last night Nikki honked my butt cheek. Not kidding. She was helping me look for my little pillow in the dark, reached down, and honked my butt. We then proceeded to laugh about it for 5 minutes. What a good way to go to sleep. Just thought you guys might enjoy that little tidbit of information.

Have a good night, everyone! We need to pack! Deadline is in 2 days! Ack!

Filed under: Cats, Furry Kids, Landscapes on December 11th, 2008 | 6 Comments »