Fluffy Update

The sad news about Fluffy was broken to the girls on Sunday. One of their friends wanted to see the hamster and they were surprised to find the cage was gone.

They know Fluffy was let go in a field. That's it.

After we let Fluffy go in the field we walked home (about 5 minutes) and then drove back to the field to check on her. It was then that we saw the hawk (or some other huge bird of prey) swoop in and fly off with a brown, fluffy clump of fur.

We're pretty sure it was her.

Run, Fluffy, Run

Did I ever tell you we had a hamster named Fluffy Angel Monkey? Three girls, three names.

One of the girls in our youth group (who I will call Shelby because that is her real name) received a hamster for a present two Christmas ago. The day after Christmas her hamster had 6 babies. There is no guarantee at a pet store that your hamster will not be pregnant. It's a chance you take. So Shelby, being the loving girl she is, took excellent care of the babies. After they were weaned she would hand feed them and bathe them and let them out of the cage and crawl all over her. They were the best hamsters.

About one month later one the babies had babies. So now she has 20 hamsters. She decides maybe it's a good idea to get two cages and separate the girls and boys.

Meanwhile, her mother can't believe all the rodents in her house! Especially when they gang up together and escape from the cage. So she starts giving the babies away at church. At one point about every kid in the church had a Shelby hamster. They were the tamest hamsters you've ever met (for the most part).

So we get snickered into two girl hamsters. My kids are so excited. They take great care of them. For the first week. And the hamsters got along great for about a month. Then hamster puberty must have set in and they start to get a little snippy with each other. Literally. One of the hamsters (Munchy) starts to get bigger because she is hogging all the food. And she chases the other one (Monkey) around if she tries to eat her food. I start to think about separate cages.

I'm a little concerned about the violence but have already forked out $30 bucks for these "free" pets. Until I hear what happened to my friend Carol's Shelby hamsters. She also had two girls that had a passive/aggressive relationship. One morning she wakes up and finds the passive one had eaten the HEAD off of the aggressive one! How's that for battered wife syndrome?!

I don't deal well with carcasses so I head to the pet store before my hamster loses hers. Head that is.

They live happily together in their side by side cages running side by side on their matching wheels for about 6 months. Then it comes to our attention that another little girl needs a hamster. We practically throw a cage in her direction because by now the girls don't even remember that we have a hamster and the back bathroom (now nicknamed the hamster bathroom) we keep them in stinks!

One down. One to go!

We kept Fluffy Angel Monkey until yesterday. The poor thing had a hurt leg and could barely walk. So we did the only humane thing we could think of. While the girls were spending night at my parents house we let her go in a field down the street. She scurried (limped) around for a while excited to be out of her cage.

Then a hawk flew down and snatched her up for dinner.

Rest in peace Fluffy Angel Monkey.

(I'll let you know when the kids finally notice that she is even gone.)

Let your kids do the walking

So I got this crazy idea to make a little extra cash. No, I'm not going to sell make-up or candles or home-made soap, I'm going to deliver phone books. Or at least it sounded like a good idea. I had these visions of my three children giddy with excitement about running from house to house with a book in a bag to put on the hinge side of the door.

Then I packed 320 phone books into my van and about killed the shocks.

I'll be returning the booksto the warehouse tomorrow and will encourage people to use the internet like us geeky people.

Who uses a phone book anymore anyway?

Who are you?

Alright. A few of you posted some comments and I appreciate that. I can feel the love out there. Maybe the rest of you are just shy or busy or don't have a blogger account. I'm just guessin'.

Larry and I are just curious as to who really reads the blog and is this really worth it? OKAY. It's just me that really wants to know who at Ford checks the blog every morning at 8:00.

Fess up.

And the rest of you out there. Whooooo are you? Who Who. Who Who. (you're supposed to sing it like the CSI intro.)

Camp Pictures Are Up

FYI for any of you blogstalkers who have been waiting for camp pictures. They are finally up and you can check them out here. I would have had them up much sooner, but I had a printing problem last week that kept me pretty busy since I am a publisher. I'll write about that sometime. I learned a few expensive lessons this week!

Anyway, enjoy the photos. You better leave a comment after you see them or Julie might "hate" you. :-)

12 people were here today

You know what I hate?
When you write a serious post and nobody comments.

I do have sitemeter people. I know you are out there!

Fear

When I was little I was afraid of the dark. At night after my parents would go to bed I would lay awake in my bed and listen to the creaks of our 1950's house. My heart would beat hard and I would imagine there was someone there. I memorized every squeak of every floor board and could walk out to the living room without making a sound (that came in handy later when I was a teen). Even to this day I will have a bad dream that will wake me up with my heart beating hard and I will think I hear someone in the house. I lay as still as I can and listen. I'm paralyzed with fear.

Fear that paralyzes so I can't breathe.

When I was a young mother with a new born I had new fears. How will I keep this child alive? Why is she crying so much? Is she eating enough? And then more children came. And more fears. Will they ever play together nicely? How can I take care of all of these kids? How will we teach them eveything they need to know?

Fear in and of itself is not wrong. God gave us that emotion for a reason. But when my fears give way to anxiety and anxiety to depression I have sinned. All of my fears came together in the past month and crashed in on me. Fear of failure to my husband and my children. Fear that paralyzed me.

Thankfully I have a best friend that set me straight. Instead of telling me what I wanted to hear, that I was a good wife and mother, he told me to make the right choice. Choose right now to be a good mother. Choose to be a good wife. Choose to react to fear in the right way. Not with worry, but trusting God to drive the fear away.

Perfect love casts out fear.

So I can move again.

Camp Update

We're back. Camp was fun, but exhausting as I imagined. Just before we left for the week I came down with a terrible sinus infection. I went to a walk -in clinic and begged for drugs. Drugs helped, but I am reeeeally tired. Pictures of the week are on Larry's laptop so you'll have to wait for the exciting update. This is the "I'm so stinking tired I can hardly type this" update.

Thanks for all your prayers. We all came back in one piece and we had great weather. Many of the teens made decisions about witnessing and Bible reading. It was a great week.