the piggies

I haven't posted about the guinea pigs yet. We got them about a month ago. The kids were missing our cat,Hattie, who is living at Grandma and Grandpa's house while we are at school. So we thought we would get some sort of small pet that we could have here at our apartment. We gave them their options (fish, a frog, or a guinea pig) and Kaise and Briggs picked the guinea pig. Then we started doing our research and found out that they do much better if they are in pairs so one pig turned into two so we told Kaise and Briggs they could each have one. Meanwhile Owen wanted a fish, so we let him pick out a betta to keep in a fish bowl and we found 2 baby guinea pigs for sale in the classifieds. Brent built them a great piggie house that sits on top of the toy chest in the boy's room and . . . Owen loved his fish - until it died the next day. So Owen was feeling left out that he didn't have a pet, but now that we had the guinea pigs home he decided that was what he really wanted so back we went for another one. So 2 pigs turned into 3. Yep, we are crazy. But they love them. Especially Owen. He watches TV with his guinea pig on his lap every morning. They have turned out to be pretty good little pets. Owen's is the grey and white one that looks like an old man with bedhead. His name is Otis. Kaise's and Brigham's are brothers. Kaise's is the one with white on his face and his name is Speedwagon (short for Oreo Speedwagon). Brigham's has the black face and his name is Dermot.

This year's garden

Here in the village there is a space that is provided for residents to have a garden plot; It's basically an extra-wide park strip that they plowed up and then staked off, but we were glad to have a place to plant a few things this year. The kids love to go to the garden to water and dig and weed. Brent and I like to see how much things grow from day to day. Some of the things we planted are peas, beans, radishes, beets, carrots, tomatoes, squash, potatoes, peppers, and some flowers for Kaise to pick. Things seem to be growing pretty well despite a late snow the middle of May. We are looking forward to our first peas and radishes in a few weeks!