Our Cute Family - Stick Figures & Silhouettes

A cutesy website - widdlytinks.com allows you to get all crafty creative and stuff... Look, I made a representation of our family as cutesy stick figures and silhouettes, too. Now I just need it as a vinyl sticker and we can be like millions of others with it on our car.

Quicky: Kanab-Style with a Bucket

We headed to Kanab, Utah to visit the in-laws for a quick 4-day weekend at the beginning of October. It wasn't much warmer due to the high winds we had for pretty much the whole trip...

We tried doing s'mores over the in-law's fire-pit, but the winds made it quite difficult.Without fail, Thing 2 discovered some messy goodness
Thing 1 even had some driving instruction, and with the in-laws approval can now drive the Rhino around the property...
The in-law's neighbors have a zip-line and rigged up a child seat, so Thing 2 had a fun ride...

We even shot a little movie of him in action:

And after a nice long day, Thing 2 decided he'd be most comfortable watching tv from a big bucket...

Summer Ketchup

Did I just make a pun? It is about time for me to get back on track and catch up on the ol' blog...

June - 2009

Thing 2 plays with sunscreen

Just look at those eyes... Busted! Luckily the couch is leather, so the clean up wasn't too bad.

Early in June, we took a quick trip to Moab to meet Mrs. H's half-sister and family - we went river rafting and then camped 1 night in Moab and then back to Kanab to visit Mrs. H's parents.

The only pics we took were of us at the North Fork of the Grand Canyon. Although it was June, being at 8,000 feet meant is was still chilly. And of course we didn't have a coat for Thing 2 - so we made due with a swim cover-all that used to fit Thing 1.

The fam-damily at the beginning of the trail out to the vista

Thing 1 and I take a breather half-way out...

Behold the beauty of the cover-all...

Couldn't get Mrs. H to hike to the end of the vista, but the kids had no problem.

A little tired from the hike, but what a view!

Cousins "J" and "C" enjoying the grandeur of the vista

Grand-dad "C" and Thing 2

Mid-June, Mrs. H and I dropped the kiddies at my parents on our way to San Francisco (anniversary trip).

We took a tour of the city, starting at the renovated Ferry Building and drove down the Embarcadero through Fisherman's wharf. Up to Steiner street to see the famous "Postcard row".We got to go inside the last house on the left and see the restoration the owner had recently completed. It was cool to see gas lamps flickering throughout the home.

Potty-break at Grace's Cathedral (funny how the tour guide chooses the rest-stop...) We continued through Golden Gate park, with a brief stop at the Japanese Tea Gardens.
The Golden Gate Bridge from the north vista. It was a really sunny day - lucky for us.
Lunch in Sausalito and a ferry ride back to our starting point. We walked down Lombard (the curvy part) on the tour, and later went back to drive it ourselves. If you haven't really seen the city, do yourselves a favor, take the city tour. It was worth it.
The next day, we went north to Muir Woods - proof that I could be a tree-hugger...Back to the city for the required stop at Ghiradelli square for an ice cream sundae.It was a quick 3-day trip. Thing 1 and 2 seemed to enjoy their time with Nana and Papa and their cousins.

Thing 1 and her cousin "N" playing in the back yard...

Thing 2 and his cousin "D" enjoying a frozen treat.

While we were in Chinatown we found some cute outfits for the kids (maybe a little hokie) - the picture turned out nice....

No Daddy, I Do It Myself

Thing 2 has witnessed Thing 1 rummage through the fridge and pantry for snacks and treats enough times, that it appears he can do it all by himself.

Mrs. H and I were chatting as we heard thing 2 pull the stool over to the fridge, open the freezer, get the ice cream out, scoot the stool over to get a bowl out of the cupboard, find the ice cream scoop and voila,

"daddy, I do it myself", he says...
He's learning too quickly... (BYU product placement not intended, but it is cool, huh?)

I Hate You!

This goes out to Mrs. H... She just has not been "feeling the love" lately.

Sunday early evening, Mrs. H was trying (and she was having her nerves really tested) to help Thing 1 with her homework. Thing 1 was protesting and just fighting against being helped. I left to attend a youth activity for my church and returned home about an hour later to witness:

The ultimate Prima Donna behavior (Mrs. H swears it is all payback for the way she was as a child). Thing 1 was yelling at the top of her lungs out her window "I hate my mom! I want her to die, and I really really mean it!".

Some would say that means she's doing a good job at parenting. At first I felt a little embarrassed, as many of the neighbors were out and about (strolling the sidewalk or socializing with each other on that beautiful Sunday evening).

The shrieks were very clear. (the mental picture that ran through my mind):
And to top it off, last night (Monday), the new cat (Mrs. H picked him out) climbed on her while she lay asleep and peed on her.

Revenge of the Meeces

Chapter II of the saga...

Where to start, where to start....

Now as per the original post, Mrs. Dr. Doolittle was happy we were catching meeces in our 'humane' traps and subsequently "freeing" them in fields away from our home. (If nursery rhymes teach us anything, it is that we should be "scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head...") Back to the story...

"Of course", I'm thinking, "We are just perpetuating the problem and giving the meeces a second chance of infiltrating someone else's home..."

So a week or so ago, I had returned home from one of many "underground mouse-railway" trips (think we had freed 6 so far..) to the fields to free the meeces... I put the trap outside on the deck.

Mrs. H didn't like that, "the dogs could get to it", she says and decides she'll put it inside the BBQ grill for now; later, she'll put more peanut butter and set it back up.

An hour or two passes and she now has time to attend to the re-baiting of the trap. She grabs the trap and brings it inside from the deck. She begins to open it and...

(No, no. Not Jamaican Reggae singer Eek-a-Mouse)

...there were live meeces inside the trap.

Oscar-winner for Outstanding female performance, Mrs. H does the stereotypical -- Now try saying this all in one breath... 1, 2, 3... Take a DEEP BREATH...

Freaking Out lady looking for the highest place off the ground, scampers up on the counter top in the kitchen and at the same time throwing the now-opened trap on the ground, thereby "liberating" the meeces inside our own house!"

(Ok, breathe now...)

The doglies didn't even notice the meeces (we think two) running for cover. I eye in on one and try to corner it, but I'm no mouser - too slow. I watch it make it's way underneath Thing 1's computer desk in the family room.

Of course, you realize, this means war!

It's time for barbaric measures. She says, "We will KILL those mice (translation: "You, Mr. H, will take care of this for me...") no matter what!"

I think this means Mrs. H can now officially lose the title Mrs. Dr. Doolittle. "The gloves are off!", she declares.

She then breaks down into worry, anxiety-mode tears at the thought of just having released the meeces inside the house. I poke fun at her, of course, for not checking the trap prior to opening it.... (relegated to the couch for that comment...)

Off to the store to get our weapons of mass destruction. I think we ended up with at least a dozen snap traps, a few sticky pads, as well as the original "humane" traps now set up throughout the lower level of the home.

A new part of my morning ritual is to now check the traps before heading off to work. I was pretty good at it, but alas, I have yet to find treasure...

Were they getting their REVENGE!?!

No, they just decided to be trapped and subsequently disposed of by the one who cringes at the very thought.... Mrs. H.

Living Room mouse, as it was formally named, was killed in a snap-trap behind the TV. Thing 1 really got into the "disposal" process. Donning gloves, she skipped all the way to the big garbage can outside after stuffing trap and prey into a sandwich baggy to get rid of it.

"1 down, 1 to go" I told the tale to my mom over last Sunday's evening phone conversation. "Not so fast, Mr. H.", she replies. There could be more... mice multiply fast, she explained...

"Great!," I reply. How long will this go on? Before Kitty-Dawg's demise, she had pointed, or poked around underneath the stove. Mrs. H heard some noise and decided that is where mouse 2, aka Kitchen Mouse, had set up base-camp.

She set a trap in the oven, and in the drawer below the oven. Next morning, BINGO! We had caught our 2 inside-house mouses...

After deep-cleaning the oven, and scouring the floors with Clorox Clean-up, the Mrs. still senses we may have them varmints in the house. So a thorough cleaning of the pantry and looking around for evidence (mouse turds), she decides we need traps behind the fridge, in the pantry, underneath the kitchen sink and at the back of a few lower kitchen cabinets.

Yesterday morning, Mrs. H discovers another trapped mouse in a lower cabinet, but it wasn't dead. She yells for Thing 1 to come "glove up" and get it... Thing 1 can't reach it, as the mouse had somehow (trap and all) gotten underneath the bottom of the cabinet (inside that free space between the back side of the kick plate of the cabinet and the wall.

Mrs. H calls me to "Find a MAN for the job!" She thinks our neighbor, Jeff, is home, so I call him and he goes over to assess the problem.

End of story: he had to take my Sawzall to the back bottom of the cabinet to get to the mouse and promptly disposed of it.

"Did you see him kill the mouse?" I ask Mrs. H when I arrived home from work.

"EWWW!!!, don't talk about it. I don't want to think about it." She said.
or this?

Mrs. H is hell-bent on eradicating meeces, altogether... Traps will soon go in the basement. Will there be a chapter 3 to this story? ...STAY TUNED!

Kitty - Dawg - R.I.P

Death is never convenient...

Mrs. H was alerted that "Dawg" (Thing 1 did give it a name: Tink) was convulsing and not breathing well. So Sunday about 6 p.m., Mom and Thing 1 take Tink up to the ER Vet hospital.

Mrs. H calls me and asks me to get a sitter for Thing 2 as quickly as possible and come up. I sense I'm being summoned to put down the "Mean daddy" foot.

When I arrive, Tink is on 100% oxygen and the vet had done an x-ray. He so nicely tried to let us know that a whole bunch of "not good" was going on with kitty. An enlarged heart (most likely congenital heart defect - prognosis: not good), perhaps collapsed lung (may be treatable, but anesthesia may kill the kitty because she's not bringing in any oxygen); a herniated diaphram (can't tell if the liver is being sucked through... Anyway, exploratory surgery could reveal the full scope, but at what cost? It just wasn't good. That's where mean daddy gets to play his role...
It is difficult for me to recreate the scene, but I am tearing up as I think back to seeing the emotions of life and death play it's horrific game with both Mrs. H and Thing 1.

"We've only had the kitty for 2 weeks", I keep thinking in my mind. "And, besides, whoever dumped her into our yard and made her our problem - SHAME ON YOU!" Alas, I hope Kitty Dawg (Tink) is in a better place.

It really isn't the money, but, Damn it! Why does death have to be so inconvenient!?

I thought about some of the ironic humor involved with this, one of our family's stories, but I thought I will just post this little e-memorium for our sweet Kitty DAWG.

Meeces, I hate meeces!

Remember Mr. Jinks?

With the new puppy this past year, we (No... Nope. Not this time... I am not taking the credit or blame on this story...) It is all Mrs. Hogwallop.

I digress... It was decided that the dogs would eat outside rather than the laundry room. Not enough room for both dogs to move around and eat without bothering each other, so we purchased a big garbage pail with a lid with plastic clamps to keep the dog food out on the back deck. Needless to say Thing 2 discovered quite quickly how to remove the lid and dump dog food all over the deck. He did this many times in our Summer of 2008. This meant little dog food pellets made their way into the cracks of the deck and eventually underneath the deck...

And it has become the new buffet of choice for unwelcomed guests. Even Mrs. Dr. Doolittle is not happy.

Meeces!
Not the cute kind like Pixie & Dixie.

Or, even more fondly remembered, Jerry and his little cousin, Nibbles. Maybe it's my fondness for things French, but I do remember the funny episode, "The Two Mousekateers" - Nibbles and his little baby accent, "Ah, pauvre pussycat! C'est la guerre."

(if you don't remember or never saw it. Tom and Jerry and Nibbles are french muskateers dualing with swords and at the end of the cartoon, Tom (at least it is aluded to, that he is beheaded by the guillotine for not keeping the place mouse-free; to which Nibbles says "poor pussycat, That's war!")If you have the Boomerang channel, you'll see it if you record it a few times.

So today, we...(Hang-on!), IT was decided the Hogwallops needed to deal with the meeces as Mrs. H was seeing them outside rather frequently and (although I'm going out on a limb with this blanket statement) freaked all girly-style with the heeby-jeebies, cooties and whatever else makes your skin curl and crawl... and said we MUST get rid of them!

Ah, BUT wait! We cannot kill them. Oh NO! That would be too cruel! Besides, traps means trouble for the dogs, Thing 2, the Mrs. puts her foot down.

"C'mon, it only takes one snap in the snot-locker and the doglies would leave the traps alone.", I protest.

"No, and no poison either!" So we're on a scavenger hunt for 'humane' mouse-traps.

And we find, The Tomcat live catch mouse trap. Nifty little thing, but it only catches one mouse at a time. Which means we have to dispose of (we only purchased two) of the meeces two at a time. So we take a drive out to a field upon catching our first pair.

Mrs. Hogwallop is freaking out the whole time in the car and pushing me as far to the other side as possible and whincing and getting girly-squeamish and I hold the traps in my hands motioning (you know, boy torture) that I'll drop them in her lap...

We stop next to the field, and I pop the lid open then holding the base, snap my wrist so it flings and ejects Mouse 1 and Mouse 2 into the field - they'll probably die by morning (a nice head fracture or whatever... I don't care what happens to them. I wanted to kill them in the first place, remember?)

So two weren't enough and we head out again to the Home depot to find traps that will hold 5-6 at a time. So we've set them up and we could have a nice harvest tomorrow morning...

Danger Mouse will be coming to seek his revenge.... on us! It's just a matter of time...