The Nuetzel's - In Their Natural Habitat

Well, I guess May was a while ago, so I'll quickly get everyone back up to speed on what I've been meaning to blog about but just haven't done yet...in reverse order.

1. Our fish that had babies... (see post here) Well those babies are now about half an inch long, and they just had their own set of babies. I wonder if we need to separate the big babies from the little babies? If so, this $2 purchase is turning into a major investment...

2. Tim and I celebrated our 8th anniversary by staying home and feasting on corndogs and cupcakes with blueberry cream cheese standing in as the frosting. Why is there always cupcake mix at our house, but never any frosting...who does the shopping around here? Oh, that's me.

3. We took a long trip over the 4th of July to South Dakota and met Dunkle Don, Aunt Bonnie, and Lily (more on that as soon as I download the 289 photos I took).

3. I found a lump on Bailey's back, $200 later we find out that it is the same cancer that got Blue...had surgery, still had cancer...in surgery again...maybe this should be first on the list since he is at the vet hospital now, recovering from his afternoon of butchering. If I know Bailey, he's probably freaked out.

4. Let's see now we are to early June...can't remember...oh yes! I went grocery shopping. That's not the whole story...so I went shopping and the total came up to $68...then I handed over my coupons and... wait for it....I only paid $13! Yes! That's a savings of 87% ladies and gentlemen. The guy behind me was astounded. Well, at first he was annoyed because the checkout lady wanted to double check some things, but after that he was truly astounded. This couponing thing is really starting to pay off!

5. Olivia has reverted to being a baby again. She constantly babels "goo goo, ga go go ga goo". She's crazy...and not necessarily in a good way.

6. Annie's got somewhere between 2 and 4 cavities. Not sure how the dentist isn't sure of the amount, but they are getting drilled and filled in a few weeks...that should be fun-not!

7. Annie is turning into a fish. She has been taking swim lessons but ever since we joined the pool she has been in lessons every morning for a half hour. Now all she does is swim swim swim. I'm not saying that it's pretty, but she is swimming, diving under water, swimming between legs, jumping off the diving board. Olivia is getting braver in the water...once, as she was hanging off the edge of the pool, she told Tim "I'm like a fish! I won't sink!" then she let go and sank like a stone, straight to the bottom of the pool. Silly Bav.

8. We bought a Honda Pilot...more info below...the girls love it because it also acts as a traveling movie theater, but only during long trips.

9. Our first camping trip of the year ended with a broken down truck and a good friend coming to pick us up (Thanks again Chris! Your the best, and when I say your the best, I mean your the only one who's wife volunteered you to come get us "in case anything should happen"...Diane, you jinxed us!)

10.Tim is still fully employed as the girls stay at home Dad. Their days are filled with swim lessons, book clubs, and dance lessons. Tim is teaching Annie how to read and she only has 8 more sounds to learn before she knows them all!

And I think that's it - our life in a Nuetzel Nutshell.

Sunday Funday!

Today Annie and I went to a carnival at the school up the street. My initial reaction was "you want me to pay $12 for a couple of bounce houses", but Annie and I had biked the long 3 block ride to the school. Believe me, it was a looooooong 3 blocks of Annie stopping everyone she saw along the way to tell them where we were going, so I bit the bullet and pulled out $12 in exchange for a green bracelet that let Annie into the carnival. In the end we had a great time, Annie spent most of the afternoon in one bounce house or another, or at the bubble making table. After another long bike ride, Annie finally made it home with a belly full of rainbow sherbet and her hair painted in strips of green and pink. Olivia later remarked to her that she looked like a butterfly!

After the carnival, we planted the rest of our veggie garden. When I say we, I mean mainly Tim. The girls spent their time digging holes and looking for Escape (that's pronounced - Es-cop-pay). He is the local worm that the girls always try to catch, then they bring him in the house and he manages to escape out of whatever container full of dirt he is deposited in. They found him out in the garden along with a few of his cousins, they all happened to have the same name.

The night before the girls and I went to a store that just opened, a store that Tim refused to step foot in. You might have heard of it...the American Girl store. It was wonderful and us girls have big plans to save up our money to buy a couple of overpriced American Girl dolls (model P5-F8896EP and P5-G0457EP to be exact), and a few accessories, like the beauty salon, the horse, a bike, a pet dog, a bedroom set, the camper... the list is practically never ending...we are open to donations if anyone wants to speed up our purchase plan.

Oh my...

This afternoon I was greeted with a ziplock bag full of rabbit turds.

Apparently Annie happened upon some rabbit turds in our backyard and was amazed that they did not look anything at all like Bailey turds so she got a ziplock from the kitchen and spent some time scouring the backyard for the tiny gems. One might ask themselves (as I did) what was Tim doing during the time our daughter was creating her own rabbit-do collection? Well, his story is that Bailey was blocking his view and he assumed that Annie was out back brushing him. Really? The girl who hasn't paid poor Bailey any attention since...since I don't know when...was brushing him? I think the only thing I might have assumed in this situation was that she had gotten a hold of a pair of scissors and was giving him a new do. But anyways, she really wants to bring the ziplock to school tomorrow. She claims that she just wants her friends to know that rabbit-do is entirely different than dog-do. That's my girl!

On a related note, I just heard Annie telling Tim "You gotta check out the poop I just made." Once again, That's My Girl!

My first project!

My first project is finally done! I'm talking about the blue dress here, not Annie - I don't think she is done, not quite yet. This was my first attempt at sewing since making a few sundresses for myself back in college. Come to think of it, I didn't even use a pattern for those dresses...it was project runway all the way!! So yes, on to the next project, something for Bav this time, and lets hope I only have to rip out one seam this time.

An ingenious plot!

I walked into our main floor hallway yesterday and almost slid across the floor on a piece of dog food. Then I noticed there was more dog food all lined up in a row right there in the middle of the floor...it led all the way down the hallway...up the stairs...down the other hall...through our bedroom...and ended in a big pile of dog food and a rubber ball in the middle of Bailey's dog bed. Well, of course there could only be one person in our house who would think to do such a thing...no, not Tim. I walked downstairs to try and find Annie, but more importantly to find Bailey to see if he would in fact follow a trail of dog food to find his favorite ball.

Once Annie and I got Bailey all set at the end of the hall and pointed out all the yummy? dog food, he turned around and went back outside. I think his trust in Annie and I has gone the way of white bread at our house. Speaking of bread, we decided to try this out using some of the wheat bread which Bailey seems to enjoy. What am I saying? He enjoys almost any food (other than dog food) that we give him. So we quarantined him outside so Annie could prepare the course. After a quick inspection, we let him back in and pointed out the first piece of bread, which he gobbled up as soon as his nose caught the scent! He made it all the way to the bottom of the stairs, and then I think he remembered that the only time we try to get him to go up the stairs ends up with him in the bathtub, which he does not like, not at all, not one bit. After a few seconds trying to regain his trust, he ran up the stairs and quickly turned the corner...into our bedroom... (honestly I can't remember why I was so excited about this, but we were)... and towards the pile of bread that was waiting for him on his bed...Bailey was sure it was another trap so he wouldn't go any further. Annie ended up giving him a bread shower and then I'm pretty sure Bailey spent the rest of the day wondering what was wrong with us.

The End!

A few new additions!

We took a trip to the pet store last weekend and like most trips to the pet store end, we came home with 2 - $1 fish. These are kinda cool though, they have a spot on their tails in the shape of Mickey Mouse. I wonder how long they will survive living with our little cannibal fish...

Anyways, we put them (still in the plastic bag) into the aquarium that night and went to bed. The next morning Annie woke me up wanting me to come down and see the baby fish. I was still half asleep and thought she was talking about a nature show or some cartoon so I told her I would be right down, and then rolled over and went back to sleep. But she kept coming up and I wasn't getting much sleep any more so we headed down and...hello! There were 9 baby fish in the bag with the 2 fish we bought the night before! Then we noticed that there was actually 9.5 baby fish...we decided to move the babies to a tupperware bowl. Later that day we invested $5 on a fish nursery (basically a box made out of netting to keep the babies away from the carnivores). We couldn't help but think that these fish, already fully grown only cost a buck, why are we trying to grow them from scratch? But on the other hand, we have lost quite a few fish in our day, if they all survive we'll probably be breaking even on the fish front. Wish us luck!

The Joker

Olivia told her very first joke over the weekend! We were reading a book and she was pointing to the animals and telling us what everything was. She pointed to a red bird and said "That's a peanut!" and then proceeded to laugh her little butt off. And that made us laugh, silly baby!