Friday, March 07, 2008

The Weekend's Here!

And, we're only three school days from Spring Break. Ahhh...a glorious 1 1/2 weeks of nothing (except TKD). Awesome.

Back in December, Jacob bought a tadpole habitat with his holiday money. He was so excited and we ordered two little tadpoles almost immediately. Well, they finally came last week. They are only guaranteed to arrive alive, so I was happy to see that they were, indeed, alive. We plopped them in their little habitat and sat in awe as they got a little bigger everyday. Okay, for three days. Then, they died. Poof. Just like that. I surprised Jacob, yesterday, by going to Petsmart and getting him a fire-bellied toad for the habitat. They only get to be about 3 inches long and he has the sweetest face. The guy there was awesome. He gave me 20 crickets (the only sucky part of the toad) for the price of 14 and also gave me some of the water crystals to put in with them. Getting the crickets from their container and into the habitat has been somewhat interesting, but that little toad just loves them. So cool to watch. Jacob's named the toad Volcano because of how his tummy looks. I wonder how fast we can kill this thing off. At least he came with a 14 day guarantee! LOL!

I set up Hannah's birthday party this week. My goodness that girl has a lot of friends. Luckily, we don't pay by the person because we invited 14 kids (not including Jacob, Daniel and Hannah) and she wanted to invite about 7 more but I had to cut her off somewhere. We only invited one little boy from MOPS and she was not happy about that because she wanted more. I'm so going to be in trouble once she actually starts school. LOL! I think I'm going to do cupcakes instead of a cake but I'm not sure. Cupcakes are so much easier.

I got an e-mail from Jacob's baseball coach this afternoon. I was a little disappointed to see that he is not on Jett's team, but it's okay because he is on his school's third grade team, so he knows everyone. I had to send our contact info to the coach since he didn't have it and, surprisingly, I got a phone call about 15 minutes later. Nice guy...wanted to know if Jacob's a pitcher, or is interested in pitching. No, Jacob's not a pitcher, yes, he desperately wants to try to pitch. Awesome! He says, because it's kid-pitch this year. Ugh. I thought we had more time with the machine, but okay.

We had Boy's/Girl's Night Out this evening. Hannah and I went to Applebee's and then to bowling and the boys met Jim and Peter for pizza and the Spiderwick Chronicles. Hannah and I had a blast bowling and I hear that the movie was great. I love doing these nights because it makes the kids feel so special. They just love it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sure that Debbie can give you chapter and verse about crickets and keeping them alive, but during the time I was dragon sitting with Sam, I learned about crickets. Debbie has a cricket cage that has tubes sticking out of it. The crickets congregate in the tubes, so you pull out a tube and tap out the required amount of crickets for the animal that you're
feeding. Debbie uses a large mouth mason jar to put the crickets into and Sam just jumps into the jar and gobbles his dinner. It was easy as can be. Now a toad might have different feeding habits, but that cage with the tubes is the thing to have.

Dad

Anonymous said...

Sounds like an awesome night out, girls and boys going their own way. Love it.

Anonymous said...

Easy peasy, Barb. The cricket container is cheap and is worth its weight in gold. I wouldn't want to fish them out. In the meantime, maybe you could put a toilet paper tube or something in there so they would crawl up it.

As for keeping the crickets, you need to give them something to drink - the pet store has some stuff in a jar we use that is a jel. Crickets are stupid and will drown in water. I've also heard you can put a damp sponge in there but I wouldn't want to clean it. You need to feed them something if you want to keep them alive for any length of time. Crush some dry dog food and put it in there and maybe some greens or a piece of potato.

Also, crickets come in different sizes. I'm sure you want the little bitty ones. Have fun with you little guy!

Barbara said...

I will have to look into the cricket thing. Fishing them out of the little container is certainly making me nuts. Thanks for the tip! I did know about the water crystal/gel things. The nice guy at Petsmart was kind enough to give me some, and he told me about the potato (and he said that an orange would work, too). And, yes, we do the small crickets. The large ones are just about the same size as the toad! LOL!

Barbara said...

Oh, and I can't believe how dumb these crickets are. You're not kidding about the drowning part. I've had to fish them out of the pond part of the habitat because the toad won't eat them if they're dead.

Anonymous said...

Jonathan has been asking for fish and I dread starting that because of the high death rate but at least we don't have to feed them live bugs hahaha!

By the way, I saw Barbara at TBall "Meet your team" night. Matthew and Jonathan are on different teams but we still got to together to chat. She asked about you and said to say "Hi". I filled her in on your adventures and she was happy to hear how much your family like TKD - she said that you should go for it - she is some level black belt herself.

I go Monday to register Jonathan for kindergarten - where has the time gone! Even Matthew is growing up too fast - in about a month and a half I will start planning his 1st birthday!

Anyway, enjoy your spring break - ours is the 17th - 21st.