A Squirrel Killed Our Car

On Wednesday, May 18th, it started pouring rain. It hadn't snowed much all winter but in May, it rained and rained for nearly two weeks straight. We had just planted our plants in the garden too and sadly, the cold weather killed all of my basil and the rain washed a lot of seed away. I have some carrots and other plants growing in the troughs between rows and some several feet from where I planted them originally.

Along with the rain came major car troubles. I had driven the car Wednesday morning to the library. Wednesday afternoon after Sam's nap, I got everything ready to go so I could do our grocery shopping (double ad Wednesdays! Yeah!). So, I got in the car, but it wouldn't start. It would turn over and over and over, which made me think it wasn't the battery, but something else. 

We'd had some electrical problems when there was lots of water on the road in Tucson but rather than not starting, the car would just die after we drove through a puddle so this was different.

For several days, we went without a car. Since it was raining like crazy, I had to borrow my dear friend Staci's car to go to the grocery store and catch rides to Young Women's activities, to teach my music class, etc. Who knew you can fit three car seats in the back of a standard size car!? Probably not the safest thing ever but necessary to avoid getting fired for not showing up to work. Anyway, it was kind of a rough week of trying to get around with the terrible weather. Usually we'd just walk or ride our bike so it was doubly frustrating that the weather prevented us from being able to get around easily (or risk getting pneumonia). 

Sam's birthday party was coming up on Saturday so I had asked my in-laws to drive up from Co. Springs to give us a ride to the party. They were planning on coming up anyway, but suddenly, it became absolutely necessary.

Friday evening, the rain finally stopped. We hadn't wanted to tow the car without letting it dry out first in case the electrical issue would just go away like it often would in Tucson when it wasn't pouring rain. 

So, Friday evening, Don decided to try to jump the car in case that was the problem. He borrowed our friend's car, opened the hood and found...

A HUGE SQUIRREL NEST! and a squirrel that jumped out and scrambled deep down into the car! Don ran into the house and told me I had to come see this so I ran out and was totally flabbergasted! The thing was enormous!

I drive this car short distances nearly every day! This squirrel must have been making this cosy nest for quite some time. There were dozens of sticks shoved way down behind the engine block and tons of grass. This was a carefully, very cosily built nest! He could have started building it just when it started raining or maybe he'd been working on it for weeks and had been riding around town with me!

Do you see the squirrel on the top right of the picture. He kept poking out his head and pleading with his eyes for us not to ruin his home. We weren't too sympathetic, though. Don started tearing the thing apart immediately.

Look at all that grass!

Still digging!

We noticed that several wires had been stripped of their casing and that the squirrel had taken chunks out of various boxes, etc. Don then saw that there was a wire that had been chewed all the way through and that was what was keeping the car from starting.

I've since read all kinds of things since then about cars that were built after the early nineties have soy casing on the wires and there are frequent problems with bunnies, mice, squirrels, etc. eating the wiring in these cars. I guess at Denver International Airport, there was a major ongoing problem in long term parking with cars not starting. At first, they thought it was vandalism. Then, they put out cameras and saw rabbits climbing into the cars that would later not start...

So, beware! Your car could be killed by a squirrel (or bunny!) too! We had a neighbor walk by and said they'd had several hundred dollars worth of work done on their car to replace wires that had been chewed through by the squirrels. Then, another friend in Family Housing said the same thing had happened to them...

Luckily, Don was able to do some magic and wire the thing back together so the car would start. The darn squirrel refused to come out of the car while Don removed the nest so he drove and drove and drove to try to kill it or get him to jump out somewhere far away from our car. I guess once they mark your car, they will always come back to it. 

So, that was our crazy car/squirrel situation.

I spent a good part of Friday making homemade quiche for Sam's birthday party. I made two mushroom, spinach, and swiss cheese quiches and two bacon, spinach, and swiss cheese quiches, all with homemade crust. 

I also made ginger cookies and a homemade cake which I failed to put the eggs in. I was so distracted with all the stuff I was cooking at once that I just plain left them on the counter. The cake didn't rise very well but still tasted good (kind of brownie-like, surprisingly. Brownies have so many eggs, though. Hmm) so I frosted it. I made a cream cheese frosting which I colored orange and then Don helped me draw a basketball on top. 

Don gave Sam a little black frosting mustachio, which Sam found hilarious. It was pretty cute.

Sam's Second Birthday!

Sam turned two on May 16. We planned a party for the following Saturday (May 21) so his actual birthday was really low key and chill. I decided to let him eat his favorite things and do some of his favorite things.

His day started off with Don and I singing a raspy, morning voice version of Happy Birthday as we got him up. After we got him out of his jammies, he fought getting dressed (like he does nearly every day) so we let him stay in just his diaper all morning.

I made a special breakfast for him. His favorite breakfast (and what he eats every single morning) is old fashioned oats with a tablespoon of peanut butter and a little brown sugar. It is the one thing each day I can (almost always) count on him eating. 

Since it was his birthday, I thought I'd spice it up a little. I made some steel cut oats with whole milk and a little butter and brown sugar and he loved it. He also ate a bunch of cantaloupe. 

Steel cut oats time. 

After breakfast, Sammy and I played a lot of basketball in the living room, kicked the ball back and forth (two of his very favorite things) and then played with puzzles.

We read a bunch of stories and ate some lunch and then Sammy finally got dressed for the day and took a nap. 

After he woke up, we went to see our friend, Jack Brainerd, the luthier, who fixed my violin and gave me a bow to borrow. I took the bow back that I'd borrowed and Sam and I stayed and watched Jack shape a violin with an egg scraper. It was absolutely fascinating and smelled so wonderful and woodsy. The violin he was making was out of some type of cedar and it was so delicious smelling. I should have taken some of the shavings home and used them as potpourri. 

After we visited Jack, Sam and I took a quick trip to the grocery store to buy Sammy a birthday watermelon.  

When Don had come home for lunch earlier in the day, I was talking to him about making a little cake for Sammy. He suggested I get him a watermelon instead since he'd like it so much better. Since it is true that Sam really would prefer watermelon to cake (which I'm thrilled about), I decided to get one. When I told Sammy we were going to buy a watermelon at the store he clapped with joy and bounced up and down the whole way to the store. 

We got home and Sam was so excited about showing daddy his watermelon!

Just look at that excited face!

We discovered that Sam still does not like candle flames. He cried when he first saw a candle on his 6 month birthday but I thought he had gotten over it.

When Don lit the candles on the watermelon, though, absolute joy turned into a huge breakdown. He hated the fire on his watermelon.

So daddy helped him get rid of the fire...

and Sam ate nothing but watermelon for dinner (he nearly cleaned out half of the watermelon in one sitting!). We should have tried to feed him something else first because he usually won't touch anything else we try to give him once he's tasted the melon. 

Sharing with daddy.

Sammy opened his birthday cards from family. I think it is funny how he is peeking out from behind his card that says "You're two". Funny kid.

After we looked at the cards and talked to grandparents, we went to the toy store. I had bought Sam a xylophone and several wooden puzzles at a consignment sale but Don wanted to get him something so we decided it would fun to make a little birthday trip out of it and let Sammy run around and decide what he liked.

He decided he really loved the train tables with all the little wooden tracks and trains. Don and I looked at the little wooden trains and were slightly appalled at how expensive they were. So, we waffled back and forth and back and forth (spending $25 about does me in! I think so hard about it!) and finally left without buying anything. Sam had such a good time, though, he didn't care at all.

That night, we looked on Craigslist and found a wooden train set with 160+ pieces that we ended up buying. It was expensive but so much cheaper than buying the pieces new. We gave Sammy just a couple trains and some track to start out with and now we will give him a little bit more track and more trains, people, animals, signs, etc. for each birthday and Christmas for several years to come. We can also use them for rewards for potty training (not happening yet, but someday), etc. Sam absolutely loves his "choo-choo" and sometimes when I get him out of bed, he points out his bedroom door downstairs and says "choo-choo?" He can't wait to get down there and start playing.

A quick note about how kids can play with the simplest things and be so happy: I ordered some diapers online and they came in this big box which quickly became Sam's favorite thing. Don cut a hole in the flaps so Sam could stick his head out. Sam and his friends (like William and Adam below) spent hours and hours playing in this box until Sam and his cousin Isaac destroyed it two weeks later. That box was well loved and I look forward to getting my next box of diapers just because Sam will be so thrilled about playing in it!

Sam is once again shirtless because he was eating watermelon and still refuses to wear the bib. 

It was so funny to walk into the room and find Sam with his head sticking out of the box.

CSA, RMs, Sam's Organizational Skills, Watermelon, and Bath Time with Daddy

Don and I joined a local farm by buying a community supported agriculture (CSA) share this year. 

Here we are at our farm tour. We were really excited about it but so far, haven't gotten much in the way of produce (even lettuce, broccoli and other cold weather crops) so we're crossing our fingers it gets enormously better in the coming weeks. 

At the beginning of May, our boss had an appreciation lunch for the Resident Managers at The Kitchen (a super swank and fabulously delicious Boulder restaurant). The food was unreal. I had an asparagus soup and beet quiche and they were scrumptious. If you want food worth your money, I'd recommend this place.

Sam is a very organized little person. He loves puzzles and organizing items by color, size, shape, etc. One day, he took all our shoes and lined them up side by side on the stairs. 

Another day, I was cooking in the kitchen and suddenly it got very quiet in the living room where Sam was playing. Usually this means he's in to trouble (like the time he took my lipstick out of my purse and went to town on his face, clothes, extremities, and the carpet). This time, though, I found this...

He had taken his stacking buckets and spent time filling them with objects by category. The cars got a bucket, the tennis balls got a bucket, the animal bowling pins got buckets...

He was proud of himself and I thought he was so cute, I took a bunch of pictures.

He was clapping for himself here. Since then, he's started saying "ta da!" when he finishes something and throws his hands over his head in celebration. Or, he asks for a high five by saying "ta-da, mommy!" and sticking out his hand.

This picture in the National Geographic of a Mongolian boy in traditional garb playing basketball has fascinated Sammy since he first saw it. For weeks, he would come into the living room and ask for "ba-ball" and would grab the magazine and want me to show him this picture. This kid loves basketball.

Sammy likes to line things up in a row by category. One night when we were watching Adelaide, Sammy started on a stacking frenzy on the windowsill.

I love the PJ kids. 

Sam took all his bowling pins and stacked them like this, one on top of the other, in the blinds. 

Here are the goods Sam was squirreling away behind the blinds. Funny kid.

A little pre-bedtime snack. Sam has boycotted the booster seat and bibs so we don't even keep them out anymore. We only bring them out for other kiddos who come to visit.

Don, Sam, and I went to the World of Wonder (WOW) Children's Museum in Lafayette on a Saturday morning and Sam loved it so much! He particularly loved the wind room where you could make two balls hang suspended in the air above a fan. He was fascinated and the other exhibits were really cool and worth seeing. We need to go again in a couple months because I know he'll be excited more of the exhibits as he gets older.

I love Sam's mouth. I think he was saying "wow!" 

Sam loves our neighbor, Nina. "Nina" was the first name he said after Mama, Daddy, and Jesus (out of the blue, one day, he saw a picture in the front of the Book of Mormon and said "Jesus!" It shocked the socks off me!). Nina and Fynn are some of Sam's favorite Smiley Court buddies and he often goes to our back door and says, "Nina!" He won't ever say her name in front of her, but he loves her all the same.

We had James, Becca, Nina, and Fynn over for dinner one night and Sam and Nina had so much fun eating their watermelon on the stairs.

Like I said, the bib is no longer tolerated. Since Sam is a watermelon/cantaloupe fanatic, his clothes look like this at the end of nearly every night. He's happy though, so I'm happy and I do a lot of mopping/wiping down of Sam, tables, chairs, and the floor. 

These kids have so much fun together. Sam thinks Nina is hilarious and laughs and laughs his awesome belly laugh every time she is around.

Yum!

On Mother's Day, Don made me breakfast, let me take a nice long nap, mopped the floor, and made dinner for me and his parents. He also wrote me a really nice card and bought me a super grippy and extra fancy new yoga mat. I am such a lucky girl!

Sam has not been fond of baths since he was very small. He loves to swim and he likes splashing in water but usually as soon as the tub starts running, he starts screaming. I've figured out recently that even if the water is comfortably warm, he thinks it is too hot and that's why he won't sit down (he stands screaming as I try to quickly scrub and wash him). On one such screaming/standing night, Don got in the tub with him and after a short period of refusing to sit down, he finally relaxed and had so much fun with daddy playing with his bath toys.

Now, I bathe him in a tepid bath and he's usually pretty happy. All this time all he really hated was warm water!  

Easter!

On Easter weekend, we went down to Colorado Springs to help Don's dad work on their house renovation. Don's mom was in Vernal helping Christine with her new baby so it was great that we were able to come down and get Don's dad to eat some real food. He tried to feed us cream of chicken soup for dinner which we continue to tease him mercilessly about. Yuck!

Sam and I colored and dyed Easter eggs while Daddy and Grampy worked on removing the windows in the two upstairs bedrooms. 

We couldn't find any crayons so we used colored pencils. Sam gave me this cute smile when I told him to smile for the camera. Such a cutie!

Yay for Easter!

Sam was a big helper and was using his hammer to help daddy in the hallway.

Sam and I dyed a dozen eggs and had a great time getting the dye all over the eggs, ourselves and the counters. 

Sammy showing off our eggs...

Sammy helped daddy and Grandpy board up the windows. It was bitterly cold that day so we basically took this picture and ran inside and watched from there. 

We decided that boarding up the windows really made the place look like a crack house, particularly because they were a wood color. Don's dad has since painted the boards the same yellow as the house and soon the rooms will have nice new windows so the crack house look won't be permanent. 

After Don and his dad finished boarding up the first window, we did our Easter egg hunt. I hid all the eggs we'd dyed and Sam quickly found them all. I'd even hidden some in pretty tricky spots but he wasn't outwitted. He's one smart kid.

Daddy and Sammy running around the log piles.

It was seriously so cold. I could hardly stand to be outside for the 20 minutes it took us to find the eggs. Brr!

We came back for church on Sunday and Don's dad came over for the afternoon. That evening, we had a bunch of friends over for an unusual Easter feast of gyoza, asian green beans, deviled eggs, corn pudding, and ginger cookies. 

Sam loves bananas. He's recently started calling them "nany"s instead of "nana"s. This started when he transitioned from dada to daddy and mama to mommy. I think he just decided that if he liked something, it should end with a "y", instead of an "a" now. It's fun to watch his language evolve.

Nany!