Gerbils

Here they are, the new additions to the family. As Timmy points out, now we all have pets (Tim's goldfish, Pepper for Cyndie and I*, and now the gerbils). Emma has named them Cookie, Sweettart, and Digger. Digger is (surprise) a big digger in the bedding. He also likes to nibble on whoever holds him. Cookie is the most docile one, and Sweettart is ... I don't know, the remaining one?

*I'm not sure why one dog for the both of us qualifies as all of us having a pet. I'm going to have to complain to whoever is in charge about that slight.

Here they are ... the three of them like to pile up in a corner to sleep. For the short term, the aquarium is located on top of Emma's dress up box.


They weren't very cooperative with the picture taking. They just wanted to sleep.

The gerbils woke Emma up during the night the first night, but I think that was as much excitement on her part as anything. No problems have happened the rest of the week. She's a pretty heavy sleeper anyway. They largely sleep at night and are awake during the day.

This blog is turning ...

700

No, not years old, 700 posts. Yes, this is kind of a boring celebration of the fact, but I don't really have anything horribly interesting to say or commemorate, so this is what you're stuck with. Happy 700th blogday to the Life and Times of the Wildwood DeVries.

In other news, it's Friday. Yea! It seems like this was a long week. I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe the on again, off again nature of the truck thing. On that topic, I got it registered this morning, and just sent our insurance guy an email to get started with that portion of vehicle ownership. We also figured out (via a phone call to the previous owner) how to turn off the aftermarket, really sensitive security system which went off multiple times. Hurray! Marking the unofficial start to the weekend, Cyndie just left for her scrappin' *.

*Does scrapping mean that she and Sherri are going to get in a brawl with a rival gang of scrapbooking gals? I'm thinking this could be epic on the scale of the sharks and the jets. Whoohoo, look out. Which makes me wonder, are Sherri, Cyndie and their crew the sharks or the jets?


The kids had their last soccer last night. A friend whose kids also played asked if we were going to do wrestling next. Uh, no. We're both ready for a little break in the weekly commitments. I'm guessing that the next thing will probably be swimming. For now, I want the kids to be free to enjoy the beautiful weather we've been having ... it's supposed to be in the low 80s today, tomorrow, and Sunday ... awesome. Does anyone that lives near Lake Geneva want to go water skiing over the weekend. I'm thinking one more good run would be great!

So, happy birthday blog, you don't look a post over 300.

Excitement!

Well then, we just returned from buying a new vehicle ... introducing Big Whitey, our "new" 2003 Excursion.

Here's a picture of Cyndie with her new ride.

It's not going to get great gas mileage, but we really felt like we needed a vehicle with a heavier frame (this is a 3/4 ton versus the 1/2 ton chassis of the Suburban) and a bigger engine (this has a 6.8L V10) in order to really be able to pull the boat and not put too much stress on the transmission. Here are a few more pictures from the Craigslist listing:

Beginning the Weekend

Cyndie has a scrapbooking retreat this weekend that she's helping her friend Sherri out with. She'll be gone from Friday morning through Sunday afternoon. So, she's getting ready for that ... baking some muffins, getting all her scrapbooking* stuff together, ordering photos, etc.

*I'm seriously considering starting to use the term scrapping rather than scrapbooking. After typing scrapbooking several times ... that's a long word. Man, but still, scrapping just sounds so dumb, and really isn't that much shorter.

My preparation is going to get some movies to watch. My sister is taking a Friday/Saturday trip, so Gow and I are going to get together to be single dads, and that means after the kids go to bed Friday night, we're queuing up a couple of guy movies. The theme for the evening is cops, so we're going to watch Brooklyn's Finest and Pride and Glory. My part is to go get the movies*

*How lame is this ... we have to head over to Delavan to get anything besides Redbox. The last movie rental store in Lake Geneva closed a couple of months ago!

Tonight is the last soccer practice/game of the year. The kids have done great and really enjoyed it (especially Timmy).

Midweek Bullets ...

How about some midweek bullets (for lack of any "big" things to write about) ...

• Some sports stuff ... the Vikings have re-acquired star receiver (and sometime pain in the butt) Randy Moss. Exciting times for the Vikes who need to get their season rolling.
• Liverpool has been bought (pending approval from the league and some legal details). This is very good. Their current owners are, to put it succinctly, lame.
• The kids had soccer last night and had a great time there.
• We babysat the local cousins last night while Laura and Gow had a date ... both girls were really interested in the gerbils, but didn't quite know what to do with them. Sally wanted to hold them, but everytime one touched here, she'd jump back and be pretty timid. Daisy was very excited by the gerbils, but lacked any finesse, so was restricted to just looking!
• The Excursion is still on hold while we get the DVD situation straightened out. The seller is getting it repaired, and then we'll (I think) go through with the sale.
• Cyndie and I had art class this morning and really enjoyed that. We were both very happy with the paintings that we came up with.
• Tonight is Cyndie's last sailing event of the year. She's really enjoyed that.
• We worked on our budget last night. We're going to try very hard over the winter to really curtail our expenses so that we can pay cash for the new truck (assuming that happens) and still do some of the projects around the house that we want to do.
• The jacuzzi has sprung another leak. We're really getting tired of that. We'll see where we decide to go with that little gem.
  
• It's a beautiful fall day ... I think the temperature readout in the car on the way home from art class said 73. Awesome!
  

So there you have it, some midweek fun.

Monday ... completed

Monday ... finished. I guess the development to report is that we did NOT go to pick up the Excursion we're in talks over. I'm not sure if I mentioned that yesterday, but the plan was to go get it at 5p in Janesville. When I had seen it, the DVD player was not working. Cyndie and I discussed it and decided that we didn't want to deal with stuff not working. The guy said he'd knock $200 off the price. I called the local Ford dealer and they said that it would most likely cost $665 to fix/replace, with a small chance that it would be less if it was just a loose connection or something. So, we (me and the seller) decided that he'd take it into his shop and they'd get the DVD working. So I should hear from him today regarding that. If the DVD works, the deal is on. If not, then we'll have to see if he's willing to lower the price by $655. If so, the deals is on, if not, we'll probably walk away. More on this breaking story as it develops!

On the gerbil front ... they are here and installed in Emma's room. She's really excited to have them. The kids both played with them and held them. We made a little hut/play thing out of a used cottage cheese container and some wood. I don't think it will last, however, as by this morning the gerbils had chewed it up pretty good. I guess we'll have to go with wood toys and stuff bought from the store made out of harder plastic. Pepper is fascinated by the gerbils. The aquarium that they're in is right at his eye level (currently on top of Emma's dress up box). He just stands there staring at them. We'll see where that goes. This morning when I went in to wake up Emma for her shower, she was up already and rearranging the "furniture" in the aquarium. Funny!

Today Timmy's home from school with a bit of a sore throat. He and Cyndie ran some errands this morning and also got the Suburban back from the shop. Cyndie reports that it is running well, so that's a nice thing. It definitely gives us plenty of time to find the right replacement vehicle.

Crazy Week

Well now, that week didn't go exactly as anticipated. As you may recall, we started the week with a strange Monday where we spent much of the day getting us and the boat back from the weekend up at Green Lake. Well, we've been without the Suburban now for 10 days or so. The shop where we had the transmission warranty is fixing it, though they outsource that work to a different shop, a transmission specialist, down in Illinois. So the Suburban was supposed to be fixed that Friday and being brought back up to Lake Geneva, where we could pick it up on Saturday. That didn't happen. Cyndie talked to "our" (the LG shop) this morning and apparently the "other" shop started driving the truck back up here and something when wrong. I'm not sure what, I'm not sure if Cyndie was told any details, but we're still waiting on that front. A good thing is that we're going to get a loaner car in the interim. It's going to be a Ford Taurus with no power steering ... so Cyndie should get a good workout from that!

Aside from the car dealings, midway through the week my laptop crapped out, so I spent a good portion of Thursday working with the tech guy at work to try to get it moving again, then most of Friday getting my files transferred from the old, non-working machine to a new laptop. Then the rest of the day getting the new one configured and putting software on it, etc. So now I'm up and running again, with a spiffy new laptop. It's got a new operating system on it, Windows 7, so that's both fun, and challenging! So, that's the biggest reason behind not doing any blog posts, my apologies.

The rest of the week was normal ... soccer for the kids, Emma started Girl Scouts (Brownies) for the year. They're already selling girl scout cookies. If you want to buy any, please let me (or Emma) know. If you're at a distance and don't anticipate seeing us soon after the November 8 (I think) receive date for the cookies, you can also participate by buying boxes of cookies that will be donated to a local food pantry. Timmy is very much enjoying practicing soccer at home. We have a goal set up that we gave him for Christmas last year. He digs doing drills and shooting into the net. Lately he's been very into being a goalie. He loves to dive after the ball.

Over the weekend my Auntie Diane and Uncle John (whose cabin near Kansas City we've gone to multiple times) stopped through. It was fun to see them and head out on the lake with them for a late afternoon. Uncle John is a "car guy", so he went with us to look at a Ford Excursion we were interested in. Which leads us too ...

We started looking for a Suburban replacement. Before the transmission went out, we were thinking we'd have a year or two before we'd have to replace it. However, this event got us thinking that we should start looking around to at least see what's out there. We have, we think pending a final, successful return of the Suburban, some time to shop and get a good deal. We're looking for a truck that can easily pull the boat (we think the Suburban may be a bit underpowered to handle the boat) and something that we can, at least, fit our family into, but preferably a 7 or 8 seater. So we went to see this Excursion that was for sale by a private party near the kids' school. It was a good deal in theory, but the truck was not in good shape. It had been in an accident (replaced headlight and fenders, chassis welds, etc), had some rust that had been painted over, the transmission didn't feel right (lots of hesitation in shifting, really high revving), and the oil was REALLY dirty. So we didn't jump at that. Obviously. But yesterday I drove over to Janesville to look at another Excursion. As bad as that first one was, this one was great. The Excursion is built on a Ford F250 chassis, so it's got a good starting basis to tow the boat. This one has a 6.8 liter V10, plenty to pull the boat. It also has a Banks Power system which is an exhaust system add-on which increases the power of the engine. It rides really nice, has been well taken care of, has some nice add-ons (like a DVD player), and, most importantly, is a pretty nice deal. it's around $3000 less and blue book (for a private party seller). So we made an offer, and it was accepted. Now we're dealing with the bank and getting enough cash to make the deal. Right now, maybe because it's early in the week, the local bank doesn't have enough cash for us. I may need to end up getting a bank check or something like that to pay the guy (and asking him if he'll accept that). Fun times.

Oh, and another new toy is coming today. Emma has been saving her money and doing extra chores all summer in order to get a gerbil. I'm not sure what got that into her head, but she's been very persistent. She's managed to save $42.16. So starting around a month and a half ago, she and Cyndie started checking Craigslist and ebay and the newspapers, for cages/aquariums and accessories. Well, yesterday they found someone up in Milwaukee (not too far from my office) who is selling 3 gerbils and all the accessories. She was asking $80, but Emma emailed and told her about herself and that she'd been saving all summer and got a reply along the lines of "awwwww, of course I'll take that =)".* So needless to say, Emma is VERY excited for those gerbils to arrive and become a part of her room.

*Those extra w's and the smiley face where part of the e-mail, I didn't even have to add them for emphasis.

So, there you go, our week begins with some new excitement!