Thanksgiving Snow

We had a wonderful surprise last Tuesday morning. We woke up to snow! Mary was so excited. She had been wishing for snow for a couple of weeks. Here is a video that I made:

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Here is the link to the video:http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=cb1162a732d3f02dda90bb&skin_id=1603&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url

We had such a great day!

Free digital scrapbooking design personalized with Smilebox

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here are a few images around the house this morning.

I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving!

I'm a teacher now!

Mary had fun at Grandma and Grandpa's house on Sunday. She put on a pair of Grandma's reading glasses. She told us she was a teacher now. She is at the age now where she loves to play pretend and makes up all kinds of stories and invisible friends and animals. We just laughed and laughed at her and she had a blast posing for us.

Give the teacher a big kiss!

Holiday Nuts

I have been busy with nuts and raisins! I finished up shelling all the nuts that I picked up on our drive way from our neighbor's tree. I made them into sugared nuts. If you would like the recipe you can go here. I just did sugared nuts last year but this year a friend gave us a whole bunch of grapes and I made raisins. So added the raisins to the mix. It turned out really good! I think I will call my mix, Ruth Chapter 2 mix, because I made it from gleaning from a crop I did not grow. Mary had a lot of fun watching me. She was strong enough this year to crack one or two small walnuts and she was so excited. I'm sure in a few years I will turn the cracking over to her! I bagged the mix into goody bags and put red bows on them. They are going to be some our Christmas gifts this year. Finances are a little tighter now because of us being in the start up phase of our lamp business. Here are a few pictures I took. My Christmas cactus is a Thanksgiving cactus this year. I brought it inside a little bit earlier this year and the warmth caused to set it buds on sooner than past years. It gets bigger each year!

Shelly

My last post ended on a sad note but I forgot to add one thing. When I was going to buy baby fish food for the Angel fish fry, I decided to buy another snail for the tank. I had bought several snails but they all died. The pet store guy suggested I try a Japanese trap door snail. So I did. After the baby Angel fish fry died, my trap door snail had a baby and then over the next 9 days she gave birth to a baby a day, giving me 10 little nails. So, I got 11 snails for the price of one. Trap door snails are male and female and give live birth. Mary and I named her Shelly and she and her babies are doing well, keeping both tanks completely clean of algae and makes my job of keeping the aquariums clean so much easier! Here is a picture of the proud mama after giving birth to her first baby.

Fish Chronicles

This summer our angel fish turned a corner in their life cycle. They had quite a struggle when they first laid eggs last December. You can read about the Chaos in the Nursery here. This struggle continued every 3 or 4 weeks up until July and the female finally was able to save the eggs until they turned into free swimmers, but lost the battle to the male and they all got eaten by him. So, I found a smaller aquarium at a garage sale and decided that after he fertilized the next batch of eggs he and our catfish would go on a vacation and leave the female alone to raise her young. I was so hopeful to see a batch of their off spring. I figured they would be very pretty since she was a marble and he was a gold. Maybe I would have some looking like a koi angel fish which are more unusual. Here is the aquarium that I put the male in:

Here are the 3 aquariums that I have. The little one has my beta fish, Julia, in it. You can read about his story here.

The female now had a brood of babies to raise. Here they are in the wiggler stage.

Here they are a day before they took to the waters and started to swim. They are the dark area on the rock right below her fin.

Here they are free swimming around their mom.

It was so fascinating to see her with her young. So, very diligent and amazing was her care for them. I had baby fish food for them and I kept the water really clean. I had so much fun watching them through a magnifying glass. You could see their little eyes, mouths and tails. Each night she would gather them all together and they would settle down on the rock for the night. This is so she could protect them during the dark hours when things are harder to see coming. There was no other fish in the aquarium but that was in her programing. So amazing. To my sadness they didn't live more than 4 days. They kept dying and falling to the bottom of the aquarium. I don't know if the food wasn't right for them or if there was something wrong in the water. I decided I would just give it my best shot with this group of babies and not spend a lot of money specializing in angel fish fry. We just don't have the money right now and I don't know what I would do with a bunch of baby angel fish. The mom in me just really wanted to see some of their young make it to adulthood and see what they looked like. The female sulked for a day or so after her last babies died. I cleaned the tank and put the male and the cat fish back in the tank and Julia got a new home. I put him in the aquarium that I had been keeping the male angel fish in. Now he has lots of room to move around in:) Now, when a batch of eggs are laid on the slate stone I just lift it out of the water and wash them away. I just can't see the fish going through all the fighting and struggling for these eggs and they don't survive. So, I feel that is the kindest and best solution for now. Maybe someday I will raise baby angel fish but not now.

Ruth Two

I am trying my hand at raisin making. Some friends at church have a loaded grapevine and they gave us a bunch of Thompson Seedless Grapes. I got out our food dehydrator and loaded it up with grapes. It took a couple of days but they turned into really yummy raisins. Here is how they started out ....

and this is how they ended up...

I also have been cracking the walnuts that have fallen on our drive way from our neighbors tree.

I plan on making a sugared walnut and raisin mix for Christmas again this year. I told Rich I think I will call it a Ruth Chapter Two mix. Ruth chapter 2 in the Bible tells about Ruth gleaning in the fields. That is how I feel, by reaping the fruits from a harvest I did not work to make happen. I just got a little bit from the corners of the field :)