Consider us lucky!

I guess you have to live in NY to get someone to come out and detain a snake!

http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/2008/06/11/20080611snake11-odd.html

New regimen

After 6wks of grueling workouts, I step on the scale. To my amazement, I haven't lost much weight, so I become frustrated. Mike asks me if I want to know a more effective way to lose weight...uh yes! Well according to the statistics (and my personal trainer husband), it is 300x more effective to work out in the morning than the evening. Thanks for telling me that now! So I've been waking up at 6:30am to work out for an hour before all 50 (ok 4), of my kids wake up! Not a huge fan of waking up at the crack of dawn, but I have a goal to lose 15lbs by the boys' first birthday and dammit, I'm gonna make it happen!

Edward Scissorhands

Crew and Cooper got some much needed haircuts this evening. Mike likes to cut their hair himself. Crew had his first haircut at my cousin's barber shop, but since then, they've been at home. So Cooper's turned out pretty good, not a lot of hair to work with there. Crew's...not so much! As most of you know, he has a massive amount of hair, hence the reason his first haircut was at 3mos! Dad went a little crazy with the scissors and now my poor son looks like a Chinese Indian! Not that there is anything wrong with being Asian or Native American, however, when you're French, Irish, German, Greek, Italian, Egyptian and Palestinian; to throw in two more nationalities just confuses things! I may post pics so you can all share in my anguish...

Newest member of our family...

yes, we've added yet ANOTHER member to our already HUMONGOUS family! Mike was at the pet store the other day trying to by another frozen treat for our snake friend, when he decided to stop and look at the live mice. he said he fell in love with this little hopper mouse who was minutes away from being feed for one of the snakes there. so what does he do, he buys it and brings it home. as IF we need another animal!! what can i say, he's a sucker for the helpless! he says so nonchalantly "it was only a few dollars and i don't think it will live long anyway." so it's in a box at the moment until we get him a cage tmrw. all day long bella says "mousey, i wanna hold mousey", nice huh? we decided to name him Freedom, since we "freed 'em"...ha! and it goes with the whole America (name of our cat) and all. We are now a family of TEN!! what next???

Holy snake!

Ok, so my hubby walked out the front door the other night and what does he see on our doorstep? A freakin' snake! Yes, a full blown, huge, hissing snake! He comes running threw the door like he's just seen a ghost (with Bella in the football hold and all). I go to check it out and I start to freak out thinking it could be a rattlesnake. Trying to avoid calling 911, I call Tempe police, who were of NO help! Then I call Tempe Fire, no help there either. They direct us to the Hemoculture hotline, which is supposed to be 24hrs. No answer so we leave a message. We then try to call the Game and Fish hotline, they are only open M-F 8-5, again...no help! We start thinking about our dogs, our cat, Bella playing out back, etc, etc. So we decide to call 911, just in case it is in fact a rattlesnake. Even they couldn't help! The operator said he would not dispatch because none of his officers are trained to catch a snake. Again, he forwards us to this Hemo hotline. So we proceed to leave ANOTHER message (at this time it's midnight). No call back so we go to bed. We get a call at 4am from the oncall snake guy who we describe the snake to. He says it's a gopher snake and not to worry, it's doing more good than harm for us. Ok great!

Next morning Mike goes to let Frankie out to go potty and guess what's on the BACK porch now? The stinkin' snake! Frankie attempts to bite it and it strikes him instead. He's ok since it's not a venomous snake, but I don't think he'll do that again! Keep in mind by this point, Mike thinks he's The Crocodile Hunter! He's grabbing dog crates, empty boxes, brooms, shovels, whatever he can find to try and catch this thing. Finally he slithers off into a hole under our fence. Mike brings home a frozen rat last night and tries to leave it by the hole. This morning it had ants all over it, and no snake in sight. Mission failed!

So the snake lives to see another day. Us on the other hand, won't rest easy until we can catch it and relocate it. The saga continues...

Carry on, carry on...

Ok so Mike and I started working out about a month and a half ago. Sure enough, he hurts his knee AGAIN. So I've continued to work out all by myself for the last week or so. Speed walking or running and then boxing. He still likes to critique me from the sidelines, I guess I need it for motivation so I don't complain! He thinks he tore something. We'll see what the MRI shows, but for now I must carry on without him.