I have been busy the past couple of weeks trying to get our little house ready for two big additions :) I am quite proud of all I have accomplished so far. We have converted the dogs' former room to the girls' bedroom, and our family room is now a playroom. We had to let go of some furniture and household items in the process. The big upside of this is that putting together the playroom actually cost us negative money. The kids' furniture we bought cost less than what we got for the pieces we sold from that room. I love me some Craigslist! The girls' room is small, although not as small as it looks in this picture. The beds are bunk beds, but we do not plan to bunk them right away. This way we have the option of pushing them together so an adult can squeeze in with the kids if necessary.

This week I spent some time working on Helen’s nursery. I rearranged some of the furniture, changed some decorations, and added some items (brand new and “heirloom”) as well. I am not sure how different it looks to an outsider, but it feels to me like it is Helen’s own room now.

Click here for more pictures.

The bunny area was looking pretty ragged, so this afternoon I put an hour or so into rehabbing it and must say I am quite pleased with the results. I think Alvin and Scout like it too! Since we haven’t shown off the bunny lair before, I thought now was a good time to do so:

1. Frame: We use two “puppy pens” (also known as exercise pens) latched together for the frame. We initially had just one, but the space really wasn’t big enough for them. Who can binky in a 4x4 space?
2. Base: Underneath, (on top of the carpet of our finished basement) we lay rubber matting - the heavy duty mats generally used for horse pens. These are great because they are easy to clean and nothing is getting through them. On top of the matting, we usually lay carpet fragments (we are using one large 6x8 fragment here) but in the past we have also used the untreated woven mats you can purchase by the foot at World Market. We will still give the buns the woven mats occasionally to play with, but our Scout is such an avid chewer that the mats never lasted very long to be cost effective. They don’t chew the regular carpet, and we can just cut it up if any accidents happen that stink it up.
3. Tunnel: this is a cement forming tube with two small pieces of wood screwed to the bottom to keep it from rolling.
4. Shelter: the top of an enclosed cat litter box.
5. Litter Box: we just purchased a Rubbermaid storage bin to use for this purpose. We had been using a standard litter box, but our big girl seemed to be “missing” a lot. Hopefully she can keep her tush in this box a little better. We generally line the box with newspaper, put in a bit of “Yesterday’s News” litter for absorption, then fill the rest with timothy hay. They need fresh hay every day.

We also keep some unfinished wood and baskets for the buns to chew on and play with. Scout likes to “rearrange” the pen (pick these things up with her teeth and then throw them back over her head).

We also try to let them out as often as possible, but they must be supervised.

Kellie took some photos of the nursery earlier this week; it's really coming together now... Just in time as well :) Clicking any of the pictures below should bring you to a larger version... See if you can spot the Romeo...

This area of our backyard used to be almost completely covered with straw over mud... We had a swale (shallow trench) put into the yard to stop water from flowing from the backyard directly into our foundation. This completely tore up our yard. Now have our yard back :)
On the left you can see the compost bin I built...

We still don't have grass where the dogs like to "go"...

Picture of Buddy with the new garden...

Every day in our house is an adventure, but Jeremiah and I have had quite a week with animal issues. It started Thursday afternoon, when the roofer came over for our estimate. Our usually calm and friendly Buddy was unhappy to have a visitor who was not interested in acknowledging him, and barked incessantly. This is unusual behavior for him and I was surprised to be unable to quiet him. He eventually was sent to his room and he barked from there.

This must have riled the cats, because as our poor roofer tried explaining what our process/timeline would be, all three cats were suddenly lost in a screeching ball of flying fur about three feet from where we were sitting. Lulu was screaming bloody murder and there were large tufts of fur flying around. The roofer was very upset, “Oh my God, oh my God! Do they have claws? I can’t believe it! Is that cat ok?” Of course she was ok, just agitated and ever the drama queen. For the rest of the visit, he kept looking at the tufts of fur they left on the floor and said later, “I can’t believe the destruction. It’s like National Geographic in here!” I have never been so embarrassed by my pets, and told him, “I swear it isn’t usually like this.” Of course, I chose not to mention Dexter and the bunnies, which he never saw.

Later that evening, we were out in the patio area weeding and watering the perennial garden, and all of the neighborhood birds were screeching and carrying on. Jeremiah soon found the source of the problem: there was a large hawk on top of the utility post in the rear of our yard. She was sitting there with her most recent kill, which appeared to be a full grown rabbit. She sat there for several minutes as we watched, then flew off with her kill in her claws. Jeremiah and I were both amazed with the size of her kill and her strength to carry such a large animal.

On Saturday evening, Jeremiah and I returned from our family cookout just in time to avoid being caught in a torrential downpour. The rain didn’t last long, but came down very fast. About 20 minutes later, we heard squeaking and saw our Romey excitedly chasing a new toy: a little mouse. The mouse was scared to death and we quickly locked the cats in the bathroom so we could get him safely out of the house. We used a glass and a piece of cardboard to catch him. He was very cute and Jeremiah half seriously suggested keeping him. However, having attempted to keep a wild mouse as a pet once before and it ending disastrously (with a bite, a tetanus shot, a police report, and a poor dead mouse) we resisted the temptation. We set him free in the garden and sat down to finish our movie. Fifteen minutes later, we saw Romey trotting toward the spare room with what appeared to be a long tail hanging from his mouth. Sure enough, he had another one. Once again, we captured the interloper (who appeared to have no puncture wounds or other injuries) and set him free in the garden, now concerned that we were being invaded. We followed Romey to the basement and located to possible points of entry: the window to our crawlspace (which was cracked open) and the drain in the floor. We thought that the sudden downpour could have brought the little guys indoors seeking shelter. To be safe, we searched through the basement/storage area and kitchen cabinets for signs they had been setting up shop (AKA mouse droppings and chew marks) but were thankfully unable to find any. Hopefully, then this was a one time incident and our little hunter will keep them out. Our project for today is to replace the drain cover and fix the window so we can close it tightly and hopefully avoid incidents like this in the future.

As Kellie stated in the comments, we had an adjuster stop by last night to look at the roof: we need a new roof and new gutters in the front of the house. He was a really nice guy, Jeff and I talked with him for a while. He said we didn't need to worry about the roof leaking right now, but he said when it starts getting warmer the damage is going to get worse. He said we definitely need to get it done by this winter.

He, and the adjuster that came for our Subaru had a lot to say about the damage down south from the hurricanes last year. These adjusters are contract workers that pretty much go wherever there's storm damage. This guy last night was talking about how they've been working crazy hours the last few months down south. They were expecting to get a few months off before this year's hurricane season, but then all these tornados and hail storms hit the midwest: no break for them. He said its completely unbelievable the damage that is still down there. He was assigned to the Mississippi area. He said that although New Orleans has gotten pretty much all the press regarding the hurricanes, what happened to Mississippi was just as bad. He said they had a 10 foot high swell that went about 12 miles inland(!). He said it looked like a tsunami had gone through. He also said there are a lot of very pissed off people; people pissed that this is flood damage (and won't be paid for by the insurance companies).

Speaking of New Orleans, Kellie's brother Joel just got back from a Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello charity concert down there (his girlfriend is from there as well). He said New Orleans is still a ghost town. Driving down streets he said is really creepy. The houses all have big X's on their front doors with numbers below the X's denoting how many bodies were found inside. None of the street lights work...

It's been awhile since I last posted, more to come soon...

So, last night it was pretty warm. We had the windows open while I was studying in the living room and around 9:30 or 9:45 I hear something outside that sounds like a low, prolonged thunder roll. We had a storm to the west of us most of the night, so I didn't think much of it. Problem was, this rolling kept getting louder and louder. After a few seconds, the dogs and I sat up and I tried to look outside to see what was going on. Dexter started going nuts. Suddenly it got *really* loud; it sounded like we had a stampede going through the roof of our house. I immediately ran to get Kellie. She was freaking out as much as I was. We were starting towards the basement when I looked outside (through the front window) and realized what was going on. There was so much lightening it looked like daylight out. In the lightening, you could see the hail falling. It looked like the sky was dumping baseballs on us. It was a blizzard of hail. The Subaru, parked in our driveway, had its car alarm going off...

At this point, realizing it wasn't a tornado, we calmed down a bit. The hail lasted about five minutes. Afterwards, we went outside to check the damage; it was pretty obvious that the Subaru got hit hard... here's a pic of the windshield:

The roof of the Subaru looks like someone took a hammer to it. I couldn't get any pictures of that as it was too dark. Here's a picture of the hail:

I talked with the neighbors this morning; their kid was running around their front yard last night picking up hail. She said they have a bucket of it in the freezer :) For a size comparison, they took some pictures of the hail next to a tennis ball and they're about the same size.

I checked out our roof from the inside last night and from the outside this morning: everything looked fine. I really hope there's no damage to the roof given how loud it got last night... I guess this is why we have insurance.

To see the radar images of this storm, go here.

I was looking through all the different modules available for drupal and saw a google maps module. Sounded pretty cool so I thought I'd check it out... any ways, the following should be a google map to where we live...

http://www.jbullfrog.net/node/162

This module was extremely easy to set up. The hardest part, which is actually very easy, was obtaining a google maps API key which you can get here given that you have a google account. For more information about this module, go to the GMap module site on drupal.org