A New Year

New Year's isn't much of a holiday here. Jeremy had planned to work and ended up staying home and doing a bit of work during the day. That was a nice change of plans. Josiah thought we should do something to celebrate New Year's Day. I asked him what he recommended and he said "fruit and candy dessert." He and I bought some fresh fruit and we have enough candy to last until Easter. We had an enjoyable dessert and Christmas Veggie Tale movie night.

My brother traps as a second job in the winter. Well, it's a hobby too, but since he sells the fur for profit I'll call it a second job. This week he brought a science lesson over since he had trapped a beaver, otter, red fox and raccoon in one day. It was fascinating! The beaver was trapped in the pond down the road from our house. That beaver (on the left of the picture) is probably 2 years old. A small one. Apparently beavers can make quite a mess of the drainage systems. We love to watch the otters at the zoo. I didn't really know that they were wild in this area. Brian says the otter run a long cycle. They come through the same area every 2-3 weeks. He trapped two otter this week.

The girls were too scared to come out. Don't ask me why they are afraid of dead animals. Sometimes I'm pretty sure they just need to use every excuse for drama possible. Brian took each animal to the window. Here he is showing them how the beaver has webbed feet.

Aliza informed me last night that we have had too many days at home. I didn't realize that until then that we had been home all week, except for running our drive through errands. Tonight seemed like a good night to eat at Friendly's after church. Mom and Dad joined us. While we were waiting for our food, Dad pulls out his ipad and he and Jeremy start watching football. Really??! My Dad!! The one who never allowed singing at his table. (I was the child inclined to sing or hum all the time.) The moment begged to be documented. =) And, you know, I didn't really care if he watched football at the table. I'm just so thankful that he was at the table, happy and healthy. He spent some time in ER yesterday for difficulty breathing. When you get a call like that from your Mom, it makes you think. Turns out he most likely had some kind of allergic/asthmatic reaction from the very dirty work he was doing at a rental property the day before.