Five fun-filled days!

I am grateful for the recent opportunity I had to go to Utah for a very long weekend for some girl time mostly with my sister, Jennifer, and my cousin-but-basically-a-sister, Kami!  So fun!!!  Here's a bit of what I did and who I saw while I was there.

I arrived on Friday and spent the day and evening with Kami and her family (she has a husband, two cute girls, and a very handsome little son :o).  This is who helped Kami pick me up from the airport:

Someone needs a nap!

 Jennifer came and spent the night there with me that night as well.  So fun!  One of the first things the girls showed me when I got to their house was a fish aquarium they had made for me, so I wouldn't be too lonely without my fish while I was away from them.  So cute!

The big white fish on the bottom is a sucker fish, complete with a suction cup and everything!  ;o)  They rigged the fish so if you moved the string they were attached to, it looked like they were swimming.  How awesome is that?!  Thank you, girls!

On Saturday I got to visit both of my grandma's with Jen, which was so much fun!  That, of course, meant eating Tiny Spicy Chicken for lunch with Grandma R,

and going on a pie adventure for dinner with Grandma S!

It was so wonderful to see and spend time with them!  I love, love, love my grandmas and am very grateful for the special relationship I have with each one.  :o)

On Saturday night, Jen and I drove back to her house and had a slumber party there.  They next day I went to her Young Single Adult Ward for church.  It was interesting for a couple of reasons:  1)  I haven't been to a YSA Ward for a long time!  2)  They have many deaf people in their ward, which makes it super cool to see how everyone is able to communicate without distracting or taking away from church.  Pretty cool!  They even use sign language to sing the hymns and say prayers.  It was a really neat experience!

On Sunday night Jen and I drove to Kami's brother's home to have dinner with his family.  So nice of them to host dinner!  There were 10 kids and 6 adults present.  It was pretty crazy at times, but so enjoyable!

One of my favorite parts of the whole trip was getting to know Kami's youngest!  He is so, so, so cute!  And he smiles all the time and has the cutest laugh!  I held him A LOT!!!  And he so way loves his Auntie Darah ;o)  How can you not resist loving him??

On Monday, Kami and I got to spend time together, just the 2 of us.  Our plan was to see the new movie about Joseph Smith on Temple Square and then get lunch.  However, they kept having technical difficulties and couldn't get the movie to work...  Kinda frustrating...   But we shared 2 really amazing sandwiches and had a very fun time anyway!  It was nice to have Kami-Darah time, no kids, no husbands, etc.  Reminded me of fun times we had living together while going to college.  Fun, fun times!

Tuesday was the girl's first day of school:  one in 1st grade, and the other in Pre-school.  (Can't believe they're as old as they are!)  It wouldn't be the first day without pictures, right??

As much fun as I had, I was very grateful to return home to my handsome husband (who had diverted back to bachelor life and hadn't been getting much sleep, crazy man!).  Dave surprised me with these beautiful homecoming flowers when he picked me up at the airport.  :o)  Thanks, my love!

So grateful to everyone who helped make my trip a most fabulous one!!!

Yo Fohchoon Cookee Say...

This weekend doesn't hold too much excitement for me.  Until now.  ;o)

Here is the fortune from my fortune cookie today:

This weekend will bring you a surprise.

Oh goodie!!  Weekend, hurry up and get here!  ;o)

P.S.  Blog about my Utah trip coming soon!  (Maybe that's my surprise:  time to actually update my blog!  LOL)

Happy Birthday, Bryan!

We went to the Abamonte's home to surprise Bryan with a surprise party to celebrate his 24th birthday.  (My little brother is 24?!?  Twenty-four?!?  When did that happen?!?!)  Ariel did a WONDERFUL job organizing, decorating, cooking, and keeping it a secret from Bryan.  Way to go!!!

In addition to cake balls, I made a german chocolate cake (Bryan's favorite) so we could put 24 candles on it and see if he had the lung-power to blow them ALL out in one breath.  Well, he managed 21.  Better luck next time!  ;o)

I am grateful Dave and I were able to go celebrate with Bryan!  I'm gonna miss him being so close during the coming months...  It's been nice to see he and Ariel often this summer.  :o)

What a mess!

So, I made cake balls for my brother's surprise birthday party this past weekend.  I decided to use white cake mix and vanilla frosting; I got both milk chocolate and white chocolate candy coating to add some variety.  Since this is the first time I've made cake balls, I did a lot of reading online and talking to friends to get all the cool tips and tricks.  I was slightly nervous, and worried it was going to take FOREVER, but it really didn't take as long as I thought and wasn't even as tough as I thought.  It was plenty messy though...

I started out by making this beautiful white cake.  Looks pretty tasty, if you ask me!

The recipe said I had to crumble the cake.  I questioned the method of choice:  my hands.  I was supposed to take my clean hands and wreck a beautiful cake?!  No way!!!  But, I did, and here's the after picture...

I moved it to a bowl so I could add the frosting.

This was the super disgusting part:  mushing the cake and frosting together.  With my bare hands.  So nasty!!!

Then, I used a small cookie scoop to make balls, then rounded out the edges by rolling the balls in my hands. 

I had an idea after making the first half of the cake balls:  what if I add peanut butter to the cake mix??

That was a super yummy decision!  So glad Dave's love of peanut butter inspired adding the peanut butter  :o)

Here's what they looked like after coating them with the chocolate.

They seemed to be enjoyed by all!  I will definitely make these again!  But, maybe next time, I can find a friend to do the messy parts  ;o)

A Nursery Rhyme Kind of Day?

Having some Little-Miss-Muffet-type moments this morning... Except I'm not on a tuffet (whatever that is); I'm at my desk at work. And instead of curds and whey, I'm eating honey nut cheerios. But I did get startled by not one, but TWO spiders who fell down beside me on long web strand thingys... Sick! I knew I should've stayed home today! lol

 Oh, and there will be a post about some of this weekend's happenings coming soon, as in today or tomorrow  :o)

Dear John... Ish...

Dear Sloppy Joe,

You have been a yummy addition to my life recently.  However, I do not like eating you so many days in a row.  (Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...)  Let's break up.  Maybe, someday in the distant future, I might be able to eat you again....  But for now, just go away.  Far, far away!

Love,
Me

Does this mean we're grandparents??

We drove to Peachtree City right after work last Thursday to celebrate Dave's Mom's birthday with the rest of the Wheeler clan.  We didn't get home until 10.  We normally feed our fish right before we leave the house at 6 every morning and then again right when we get home from work at 6 in the evening.  Since we were getting home so late, I assumed our cute little fishies would be hungry!  So I went straight over to the aquarium and fed them.  I noticed that two of the fish (Clyde, the guppy, and Neytiri, the silver platy) weren't going to the top of the tank and eating like they normally do.  They were hovering over the rocks.

My heart sank.  The last time that happened, the fish that hovered was dead by morning.  :o(

I started freaking out a bit and Dave tried to calm me down.  "We can't do anything about it now.  All we can to is use the net to get them out in the morning."  How comforting...

Dave left to brush his teeth and get ready for bed, but I just couldn't step away from the aquarium.  I love the fish and hated to think that we were going to loose TWO more!!!  I sat there thinking, "What in the world are we doing wrong?!?!?" 

Remembering it was late and we had work the next morning, I decided I needed to just let go and go to bed.  As I started to leave, I noticed something moving in the rocks.  I called Dave over and asked him what it was.  He said, "Ummm....  It's a baby fish."  What the?!?!?!?!?

How in the world could we have fish when all the platys are female??  We figured out that we must have bought a pregnant fish.  (They really should make it easier to tell if a fish is pregnant or not!)

And, I don't know what I was thinking, but I didn't think the fish would be so teeny tiny!  They are super little!!!

Dave said that fish don't just give birth to one or two fish, so we started searching for more baby fish.  Sure enough, we found more.  We realized that the two fish who weren't eating were actually "hunting" for baby fish to eat.  Platys eat their babies.  Yuck!!!  Not very good parenting skills if you ask me!

So, here it was well after 10 pm.  But, Dave (the wonderful husband that he is) began a Search and Rescue mission to get as many of the babies out that he could.  He successfully saved 8 of the cute little fish babies.  We put them in a good-sized rubbermaid container.  (Only had the 1 tank...)

Anyway, long story short...  On Saturday, we watched as all the large fish in the aquarium pecked at the rocks and hovered around the plant, waiting to catch a poor, helpless, unsuspecting baby fish.  How rude!!!!!  It was not fun to watch and so we knew we didn't have many options unless Dave wanted to deal with a freaked-out wife after witnessing national geographic moments right in our aquarium.  Not cool!!!

Dave and I took a date-night trip to PetSmart and bought a bigger aquarium.  (Yes, we are suckers!  Only for cute teeny tiny baby fish though!)  Dave (again because he is such a wonderful husband) got the big tank ready and moved the 4 big fish (Crush, Meg, Neytiri, and Clyde) to the new 10-gallon tank and put the "rescued" babies back in the 5-gallon tank.

It took awhile for the babies to realize their lives were no longer in danger.  We were finally able to count 12 fish babies!  Pretty cool!

This is so way NOT what we expected when we got our original fish a couple weeks ago.  However, it has been amazing to watch the babies grow so quickly.  They are so stinkin' cute!!!  I could watch them all day!  :o)  (And I try to...  But Dave thinks I'm crazy...  ;o)

Oh!  After doing research online, we are thinking that Sidney (our fish who died) was probably the Mom of these cute little fish.  It is not uncommon for platys to die after giving birth.  Sad!  (However, I don't know that I'd be in great shape either if I gave birth to over 12 babies at one time...)  Some of the fish babies are starting to show some of the same colorings and markings as Sidney.  Can't wait to see what they look like in a few weeks!

Here are some pictures of fish aquarium adventures  :o)

The blob in the top left is a pebble from the aquarium.  There is a baby fish not too far south of the pebble; there is also one at the very right side of the picture, almost directly across from the pebble.  They are tiny!  (This picture is zoomed in quite a bit.)

These are the cool blue and green pebbles Dave and I bought for our new LED-lit aquarium.  Tamara would love it! :o)

Here's a pic of both the tanks and our temporary set-up.

In honor of this festive occasion (while Dave was setting up the new tank) I wore my fishy pajamas.  :o)

Our so way amazingly cool aquarium!  There's lots of extra room in there for our fishies!

Here's a close-up of one of the baby fishies.  Kinda hard to see, but it's that little gold dot underneath the blue cleaner thingy.  See it??  I told you they were teeny tiny!!!

Here's the feature that sold Dave on this nifty LED-lit aquarium.  It has a night light!  Look at the blue-ness!!!  Oooooo!!!  Aaaahhhhhhh!!!  How pretty!!!

Anyone going to want a fish in about 4-5 weeks?  I'm so way serious!  We can't offer a 14-day guarantee like PetSmart

And then there were 5! And then 6! No, wait -- 5....

It's been a crazy past few days at the Wheeler household!  Not only was my beautiful Mom in town all week (which made for a so way awesome week!!!), Dave and I got 4 more fish on Friday on our way home from work!  Crush, the original orange platy, seemed to warm up to them fairly quickly and has started swimming a lot more.  :o)

We got a variety of fish:

Another platy; this one is gold/yellow female with cool black accents on the back fin.

A red gold tuxedo guppy.  He is a boy.  :o)  Love, love, love the flowy tail!

 We just one one of these zebra-striped danios.  She is a girl and very beautiful!  She is also the biggest of  our fish.

And we got this algae eater who is really fun to watch hop around the aquarium.  :o)  His name is Shamu!  He is the smallest of the fish.

We enjoyed watching them over the weekend, especially me!  These are my very first pets ever!!!  (Well....  Unless you count the cute ladybug Jennifer and I tried to have many, many years ago.  I think the ladybug was our pet for maybe 6 minutes?  And that may be stretching it?)  So, I would pull up a chair next to the aquarium and sit there watching.  So much fun!

On Saturday night, however, we noticed that the danio was starting to chase the other fish a bit.  By Sunday morning, it was kind of nipping at them too.  NOT GOOD!!!  We came home from church and couldn't see Crush.  I was panicked, thinking the stupid danio ate him.  Dave found him hiding in the little decorative house in the tank.  We realized that the other fish were having to fight for food and constantly hide so Dave took the danio out (which was a feat because the danio is super quick!).

Found out danio's are school fish; they do best in groups of 3 or more.  (We had so way asked the guy that helped us purchase the fish, but he didn't mention that at all!!!  Not fair!!!)  Since our tank is too small for that many fish, we were able to return the danio and got two more little fish in its place.  We wanted another cool-looking guppy, but it was a girl and we'd rather not have little baby guppies yet.  ;o)

So, we got two more platys.

 Yes, that's a gold Mickey Mouse platy.  Super cool, huh?!

The silver platy we got has metallic blue highlights in certain lighting (which looks awesome!), but it doesn't have as quite a definitive Mickey Mouse shape on it's posterior. 

Dave finally let us name the fish.  He said we should wait a few days to make sure they survive. 

orange platy - still Crush (named for the orange soda)
gold platy - Sidney (named after Jennifer Garner's character, Sidney Bristow, from Alias, which Dave and I watched together while dating before we got married)
tuxedo guppy - Clyde or Fabio (he's the only guy in a tank full of girls...  ;o)  and he has long, flowy hair, i mean tail!)
gold Mickey Mouse platy - Meg (named for Meg from the Disney movie Hercules; I used a line from a song Meg sang to explain my feelings about Dave during a Define The Relationship chat we had:  "At least out loud, I won't say I'm in love."  ;o)
silver platy - Neytiri (Nay-teer-ee) who is the lead-role blue girl from the movie Avatar which happened to be our first official date (which is quite the story by itself! ;o)
algae eater - all of our algae eaters will be named Shamu!  If this one happens to die, the next one will be Shamu 2.  Then Shamu 3, etc...

Well, yesterday morning when we fed the fish, Sidney didn't rush up to eat anything like she normally does.  I was concerned.  But, we had to go to work.  When we got home, she was dead, laying in the corner of the tank where she had been before we went to work.  I was pretty sad about it.... My first pet death!  What did we do wrong?!?  Dave says fish die all the time, and to not worry because PetSmart offers a 14-day guarantee with their fish, so we can get a free replacement Sidney.  It's still sad...

I hope all the rest of our cute fishies survive today!!!  Don't worry, it's the first thing I check when I walk in the door from work and the last thing I look at as I leave the house in the morning to go to work.  I love our cute fish babies!!!

And, I love that Crush is a more normal fish now!!!  Yay for friends!!!  That's all he needed  :o)