Hello everyone!! Our mornings since we got the kittens have been very cozy. Wyatt, Billy and I hang out on the bed, doing whatever (I usually blog) and the kittens romp around the room being silly. Miso has usually come and gone by this point. She likes to wake me up early for her breakfast, cuddle next to me for a bit, then heads to higher ground when the kittens get up. Like me, Miso likes a slow morning.

Speaking of the kittens, they had their spay/neuter surgeries this week, and both of them did great. I was super nervous, and I hated leaving them there overnight, but it helped that my SIL works there and could update me often. She sent me pictures when they woke up. I thought it was hilarious – my kittens woke up and when they were awake enough to have food, they pigged out. The pictures Chrissy sent cracked me up. She sent pictures of Max and Mouse, and also of their mother and sister, who were also there being fixed. If you remember, their mom was a stray my friend let in his house around Thanksgiving, and she had the kittens a week later. The clinic has a grant program that allows them to do the surgeries for a great price – we paid $50 total for the kittens surgery, and that included the meds and vaccines. Anyway, their mom and sister were posing like princesses and my kittens were headfirst in their food bowls.

Isn’t the mom gorgeous? Can you believe she was just wandering the streets? She was underweight despite being pregnant when my friend took her in. She looks soo much better now!

On Valentine’s Day, we had a very simple celebration. Billy and I took a walk in the park at sunset, and then we went home and he made Wyatt and I pancakes with a homemade strawberry compote to put on top. It was delicious! I had mentioned earlier in the week that I really wanted them, for some reason, maybe a bit of comfort food mixed with bright flavors, and he did a great job.

Earlier that day we didn’t do much, other than go to the library. I ended up getting a book from their blind date with a book display, and I could not put it down.

We also had our Blackbirds meeting last week. It seems like once we recovered from being sick and got the all clear, we hit the ground running again. I think I could have used a few more days of slow moving, but that was not in the plans I guess. After our skating adventure this weekend I am not making any plans for a while!

However, Blackbirds was really fun. This time, I had the kids building Yeti traps for a bit of fun Stem time. Billy made 3d printed yetis for every kid, and then we gave them the supplies, the plans and a parent helper and they got to making – or, most of the parents did. It turned into the parents working on the traps with their kids and all of us parents just talking away, and honestly it was so fun. There were so many smiles, and one of the children came up to me afterwards to tell me how much fun she had, and how much she enjoyed making the trap. It made me smile.

We are signing Wyatt up for Little League this year! There is a city near us that offers a special needs team, and Wyatt and a few of his friends are going to join. It sounds perfect. They are super flexible about practices and games, and they only play two innings, which is probably the exact right amount of time for at least my little guy. It is also free! We sign him up this week and I am pretty excited! I don’t think anything starts until April so we have some time to get some practice in here first.

And since I am talking sports and activities, let me brag a bit on Mermaid Girl – who I am going to rename Ninja Girl on here. She has been taking karate, and was just accepted into the black belt club! This means she is fast tracked for her black belt, and has to go to extra classes and one of them is a weapons training. She has a bostaff which sounds so cool! I am very proud of her!

We have also been catching up on things around here, that got shoved aside when we were sick. School, housework, just the bits and pieces of everyday life. I also caught up on my correspondences with my pen pals, and I am heading to the post office tomorrow to mail them all. It has been so much fun, and I get so excited when I open the mailbox and find a letter! Max was attempting to help but fell asleep instead.

And that is about it from me today!! I hope that whatever you do today, you do something that makes you smile!

I am linking up with Deb at Readerbuzz,  Kathryn at Book Date, and  Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

Hello everyone! I am finally taking a moment after a crazy morning of kitten wrangling and not enough coffee.

If you read here pretty regularly, then you know that my husband surprised me with a kitten for Christmas! We couldn’t bring it home until this weekend though, as she was too young to leave her mom at Christmas. So on Friday night, we brought home two kittens, Mabel (orange) and Mouse! We decided that it was better to adopt Mabel and one of her littermates so they could occupy each other and save Miso from a lot of their kitten antics.

You can read more about it all in my Coffee Catch Up from yesterday if you want!

Books:

I finished up The Lady on Esplanade, which was pretty good. There were some aspects that sort of bothered me but the story itself was solid. I am also still enjoying my slow read of Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge. So much so that I joined a Pen Pal exchange for adults through the Analog Life Project I signed up for! I have a new snail mail pal, a woman in The Netherlands. I think I am going to make letter writing a part of week, for my new pen pal friend and also, just to my other in real life friends and online friends. I think it would be fun.

I also started the book While the Earth Holds Its Breath, and goodness I am loving it. I love Moat’s writing style and going on this journey with her. It is interesting to me, mainly because I already love winter, so reading about someone training themself to love it is fascinating.

Screens:

As for screens, Billy and I have been binging Stranger Things, and we finally finished the series last night. It was a great final episode. It was nuts to see them so tiny and little in flashbacks from the beginning and now the actors are all new adults. It was just really well done. I think tonight we are going to watch a movie but I am not sure which one yet. We may even watch two, since today is in the negative temps here.

The In-Betweens:

I already told you about the kittens, and other than that, it has been a pretty slow week. Other than Wyatt’s wheelchair completely losing a wheel while I was pushing it!

It was very scary for a minute, and I am so thankful that I was actually pushing him with both hands when it happened. We were walking through the parking lot to our car after physical therapy when it happened, and if I wouldn’t have had hold of both handles it scares me to think what would have happened to him. I stood there for a moment trying to figure out what to do, trying not to alarm him more than he already was, because he was scared. I ended up leaving the wheel where it was, then wheeling him to the car on one wheel, just holding up the other side myself. However, to load him I had to gently rest the chair on the ground in that weird off balance pose which really freaked him out but then I reminded him I would never let him fall and he calmed down. After we were all loaded back into the car, I drove to my FIL and he got the wheel back on solid enough to get Wyatt in the house, then Billy fixed it the rest of the way. It was quite the adventure, which ended much better than it could have.

Posted Last Week:

Top Ten Tuesday

My Year in Books Meme

Saturday Morning Coffee Catch Up- Kitten Update

Around the Internets:

Just a reminder that Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and I co-host A Good Book and a Cup of Tea monthly which is for any and all bookish posts. And as I am typing this I realize I didn’t post any January information yet! I will rectify that today!

And I have decided to retire my idea of Soup and Story Saturday. I can’t figure out quite how to run it so I will shelve that idea, but still eat soup.

And that is it from me today! I hope that today you do something that makes you smile! I know too, that the world is very heavy right now, with a lot happening. So the small things we do, like just getting a special coffee drink (my current favorite is the matcha latte with vanilla syrup 1 pump and oatmilk from Starbucks), finding a moment to settle down and read, a long walk outside, are all so important to keep our mental health.

And now, just a few pics from the camera!

Good morning everyone!! If you read here regularly, then you might remember that Billy surprised me with an orange kitten for Christmas! I just had to wait for her to be old enough to leave her mother to pick her up.

Well, in the meantime we decided maybe we should also adopt one of her siblings to save our senior cat Miso from the full onslaught of kitten play. So, we told our friend we were interested in two, and well, we got to bring our new babies home last night! Billy braved the snow and cold to drive over and pick them up, and Wyatt and I were waiting very anxiously for them to return.

About 15 minutes later, we heard the car door shut and Billy’s boots crunching up onto the porch. They were here! I let Miso sniff at them through the carrier for a minute, then we took them back to my office, where they will live until they are vaccinated and dewormed. Well, for as long as we can keep them there. We had a little escapee this morning..

Meet Mabel (orange) and Mouse!

Our friend Justin, who has been raising them since they were born in house the week of Thanksgiving after he took in a stray mama, said that Mouse is an explorer and Mabel is a cuddler. And so far it does seem like that is the case! They seem to be adjusting well to leaving their home and mom. They have eaten and used the litter box and and played and cuddled and slept – and that was all within the first hour.

The night was pretty quiet, we didn’t hear much out of them, and I think adopting two was a good idea. They curled up in their little bed and pretty much stayed there until I got out of bed at 6 am to use the restroom. When I came out, I looked into the room and saw them, waiting for me.

I tried to go back to sleep but it was game over. The little plaintive mews came from the room, and Miso’s interest was piqued, and she was prairie dogging to look over the barrier, and then I heard a scrabbling and up popped a small little gray head. Mouse. In seconds she had scaled the wall and plopped down into the hallway. Miso just sort of looked at her like “What in the world is this?” as Mouse made her way into the bathroom. So I got out of bed, scooped up our adventurer, and put her back in the office. Then I got a coffee and joined them, while they played and climbed on me and decided my phone and coffee were new toys. Now I am chilling with Wyatt and Billy is hanging with the kittens for a bit too.

It is definitely a change and something new to get used too, which we will. It will be a lot easier once we can let them roam around, but I want to make sure we don’t have them pass anything (like possible worms) to Miso. I am not sure if we will make it all the way to that appointment but we are going to try!

And that is our big news! Wyatt is a little apprehensive about them, but he will get used to them and love them as much as he does Miso.

They are adorable little balls of fluff, and I am so glad that their mother curled up on Justin’s porch that cold week before Thanksgiving, and that he let her in and let her stay, even after he knew she was a week from having babies. And he kept the mom and one of her babies too, so don’t worry, Mama cat is safe and happy too.

I hope that whatever you do today, you do something that makes you smile!

Hello everyone! I hope that you are all having a wonderful December!

This story was supposed to be part of my soup and story Saturday, but it didn’t work out for me Saturday. So here it is.

A few weeks ago, we were driving down the street when we saw a tiny kitten get tumbled by a car. We saw it scamper off to the side of the road, and Billy immediately pulled over and got out to investigate. The kitten, a sweet little calico, took off running away from him, although he tried to catch it. He wanted to make sure that it was uninjured. He followed it up onto someone’s lawn, and when it darted in back, he stopped his pursuit. We hung around another minute or more to see if it would come back, but we didn’t see it again. Our consensus was that the kitten was okay.

Billy told me later that as he got out of the car he was thinking to himself, “Well, if I catch this kitten, I guess we will have a new family member.” He had been telling me for two years that we don’t need any more furry animals, and he thought, “Well, this might be it. Erin will get her wish.”

So back to the present. A few days ago a friend of ours posted a video of kittens playing, with the caption, “Who wants a kitten?” And among the gray kittens were two little orange ones. I love little orange kittens, but I passed the post by, just dropping a like on it. Billy however, texted our friend, setting up a time to go see the kittens, and one day after work, Billy dropped by. On the way home, he called to let me know that in four weeks time, we are going to have a new little furry friend joining our home!

The story behind the kittens: Around Thanksgiving, a stray cat curled up on the porch of our friend’s house. His partner told him there was no way they could leave her out there, it was so cold, she was underweight, and they could tell she was pregnant. He agreed, she couldn’t stay outside, and so they let her in. They took her to the vet, and the vet told them the kittens would be born very soon – and five days later, she had six little kittens. And my friend had a very full house! His girlfriend is another animal lover, with a whole bunch of animals, including lizards and rabbits and cats. They really didn’t need to add seven more cats to the bunch. (and they didn’t consider it lol) They are keeping the mumma cat, and one of her kittens, and are using a local animal clinic to get them all fixed and vaccinated, and finding them homes. (The PAWS Clinic is amazing – they have a deal for a mom cat and kittens, and all the kittens are only $5 each to get fixed and vaccinated!) And our home will be one of the new homes!

Our kitty Miso is a sweet old girl. She has always been the mild mannered cat, a cat who loves people and she also really loves other cats. Before our previous other cats, Maggie and Marlow, passed away, Miso could always be found following one around, sleeping near them. Now we find her curled up with Wyatt’s stuffed animals. I think she will like having a new little friend as well, and when the new one gets on her nerves, I will let her have her space alone. She is such a gentle cat – and she will always be my baby kitty. She is the cat that of all of our cats was the most mine. She is my shadow.

I can’t wait to properly introduce you to the new baby! She is not old enough to leave her mom yet, so we will get her in about a month, but we are still calling her our Christmas surprise from Billy. Wyatt is also excited – although maybe not as excited as me!

And that is it from me today, and my post about our sort of Christmas kitten!