Home and Golfing

I'm back, and glad to be. I've missed being here! After my flight being canceled, having to reroute and getting home six hours late, my long day ended with two of my close friend dropping by at 2 in the morning to see me! It was a great way to be welcomed home. Today I wanted to do something with my family. I said bowling but I got voted out... we went golfing instead and it wasn't mini golfing to my disappointment. The last time we went golfing as a family I lost, big time. I couldn't ever hit my ball and when I did I took a big chunk of grass with me and it went about 5 feet to the side. The good news was that today we just went to the "range" and hit balls, and I must say that I'm much better at that then playing an actual game. There is no score keeping and no one has to wait for me to catch up. It was a lot of fun!

On our way to play golf

 I'd like you to notice my two coats... I was freezing!

Dianne totally showed us up. She was great at it. Actually everyone was really good at golfing! I even had some amazing hits 

family picture

after family picture

Later that night we had Chinese, watched a movie, and I went to Logan High School's play. It was Pride and Prejudice and it was great! Laurie was Mary and she did a wonderful job. I love that girl.

Zuwati

This is Zuwati our striped hyena :) totally makes my day

For the birds

This is Pixars short "For the Birds". I love it! But this post is all about birds. I love birds and birds love me. I am a bird kind of person. So here are all "my" birds here:
I have my three cockatiels. Two baby birdys who haven't gotten their color yet and then an ancient moody bird. These guys live out in the portable in the birthday room! They are very well socialized and love sitting on your shoulder. When I'm in there I take my baby Beans out and put her on one shoulder and Patches on the other!

Beans

Rice

Patches

 The cockatiels aren't the only birds in the portable. There is also Bindy. Bindy is our Laughing Kookaburra. There is a song about here, that apparently no one knows anymore. But she is a pretty bird! I have a video of her singing/laughing and a video of her eating her dinner :)

I love watching her eat. I guess she was shy with me recording her but she is very entertaining to watch, but she's not my favorite bird to watch while they eat. Lurch is my favorite. Lurch is a Vulture and loves his rats! The video doesn't do it justice... but here's Lurch

We have three Birds that share a room downstairs. Sometimes that rooms get's awful loud with all the squeaking, chirping and singing but I love sitting in there with them and just listen. There is Jester, Alfred and Itchu.

Jester, she doesn't like me. She's bit me a couple times.

Alfred, my favorite!

And Itchu. If you listen you can hear him talking. He's a great bird, but there is no way that I would touch him, not at this point anyways. Most the time his talking is cute and I like listening to him but he has recently started barking and he does it ALL THE TIME. It's awful. It's not like a dog that you can just tell it to be quiet, you tell him and he just keeps going. There is a movie below that you can hear him barking in also the other noise at the end are the lemurs outside!

And don't forget about the chickens and the turkey! 

My window

From my window I can see almost all of the animals here at TGRE. I love it, I can sit here all night watching everyone and what they are doing. My favorite is looking out and seeing the Kangaroos playing at night. The other morning I was sitting watching the Red Kangaroos hopping around and enjoying the cool morning air, when I saw one of the joeys out jumping around too! She was so cute and so happy to be out of that hot little pouch:

I love looking out and seeing Snark, Freeda, Noel and Wolf Girl (the "barn dogs". the outside dogs that live in the barn.) looking up at my window waiting for me to toss them a piece of bread or a chunk of fruit. I'm used to looking out my window into staring eyes, waiting for me to give attention to them, but one of my first nights here last year I got a bit freaked out. I looked out my window and Sindu, our 400 lbs tiger, was looking right at me! At first it startled me to see her looking up here but that wasn't what scared me... Every single time I looked out the window, she was there. Looking right at ME and the look on her face just screamed "I'm going to eat you". I soon came to find out that they use to get Sindu's food ready in my room. Ah it all made since now. The face, the staring. Got it. Now I love looking out and seeing that pretty girl looking up at me :)
I also have a friend (for lack of a better work) in my window. Now she really DID scare me half to death when I first saw her! I was looking out into the distance to see if I could see the wallaroo joey when this huge spider crawled out of nowhere! It was right in front of my face she grazed my nose as she scampered past. Now even though I am an animal person I am NOT a bug person. Yuck. But I didn't want to kill it. I mean it was there before me. So I let it be and after getting over my fear of it crawling all over me in my sleep I've rather enjoyed it living with me :) I haven't had any bug problems yet! *knock on wood*.

All this talk about windows reminded me of one of my favorite stories given in a talk by President Monson in the 2010 Women's Conference called Charity Never Faileth:

A young couple, Lisa and John, moved into a new neighborhood. One morning while they were eating breakfast, Lisa looked out the window and watched her next-door neighbor hanging out her wash.
“That laundry’s not clean!” Lisa exclaimed. “Our neighbor doesn’t know how to get clothes clean!”
John looked on but remained silent.
Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, Lisa would make the same comments.
A few weeks later Lisa was surprised to glance out her window and see a nice, clean wash hanging in her neighbor’s yard. She said to her husband, “Look, John—she’s finally learned how to wash correctly! I wonder how she did it.”
John replied, “Well, dear, I have the answer for you. You’ll be interested to know that I got up early this morning and washed our windows!”

My kangaroo likes looking out the window too :)

Window. Window. Window.

Sick in Texas

It is now Thursday night. I've been sick since Monday night. That's a long time to be sick with the stomach flu! Especially in a place I love! Now I say it's just a flu bug I caught but Gwen begs to differ. She does think it's a bug and I did catch it but not the flu. Saturday while I was giving a tour I hopped over this wood fence to talk to my group, like every other tour I give. Unlike every other tour I didn't hop high enough because I scraped my leg on the fence. I didn't think any thing of it, I must admit I'm a bit clumsy and get scratched up all the time, and continued talking about that particular animal. One of group members on my tour raised her hand and told me I was bleeding. That wasn't new news to me either. I often get little scratches that turn red and bleed for a sec and then it's fine. When she told me I started examining my arms and fingers and didn't see anything. It didn't even occur to me that it was my leg that I had caught on the fence that was bleeding! I didn't think I had hit it hard enough, but apparently I had. It was gushing blood and it looked pretty bad.  I went and fixed it up and continued the rest of the day. I had to change my band aides three times within a couple hours because it was bleeding so much. (I am going somewhere with this story I promise) We thought I may even have to go get stitches because it was bleeding so much and because it was such a long cut. Well by that night it had stopped bleeding, thank goodness, and scabbed over.

The next day Kim took me to this beautiful creek that runs near here house. It was shallow and slow moving so we spent a good couple of hours walking down stream and then walking back up stream in it. I do have to say it was very strange to step into the creek and not have it be freezing cold like all the water is in Logan! When we had our fill of playing in the water we went back to Kim's place and I was sure to change my band aides and wash my cut so it was nice and clean. (this is the point of the whole story) Well Gwen is convinced that I caught something from the creek, through my cut, which I guess could have not completely scabbed over. It could happened. But whatever. Anyway it happened here I am... sick.

 All of Tuesday and Wednesday I spent upstairs, in the dark, sleeping and puking and that's about it. Today I felt much better, like a person again. The only thing was I was really tired. After not eating anything except Saltines and Sprite for the past three days I had no energy! But I couldn't stay upstairs any longer. I was going crazy. The cats were driving me up the wall and I needed some fresh air. And fresh air I got :) I took my book and water out to the patch to read and get some sun! It was a beautiful day and I loved being out there! (ps I was reading Catching Fire the second book in the Hunger Games Series. I just finished it and I liked it! I still like the first book the best but this on was still good! Thank you to Katie and Jolynn for letting me borrow them). So I'm sitting out there reading for maybe two, three hours. I get my fill of the sun and feel tired again so I go inside. Now I did remember to put sunscreen on my face AND my arms but it never occurred to me to put it on my legs. I have never gotten sunburned on my legs. I'm never sitting down so the sun is shining directly on my legs to burn them. Well today I was and my poor white, logan-winter legs got sunburned.

And on my way back from the patch I stopped to help Sassy with her winter hair again. I didn't have a brush so I was just pulling it off of her. She still has a lot that needs to come off. We left a trail today.

April Fools

Michael: Hey I found a puppy and Mom's letting me keep her.
Me: WHAT! I've been asking for a dog my whole life and you FIND one and get to keep it!
Michael: Yep. Guess we know who the favorite of the family is
Me: Surprised Kristin isn't the one getting it ;)
Michael: Let's skype and you can see her
Me: Okay!
Michael: APRIL FOOLS. There's no dog :P

Ya I totally forget yesterday was April first. Man when he said he got a dog I was so mad. What the heck... life's not fair. But the more I thought about it the more I was okay with it. We have a family dog! But then my dreams come crashing down when I realize what day it is... what a cruel joke to play.