One More

SpiderViv!

Slides and Cows

Sorry about the lack of posts for the past few days but blogspot has been causing me all kinds of grief with photo uploading.

First off, here's a pic of Viv trying to carry around a rather large bag of cat food. She grunted and strained to get this out of the bin we keep it in then got really pissed because it was too heavy for her.


I know she doesn't look like she's having fun in this one, but she hoots and hollers the minute we get to the playground and actually launches herself down the slide. We tried to get some shots on the bigger slides but she was moving a little too fast to get a picture and still manage to catch her at the end of the slide.


The last few are from Saturday, when we took Viv to a Halloween party at a friend's house.

Monkey girl

Not a lot to report except for the fact that Viv now climbs on anything and everything she can find- chests, ottomans, toys- you name it. So far we haven't had any accidents but has she has given us a heart attack a time or two. Oh- and the fish are doing great.

Zoo and a guppdate

We got up bright and early today and took Viv to the zoo before the Saints game. It was the first time we cut her loose in the petting zoo and she seemed pretty worked up about it. We also have 3 healthy guppies left and the tank appears to be through the first part of the cycle and heading into higher nitrite levels with a drop in ammonia/ammonium (ya, I've been testing the levels).

Guppdate

Well, we've lost 2 of the 5 guppies in the new aquarium. After some reading, I've learned that we overstocked a fair amount for a fresh tank (thanks Petco, great advice). New tanks apparently go through a nitrogen cycling process to produce the several species of bacteria to convert ammonia to nitrites then convert nitrites to nitrates. The whole process takes around 6-8 weeks to fully cycle and make the tank safe for future fish. The remaining 3 fish seem like tough little guys so hopefully they'll survive the coming ammonia spike.

names

I was going to mention this last week but it slipped my mind- when we were at the pumpkin farm they had a llama named Tony and an alpaca named Thunder. At any rate, the sign was pretty poorly done and from a distance (which is where we first saw it) it appeared they had 'Tony Thunder the Alpaca'. The word llama was too small to read at a distance while the alpaca inexplicably had huge text to describe him. Regardless, Tony Thunder is possibly the coolest f'n name an alpaca could ever hope to have. We haven't named Viv's fish yet- but Tony Thunder has given us some great ideas.

Misc.

First off, this our neighbor Andy's fence. He's a bit of a Saints fan and put up the second line dancers before the season started. After the Saints lost the 4th regular season game in a row, he put bags on all their heads. The Sants won last Sunday so maybe the bags will come off soon, we'll see.


Next pic. Viv nearly pooped her pants over my Dad's aquarium so he and grammie Marjie gave us one of their many spare aquariums and pump & filter setups. We got the gravel, plants and water up and running last weekend and I put 5 flashy guppies in tonight. We'll put some snails, an aquatic frog and a few more fish in once the aquarium cycles for a few weeks.


OK, the last one tonight is a pic of grandma Kathy and Viv with Charmaine Neville. Charmaine played a gig for kids at one of the local libraries last weekend and Kathy took Viv to it.

Things Not Lost in a Flood

When I was about 6 my parent's basement flooded and until the last couple of days I thought that all of my pictures as a kid were lost. As it turns out, my grandmother had a copy of many of the pictures. Here's one of my dad and myself from 1974 or so:



At any rate, we made it back to N.O. late this afternoon. Al and I will be back to our usual routine and Viv will return to having her every whim satisfied by Grandma Kathy :)

Carbondale, IL

We made a stop in Carbondale today and had some tasty pizza and a nice hike in Giant City State Park. Giant City is easily the most beautiful park in Illinois- miles and miles of trails through huge rock formations and old growth hardwoods. There's also a great little town called Makanda at the edge of the park where we had a bit of ice cream afterwards. A bit of political trivia- Makanda was the home of Senator Paul Simon.

Sullivan, IL

This morning we went from Bloomington-Normal to Sullivan, IL to see my mom and her family. We took Viv out to a pumpkin farm that just happens to be in Amish country.










We're heading to Carbondale in the morning to do some hiking and eat lunch at Quattro's Pizza. Quattro's has some of the best pizza I've had in any place I've lived in. After lunch and a hike we'll head on down to Memphis to stay tomorrow.

First Part of Trip

We arrived in Bloomington on Friday evening after a rather miserable 11 hour drive from Jackson, MS. We'll be doing shorter days for future trips.

Viv discovered that Daisy will lick her if she sticks her face close enough:



Viv pointing at the terracota sun on the front porch:


with her grandpa Alan:


We've taken her out on the bike on the local rails to trails path for both of the past two days:


Action shot (of Viv asleep):



Great-grandma Jarand:



This is around hour 5 of the drive up. You can imagine how the last 6 went.




Viv enjoys getting ready for the bike rides almost as much as the ride itself:




Anyway, this is our last day in Bloomington. My dad left for Germany this afternoon and we'll be heading to Sullivan, IL to visit her grandma Linda in the morning. I'll try to post some more pictures in the next couple of days. We're going to do some hiking around Carbondale, IL on Tuesday and stay in Memphis Tuesday night.