Nine days! Single digit days now. A week and a half to go! Get us out of Michigan, woo hoo!
We had a bit of a hard day yesterday. First, our African albino clawed frog (named Frenzy) died. :( We had her for two years. I loved dropping the food pellets on her when she was near the top of the water (as you can see in the photo). When she did this, she'd be hunting and ready to pounce... so she would jump a little out of the water to get the pellet in her mouth, and then use her front feet to push it the rest of the way in. She was so cool. We'll have to get another one in Arizona.
Nikki took great pains to empty the tank of water and gravel, making sure not to get any gravel in the sink's garbage disposal (we've done that a bunch of times and really messed that thing up!). We were eating dinner, and she got up to get a drink. Our "dining room table" (ha ha, what dining room?) is right against the kitchen, so Nikki was backing up to get away from the chair so she could turn around. Crack! Her foot hit right into the tank, which was on the kitchen floor. The back of her foot was bleeding, and there was a big hole in the tank, out of which was pouring the last remaining water in the tank. I grabbed an alcohol pad (I know, owie!) and a band-aid, mopped up the tank water, and took the tank to the dumpster. Oh well. The tank had a slow leak anyway. I'm just sorry my baby got hurt, and that we lost our froggie. We also lost a rat (Makenna) and a green tree frog (Guacamole) over the last two months. It's sad that so many of our babies won't be making this trip with us.
Then
Sarah got in some major trouble. You see, her teacher told the class to write a true story in which she got in trouble. So she proceeded to write a story (excellent work, by the way) in which she and
Savannah were riding the bikes in Wal-Mart's bike aisle, and someone announced over the intercom that they needed some attendance in the bike section. They got scolded by an employee to get off the bikes. Nikki and I had no knowledge of this until reading the story. The only thing we knew, is that Sarah was upset because "
Skylar knocked over a display and we got yelled at." She dumped the whole thing on Skylar, when in reality, she had nothing to do with it. She could only watch her sisters ride the bikes, since her feet couldn't reach the pedals! Oh yeah, and being speech-delayed, she's the one least able to defend herself or explain what really happened. Nice, Sarah. Now she's grounded for five days, and Savannah was grounded for two. Why three extra for Sarah? I'm getting there. But just imagine... this kid gets away with something and manages to keep everything a secret from her moms... and then writes about it, and hands me the story, saying, "You'll probably get mad when you read this, because it's about a bad thing I did, and I never told you about it." So we did get mad. And grounded her. And then she didn't understand why. Don't misunderstand, she never told us for any altrusitic reason, but it's more like she doesn't have any common sense. I love her very much, but I worry about her, and how she's going to get by, growing up on this nutso planet!
We came home from the store, and then Sarah saw her friends. They had been messing around with baby birds, trying to help them, and some not trying correctly. There was a young girl who was allegedly throwing a chick into the air to "help it fly," and it would just to fall to the ground. Repeat. Anyway, her friends rushed up to her to tell her who was messing with the birds now. She wanted to go over to wherever these birds are. But she's grounded, remember? Plus we don't want her getting any diseases from handling these animals. Into our apartment we go, and Nikki called the Humane Society, the local police department, and Animal Control. The only one who would take the birds was Animal Control, but we'd have to pay them $125.
What?So in the meantime, Sarah is trying to get past me (unsuccessfully, I might add), since I'm blocking the front door. Well, I can't make dinner if I'm standing in front of the door for an hour, now can I? So she goes to her room. "Good," I think. Wrongo! She's yelling to some of her friends, and taking out the screen so she can go out through the window. I yell to the kids, "Get away from our window. NOW!" They ran away like dogs with their tails through their legs. Well... the dogs would've had tails. The kids didn't have any tails.
Anyway... She wanted to call her father, who then told her to listen to her mother. No help for her there. Nikki eventually took her outside to look for the birds, when she calmed down a bit. They couldn't find them, and the kids said they were gone. Not dead gone, just gone. They came back and we had dinner. Whew!
Then Sarah showed us this cellphone she found. We turned it on and it worked. Sarah told us, "I found it in the garbage, and the man who owned it just moved out of the complex." Nikki called a few of the contacts in the cell's address book, and left messages stating that she has their phone if they're looking for it. Then Sarah says she
thinks she knows who it belongs to. I said, "I thought you
knew who it was, and they had just moved away." She just looked at me. Then she told us in passing, "...and when I found it on the stairs..." Stairs? "I thought you found it in the garbage?"
I asked. So then she actually says, "Okay, the lying stops here. I found it on the stairs, and I think it belongs to one of the apartments upstairs from us." The lying stops now. Great. Good to know. She really should be grounded for a month for all of this put together, but since we leave on Friday of next week, we don't want to deprive her of her last few days with her friends. So she can see them again starting Monday. Sigh...
The owner showed up today, by the way, and he lives nowhere near this complex. I think someone else found it and made their way over here and just left it, then Sarah found it outside. But still... she didn't even want to give the phone back. And when we told her that he came to get his phone, she asked if he gave us any reward money.
I'm hoping the next nine days (well, 8 days and 10 hours as I write this) are much better than this one! Oy vey!
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