Tacos, Turtles and Rainbows

Sunday night, I went to pick up Stacy & Rey. So... with most of our family there (Jolene, Ariel, Josh, Vic, Jake, Mom & John, and me with my kids), we had a "taco night." Yummy! It was wonderful and we all over-indulged ourselves, which is not hard to do when the food is great and there's plenty of it.

Marissa got to play with Jake a lot, which she's been really bugging me to do... They get along pretty well, for the most part, but they each have their moments when one doesn't want to do what the other does and it's a little comedy at that point.

Monday, I spent a large portion of time cleaning the "turtle tank." We have a female red-eared slider. She is semi-aquatic, loves to swim, loved snails, goldfish, crickets, grasshoppers, pothos, dandelions, and other free types of food. So... she is relatively inexpensive to take care of. It is just a lot of work once a month, when we clean her tank...

**But, Ms. Marissa really enjoyed it this day, as we were rinsing stuff out, and she wanted to go "under the rainbow" (run through the water). It was really quite cute and fun to watch her enjoy this timeless activity that we all used to enjoy (and some still do!). We played a while, then had to change her clothes. (Heaven forbid if the kid is "wet!")

**Then we watched our turtle, Bubbles, for a while. She really is interesting. She chases goldfish throughout her tank, hunting for them. They scramble to stay out of her jaws. They hide behind the large rocks in her tank and stay out of her sight for days at a time. There are currently 4 fish (two gold-colored and two grayish) still in the tank. Two are from a couple of weeks ago (the grey, as they are hard to see) and two are from just the other day. When the chase is on, it is funny and fascinating! (Snail-eating is cool to watch, too!) It provides entertainment and responsibility for us.

**By the way, she was free to us. We got the turtle, tank, stand, light, aquarium necessities and some food for free. How did we do this? There is a wonderful website called Freecycle (http://www.freecycle.org/)! This is a great way to get rid of items you don't want or to get items someone else doesn't want. You can find your area and become a member and receive randomly posted items, or post yourself. Through a couple of weeks, I received all of the items needed for our turtle through postings when people offered. It is a great thing! Check it out.

**So far, today is much of the same as any other day. We're (Marissa and I) are coloring mostly and watching "Lady and the Tramp" for the umpteenth time today. I'm also working on dinner... Yummo! (a little Rachel is always a good thing!) Toodles for now! lisa

** FYI - the website is doing something really funky and isn't putting returns where they should go... therefore, until I figure it out, I will separate the paragraphs by two asterisks (**). Have a great day!