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Jessica Acs. Crazy Happy Chaos

Jessica Acs. Crazy Happy Chaos

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animals

Time for Cake!

June 18, 2012 by Jess Leave a Comment

Angus’ birthday was a couple days ago – he is 9 now!!! I still remember the first time I saw him like it was yesterday and the first time I held him. I was instantly in love with him and knew we’d be best friends. He’s my first baby and he’s been through SO much with me over the years. So many heartaches, so many joys and big changes. He was always there to lick my tears away when I was sad, and to celebrate with me when I was excited about something. Oh Angus, I love you so much buddy.

So in celebration of his birthday (and Zoey’s birthday from last month too!), we ordered a little dog cake from this cute store I came across last month near us: Reese’s Barkery. I love this place! They are a dog bakery plus a small pet store but they don’t sell any animals, just supplies. They also don’t sell crap, they just sell the really good stuff, and the couple who own and run it are locals and they are super nice and knowledgeable. (and apparently their daughter also has a pet pig who lives in the house just like Norman! He’s a lot bigger though, over 100 pounds! yikes! and their pig sleeps on the couch too, haha!). I will gladly shop at this store rather than the big box stores! Support the small businesses for sure. One place we never set foot in is Petland. No way jose. That place is awful and sells puppies. We won’t shop at any place that sells puppies (unless they are adopting out rescues) as it’s obvious they come from puppy mills. Terrible. Can’t believe these places are still in business.

Anyway, we got our little cake for the 3 dogs and Norman to share – it’s a carrot cake. That was an easy decision as all of them love carrots. But of course what’s a party without cake for us too? 🙂 I made our favorite cake: Angel Food with a vanilla cheesecake frosting. YUM! Steve and I don’t need an excuse to have Angel Food Cake, and this is one cake that Steve will never turn down. (he isn’t a big one on sweets.)

The dogs and pig all enjoyed their cake very very much, as we did with ours!

The birthday Boy

The party-goer’s! Don’t they look thrilled? It’s so hard to get a group photo of the 4 of them, especially when there is a cake sitting on the nearby ottoman. I can almost read their minds in this photo: (from left to right)  Zoey “You guys are seriously cramping my laying time on this pillow”, Moose “Why am I wearing this hat….oh!! Is that a toy over there on the floor?”, Angus: “Darn it Norman! You’re stepping on my leg!”, Norman “I smell cake! I see cake!”

Angus has given up at this point.

 

Even baby Twitchy got in on the fun, although he didn’t get to have any cake.

Angel Food, oh yeah!

 

The other animals got a special treat today too! Fresh picked romaine, spinach and kale from our garden!!! I LOVE having a vegetable garden! I walk Norman over to it every morning and we share a few fresh picked strawberries or peas.:)

 

In other news this week: Steve and I actually got away for a couple days. Well ok, a couple nights but really only 1 day. We went up to the Wisconsin Dells for a quick getaway. I guess some people refer to these last getaways before their baby is born a “BabyMoon”. LOL. Yes this makes me laugh cause as if you can escape the reality that this baby is almost here. Sure you can go for a getaway but is there a whole LOT of stuff you can do when you’re 8.5 months pregnant? The Dells has loads of waterparks and amusements parks but guess what? I’m 8.5 MONTHS pregnant!!! I can’t go on any of the fun rides or any waterslides, plus once again, I’m pregnant so do I WANT to be running around a waterpark? Whale in the pool – look out!

What we did do was fun though. We got there after dinner on Monday so we walked around the main strip in town where all the touristy stores are and we were basically just typical tourists. It was fun though and all the stores were open late which worked out nice for us. Then we found this place called Wizard Quest and it was amazing! It’s hard to explain but it was like being in an adventure/real life video game/ scavenger hunt kind of thing. We had a blast!! We went late – at 9:30 and stayed until after they closed at 11pm. We enjoyed it so much that we went back the next night too. There was some physical activity involved as well as mental, but as long as one person on your team can do the physical stuff then you’re good.  Yay for Steve as there was no way I was sliding down huge tube slides and crawling through tunnels and stuff.

The next days we rode the Wisconsin Duck Tours. You know those old army vehicles that can go both on land and in water? Yep those. It was fun and we saw a lot of gorgeous scenery. The seating was really cramped though, hardly any leg room at all, I had to sit sideways cause my legs are too long. Then we went mini golfing at an awesome place called “Pirates Cove”. They had 7 different courses I think. It was huge! We did the 2nd most challenging course and I won! Woo! I haven’t won a game in so long. Maybe I should play more mini golf while I’m pregnant!

Later in the afternoon we went back to our hotel (which had both an outdoor and indoor waterpark) and we spent an hour and a half floating around in a double tube through the lazy river in the indoor waterpark. It was amazing! I was just happy that I was able to get myself into the tube so easily as I imagined it would be a lot harder. Steve did have to sort of dump me out of it when we were ready to leave though, lol.

Anyway, we did actually have a fun time away, and we crammed a lot of stuff into our time there. We missed all the animals like crazy though but we were getting regular text updates from our good friends who were house-sitting for us. 🙂

Inside Wizard Quest, Steve being funny

 

And finally here are a few recent pictures of our little baby coati “Twitch”

Who can resist this cute face?

Filed Under: Daily Life, Travel Tagged With: animals, pets, trip, vacation

Sliding on into 3rd….

April 24, 2012 by Jess Leave a Comment

Trimester that is!!! 3rd trimester already, O.M.G.

So I truly suck at blogging. My first excuse was going to be that I’ve been busy, but come on, the baby isn’t even here yet! If I’m busy now, then what’s it going to be like once she’s born?
Honestly though, yes things have been busy. I was sick with an ongoing cold of some sort for almost 2 months. Nasty. But I’m now feeling a lot better, just super tired as I don’t sleep well anymore. I wake up at all hours in the night and either just lie there or turn the tv on and watch re-runs of Big Bang Theory that we have on the DVR. Fun times. Then when it’s time to get up in the morning, I end up dozing off and begging for just another few minutes to sleep. *sigh*

Baby world news: still feeling pretty good pregnancy wise. The sleep issue aside, other things are going well. No weird cravings, no nausea. Still sleeping on my back some of the time and my stomach at other times, so I guess my tummy isn’t that enormous yet! haha. I feel her moving all around in there all the time now, it’s so amazing. She weighs about 2 pounds now and is over 14 inches long. CRAZY to think there is something that big moving all around inside me, cause her movements so far are still pretty slight. We are excited though, and we are pretty much ready. We have the nursery almost done (just have to get some pictures on the wall), and all the baby gear is here. Her clothes are all put in the dresser and hung in the closet, books in the bookshelf, etc. Now we just need the baby 🙂

I’ll get some proper photos of her nursery up as soon as it’s totally complete but for now here are a few little peeks.

I think she officially has more shoes than I do already! And this is just part of her shoe collection for the 0-3 month age! I have a whole drawer full for following months!

Angus asleep on the carpet. The dogs all love the baby’s room!

My favorite spot in the whole house. We have this huge rocker/recliner in the corner of her room and already I spend most of my free time sitting/ reclining in it. It’s one of the only places I can sit that doesn’t hurt my back right now. However, it seems not only to be my favorite spot but the dogs spot of choice as well. I rarely get to have the whole chair to myself, it only takes the dogs a few minutes to find me and then all 3 of them are sitting in it with me.

Animal news: We have some new members of our family including a pair of ducklings!

This is Bruce (dark duck) and Sami (blonde). They came from the same farm that we got Norman (pig) from.

We have 56 animals now so just their everyday care takes a lot of time. This is another reason we are so busy all the time. Animal shows are going well and also keeping us very busy. Animal Quest

 

Some of our crew:

Trixie, one of our Flemish Giant Rabbits, she weighs about 22 pounds.

Norman playing with Angus

Moosie

Zoey checking out Howard the tortoise

Angus watching Howard take off across the yard

On a hot day, Trixie preferred to be in the house where she could lie on the cold kitchen floor.

Kiwi enjoying some sun

Nugget the Gold Tegu

Fred the Bearded Dragon

Buffy the ferret

Jabba the Cane Toad

Shelldon the Sulcatta Tortoise

Our largest snake: Jig the Albino Burmese Python

Trixie with the other 2 bunnies: Munroe (the white & gray), a baby Flemish giant, and Hank (brown): a full grown Rex

Mikka the ferret

 

Here is a sad story from a couple weeks ago:

This is our newest little Hairless Dumbo Rat, Remi. We just got him back in February and he was the sweetest little guy with the best personality. All of a sudden he went from fine one day to having severe breathing problems the next. I found him almost heaving his breathing was so hard and I knew right away it was pneumonia and I could hear it in his lungs. I had a guinea pig die like this several years ago and it hits these little guys fast and hard. We have a great exotic vet who looks after our whole menagerie and I called him and left him a message and by the time he called me back not even 45 minutes later, Remi had already died 🙁  I knew he was dying though so I just held him and he seemed to just want to be with me and snuggled into me, minutes later he died in my hand. R.I.P Remi, we miss you.

 

Other news:

My parents came to visit a couple weeks ago! This was their first time seeing our house. My Dad and Steve assembled all the baby furniture and set it up in the nursery, then my mum and I went in and rearranged it all. Lol.

We had a great time with them, and the next time we’ll see them, Ava will be here!

the guys setting the crib up.

With Sami the duckling 🙂

Oh and these will probably be the only 2 photos I will post of myself pregnant! haha

 

Norman is getting so big!! He’s close to 25 pounds now.

A funny pic of Norman when he just woke up. He buries himself in numerous blankets in his crate at night.

 

Crafts:

Be sure to check out Homeketeers on a regular basis for their fabulous contests, giveaways, articles and tutorials on everything from crafts, scrapbooking, home decor, baking and family!

I just did a tutorial today on how to make cloth baby wipes. We’ll be cloth diapering little Ava and I really wanted to make some cloth wipes to use along side the diapers. It was so easy and I love how they turned out!

Check out the tutorial here

 

Well that’s all my news for now. Hope everyone is having a wonderful Spring so far! 🙂

 

 

 

Filed Under: Animal/ Zoo stuff, Daily Life, Tutorials Tagged With: animals, baby, family, pets, tutorial

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