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Jessica Acs. Crazy Happy Chaos

Jessica Acs. Crazy Happy Chaos

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pets

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? ๐Ÿ™‚ 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)ย  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.ย  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. ๐Ÿ™‚

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

Can’t Get Enough…

May 2, 2012 by Jess Leave a Comment

of popsicles. I know, random right? It’s something I constantly crave and have been for weeks. Months even maybe, I don’t know, I really don’t remember how long. Our freezer is overflowing with boxes of various flavors of popsicles though. Today is for sure a day when they are greatly appreciated. It reached about 80 degrees here and inside our house it’s been real toasty.

What else have I been craving….root beer floats lately! I’ve only given in a couple times to those so far though. And water, lots and lots of ice cold water.

So I am 28 weeks today. Wow. I remember reaching 8 weeks and being so excited for making it that long. It’s funny though cause I’ll wake up in the morning and find myself lying on my back as usual, and I’ll feel completely normal and for a few seconds a wave of panic overcomes me as I reach down and feel my tummy. Whew! Ok the bump is still there, yes I am still pregnant! haha. Odd how I can so quickly forget the 4 or 5 times I was up during the night to pee. Oh pregnancy joys.

Speaking of pregnancy joys, I get a whole slew of weekly emails from various sites that update me on how my pregnancy is or should be progressing. Today I was informed my baby is the size of a rutabega. Really? A rutabega? Could they not use something else that might be more common to visualize the size of?

Last week I opened an email that said “Welcome to this next week of your pregnancy! There are exciting things to come for you and your baby!” Then the next line said:

“In this issue:

– Heartburn

– Bleeding Gums

– Leg Cramps”

Oh EXCITING!!!! Woo! Thanks for the heads up! ….blah

And none of those were news to me since I’ve had all of them for the last month already. Loads of fun.

Otherwise though I have nothing to complain about. Starting to feel more tired again like I did in the first trimester but that could also be because I’m getting up real early again.

I am loving my big recliner that’s in the nursery so much. I try to sit in it whenever I can but then all 3 dogs want to sit with me too. Zoey often beats me to the chair every time so I have to scoot her over. A couple nights ago Norman the pig was in here with us and he eventually got bored wandering around the room and jumped right into the chair – with me and the 3 dogs!! I had to get up fast since his little hooves are quite sharp and he was basically sitting in my lap.

so then Moose gets down and Norman realizes he has room to lie down.

 

So much for getting to sit in my big chair. *sigh*

Today they all tried again to sit with me, so I then tossed my Boppy pillow and my preggle pillow into the crib (which is right beside the chair) and I plunked them all into the crib. Turns out they just wanted to be in the room with me as they were perfectly happy lounging on the pillows in the crib. Too funny.

As funny and cute as this is, this will not be a regular occurrence. I need to get them all used to sleeping on the floor of the nursery or in one of their own beds or we are going to have real problems once little Ava gets here!

 

Filed Under: Animal/ Zoo stuff, Daily Life Tagged With: baby, pets, pig, pregnancy

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 ๐Ÿ™‚

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 ๐Ÿ™ ย 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 ๐Ÿ™‚

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! ๐Ÿ™‚

 

 

 

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

Moose turns 1 today!

January 28, 2012 by Jess 2 Comments

Happy Birthday to our little Moose. I can’t believe our baby puppy is a year old today, and what a year it’s been for him.

At only 8 weeks old, he had Parvo Virus which is usually fatal for such young dogs. Thankfully he made it through as we caught it early and we were able to quarantine him at home. Sadly, some of his siblings didn’t make it ๐Ÿ™

Then he was in our wedding, made the move (his first road trip) across the country from Los Angeles to Chicago, lived in an apartment for the first 7 months and then moved to a house with a big yard. He acquired a pig as a new brother and playmate, then another road trip to Indiana for Christmas. He’s also made several appearances and stared in many of our animal shows. What a busy pup he is.

Happy Birthday Moosie, my little black shadow. I miss you lots and can’t wait to see you in a few days ๐Ÿ™‚ xxoo

Filed Under: Animal/ Zoo stuff, Daily Life Tagged With: dogs, life, pets

Sleepless Nights…

May 11, 2009 by Jess Leave a Comment

….and not enough hours in the day.ย  Our house is in complete chaos right now. With trying to clear some stuff out, pack and get the house ready to sell, it just seems like there is too much to do and not enough time left to do it in. I walk into a room and don’t even know where to start. We have boxes and rubbermaid bins in every room, as we try to sort out what to keep, what I want to take with me to California, and what to get rid of.
I won’t be able to take much, basically what we can fit into the back of the car.

boxes1

I found this video on youtube – its about the EATM program that I got into – very cool!

Exotic Animal Training and Management Program

Zoey had her surgery a few days ago and is doing well. Her first night home was not good – she whimpered for hours and it broke my heart. She has a huge incision all the way from the bottom of her rib cage to her lower abdomen. We should have the results from her liver biopsy at the end of the week.

June will be my last month teaching scrapbooking classes at Precious Memories, well teaching classes anywhere actually. (for the next 2 years anyway). As of August, I officially become a student again. crazy…

A new class I’ll be teaching at PM in June is a Date book – this was really fun to put together! I made one for my mum for mother’s day and I also made a matching address book to go with it. (I put together a tutorial on this, I’ll try to get it listed in the next couple days).

datebookclass

datebookclass2

Filed Under: Daily Life, Scrapbooking/ Mini Albums Tagged With: classes, eatm, pets, scrapbook

We’re down to just one…

January 2, 2009 by Jess Leave a Comment

Just one guinea pig that is. Our little pig Ernest died today. We knew it was coming. He was old and very frail but he kept his spunky attitude right up to the last minute.

Fro (who is a BIG pig) is our last remaining one.ย I think our guinea pig saga is coming to an end. Almost 2 years ago now, I got this *brilliant* idea to adopt a pair of older guinea pigs from a rescue org or shelter. We found some with the Small Animal Rescue Society of BC (SARS). When we went to look at some at the foster home they were at, we left with 4 guinea pigs, not 2 like we had intended. They even gave us another huge cage to take with us. (they really wanted us to take both pairs of male pigs). All the pigs were adults, their exact ages unknown as all had been given up or abandoned. (one was let loose in Stanley Park Downtown Vancouver, one was left behind in an apartment after the tenants moved out (!!), and the other two were just surrendered to the organization cause they weren’t wanted anymore. All 4 of them had sweet personalities and weren’t timid at all with us. ย However, they came with various health problems. One died within the first week of us having him, he came down with phemonia overnight. We rushed him to the vet and they tried to save him but he died a few hours later. That led to the adoption of Ernest, the 5th pig for us. He belonged to our local Humane Society and was being fostered by our small neighborhood pet store that we shop at. He was there for months and they kept trying to get us to adopt him, especially when they learned that we had all the other pigs at home. The humane society told us they just wanted a good home for him, preferably someone who knows guinea pigs, so he can live out the last few months of his life. They said he was quite old and didn’t have much time left. Well that was almost 2 years ago so Ernest did well!

Long story short, all the pigs had their share of health problems (except Ernest actually!), and they are all well known at our vets office. Fro is now an only piggie. I don’t think we will adopt any more pigs, but who knows!

It’s sad really how this group of sweet guinea pigs had such health problems. I had tons of guinea pigs when I was younger and they were all healthy! I don’t remember having extreme health problems with any of them.

Good bye Ernest, we’ll miss you. ย xoxo

Filed Under: Animal/ Zoo stuff, Daily Life Tagged With: pets

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