spring events

 Camden, Levi, and I took a train ride on the Nickleplate Express

Camden is going to learn about geocaching this summer, but we went searching for a couple and the kids loved it!

baby Coco

Our strawberry bushes have been giving us hundreds of strawberries

Mother's Day downtown Carmel

Dig Dig with my nephews

our annual pizza on the floor as we celebrate another year in our house (now 4 years!)

Here is the original "pizza on the floor" May 2020

Camden dissected a frog for a homeschool

kitties getting outside time

view right over my head in bed

Coco & Kiwi's 1st birthday

Our two kitties, Coco and Kiwi, turned one! They celebrated with some canned wet food. It also marks a year since they lived with us as foster kittens. The kids really enjoy the cats and they have been a nice addition to our family.

Kiwi

Girl. Orange and soft. Hobbies: watching birds and dreaming of catching them, exploring outside on her leash, sitting in the little window above my bed (she does this every morning and every night)

Coco (Coconut)

Boy. White and course fur. Hobbies: sitting in boxes and bags, eating food he shouldn't especially chips and snacks (he eats through the bag to get to food), sleeping on the floor, eating Kiwi's food (they have some unspoken rule that he's allowed to eat her food if he wants so we put a wall up between their bowls), sitting outside in the grass on his leash.

The cats wrestling and chasing each other but they never tattletale on eachother (unlike the kids), which I appreciate. They both have a bad habit of climbing on the counter to find food scraps and we're trying to figure out how to stop them. They are VERY tolerant of kids and get held, carried, "cuddled", etc and don't ever bite or scratch. Since we've had them since they were born, they were acclimated to noise and being held so they really don't get freaked out by much at all. They are very curious and have to be involved in any new activity. If something in the house is slightly different they're all over it. They love chasing birds through the windows or the occasional fly in the house. There have been mouse problems over the last year in our neighborhood but the cats will definitely be keeping mice out of our house. Neither seek out cuddling people or being pet but I suspect they are generally tired of being touched. They've been fun pets and easy since we can leave them during the day or for long weekend and they are fine on their own together.

birthday treats

Kiwi sleeping on her favorite window shelf above our bed

flashback to all 5 siblings last summer

Introducing...

Our newest, furry family members are Kiwi (orange girl formerly known as Flash) and Coco (short for Coconut, white boy formerly known as Carl)! The fruit themed names are a nod to their mom, Nectarine, who was with us helping care for her babies for ten weeks and was so sweet and patient.  The kitties were back at the Humane Society for a week getting spayed/neutered with their siblings and then returned home with us after we adopted them.

Everyones name suggestions:

Chris: Nova & Astro (we had always liked the name Nova for a pet but haven't used it yet)

Stephanie: Nova & Cosmo

Camden: Reeces and Snickers

Savannah: Peanut & Popcorn

Jonas: Dirt & Cloud (these were actually his better suggestions)

Levi: Donut & Kolache 

summer of kitties

 In late June, we decided to foster some kittens as a summer project. We started with four, three-week old kittens and they stayed with us for a couple weeks. They were pretty scared of people and often hid, but the kids still enjoyed them.

After that, we took in a mama cat (Nectarine) and her five, day old kittens. The kids named them Flash (orange), Tiger (orange), Carl (white), Mac (white), and Small Fry (fluffy white). We were able to watch the kittens grow from tiny fur balls into crazy kittens over the course of 10 weeks. I spent a lot of time cleaning up after them, so I'm sure owning six cats is not in our future. The kids loved having them and playing with them. We plan to adopt two of the kitties after they get spayed/neutered and are ready for adoption.

photos in reverse order