Animals

Because we will soon be moving across the country, we need to prioritize what all to take and what will need to be left behind. We’re pretty attached to the kids, so they are on the “bring with” list. Other than that, we are trying to be pretty open to what might stay in El Paso. One item that made it onto the “leave in El Paso” list was my African dwarf frog, Foovy (so named by Avey when she was 2 or 3). I figured it would border on torture to have the poor thing in the car for the long drive, with all the vibration and noise driving her insane. Last week, I found someone who wanted to take care of her, and gave her a new home. It’s been nice to take a little responsibility off my plate and to not worry about Carver knocking the frog bowl onto the floor with one of his many ball games. We do miss her a bit, but it was all for the best.

In other news, we had another close encounter with nature last Sunday. We were at my Grandma’s house, and Carver was in the mood to explore. During our expedition, I noticed a little ball of something on the ground. Upon closer inspection I discovered that it was a little bird that appeared to be injured. I spent some time trying to figure out where the injury was so that we could decide the best course of action. With my terrible veterinary knowledge and nonexistent skill with diagnosis, it looked to me like the bird had some kind of head injury; it was twitching its head back and forth, and did not seem to notice the food we put in front of it, 

We debated for a while about what, if anything, we could do to help. Leaving it where it was would certainly seal its fate as cat food, but we were not satisfied with that. I thought maybe I should just put it out of its misery, but we finally settled on keeping it warm for the night in a box in our bathtub and then I could just drop it in front of a vet in the morning to see if there were anything to be done.

After no change for several hours, I found that the poor thing had passed on very early in the morning. We arranged a funeral for the next day after school.

It was a bittersweet experience in that Avey was thrilled to take care of a bird for a short time, and we could at least say that we did all we could to make the bird’s last few hours a little more comfortable. But it was sad that the little bird did not recover. 

The entire experience made a nice segue into speaking to the kids about the upcoming second anniversary of my younger brother’s death this week. Carver was just barely a year old at that funeral, so he had no idea what was going on. We spent a few minutes of family night talking a little about what it all means and talking about how we feel about it. It was a good opportunity for Avey to express herself, and Carver seems to understand a little bit more. 

Otherwise, Kira had a busy day yesterday – she gave a 45-minute presentation at a Stake Women’s Conference. After hours of preparation, she reportedly did awesome! It was nice to have it all done, and she spent the rest of the day relishing in the relief of having accomplished something and not needing to spend her evenings preparing for it any more! 

I turned in my dissertation to my committee members this week, so that they can review it before my defense at the end of the month. That feels like a big weight temporarily lifted off my shoulders. I still don’t get a huge break because I have lots of preparation for the defense, but it is a great feeling to be a bit closer to the end. 

That’s about it for this week, but stay tuned for more adventures!

#Happenings