Critter Watch 2012: A Shocking Turn of Events.....

Well, I suppose it was bound to happen.

Chris' raccoon watching contraption-building culminated in this beauty.....complete with rain gutters and twinkling Christmas lights, because, you know, we'd hate to put something tacky in our yard......

The lights allowed us to see the raccoons really well.......

.......but unfortunately this familiarity also led Chris to the (mistaken) conclusion that the raccoons were indeed his friends.  That's right, he imagined himself as the Raccoon Whisperer and soon found himself sitting outside with all five critters surrounding him as he attempted to feed them dogfood......from his hand.

This in turn led to a late night walk over to the ER for a rabies vaccination.

Chris was stunned....he came inside and informed me that he was shocked that he'd been bitten....I couldn't believe that he was so surprised that a wild animal would bite him.  This did lead to very productive discussion with the boys though about the differences between wild and domesticated animals.....

I don't think the incident has put a damper on Chris's enthusiasm for all things raccoon, especially since I saw that he put "raccoon dog food" on our grocery list for next week.....but hopefully it's halted any more dreams of finding a raccoon baby and raising it as our own....

I blame Grandpa Reintjes for this.......how could a son grow up in a home where every stray animal was taken in, including a chipmunk who lived in his father's pocket, not want pet raccoons when the opportunity presents itself?

Thanksgiving Reintjes Style aka Critter Watch 2012

We were supposed to do Thanksgiving at one of our new friends' houses but their children fell contagiously ill and didn't want to spread around their disease so we had to make other last minute plans for our feast.....or in David's words "Thanksgiving was ruined".....

Since the commissary was out of turkeys, and Chris had already declared we should just have steak as it was just our little family eating, we had a scaled down version of Thanksgiving at home with steak, sweet potatoes, lots of cranberry sauce and stuffing (since that's what we were supposed to be bringing to dinner), homemade rolls (because they're delicious) and pumpkin pie from the freezer (because I need at least a weeks notice to gather up enough energy to make homemade pie).

As you can see, we had a very fancy, pants optional dinner......

But that wasn't the fun part.....the highlight of our day wasn't the food....it was the raccoons.....

Apparently this is how we do family time now....Chris spends his free time building beautiful structures such as this to adorn our backyard--complete with obstacles for our critters to overcome in order to get to their food--with the children's help of course.....

.......and then as soon as night falls we all gather round our back windows and wait......

Meet Patches, one of the five raccoons that have become our nightly visitors and source of endless excitement for husbands and children alike......

I hope you all had a Thanksgiving as wonderful and raccoon-full as we did--you know, if you're in to that sort of thing :)

It's Official

Chris is now officially a JAG....albeit with the new training qualification program he's guinea pigging, a JAG that's not allowed to actually do lawyery things in a courtroom.......

The children pretty much ran amuck in the courtroom during the whole ceremony but no one seemed to mind as long as the boys remembered to sit on the "good guys" side......I guess that's the kind of advice you get when you're working for the prosecution :)

We are so very proud of our very own JAG :)

Critters are for Catching....and Chasing.....

We enjoy the simple things around here.....reclaiming patches of woods for our yard, catching critters and listening to children cry over the fact that no, they cannot keep cockroaches and snakes for pets and then listening to them cry again because apparently when housed in the same container neither can live while the other survives......

In other news the boys have officially turned the train table that was relegated to the patio into their "dirt table."  I was envisioning more of an outdoor art project area but I suppose it was an inevitable turn of events what with the shovels we left out there for them to play with.....

We also gave the kids a planter so they could have a bit of a garden....it looked better before the critters got to it and we awoke to plants and dirt strewn about the rock pit....

On the other hand the planter destruction led to the quest to figure out what type of critter it was exactly who has been savaging our handiwork.  This quest in turn led to the placement of a wagon outside of our living room window with a ramp for the critter to climb up at which point he reaches another board next to a bucket that has to be knocked over in order to reach the dog food underneath.  The tipping bucket provides the sound that signals us to turn off all of the lights inside the house and crouch down next to the window to spy on the critter.

The mystery wasn't exactly solved as our trap has produced not one critter, but one possum and a pair of raccoon friends so far.....this has become a nightly pastime.....is my husband the only one who runs outside with a flashlight and the dog at the mere hint of a possible critter invasion just to see it and then chase it for fun?

Aside from critter sighting our second favorite current pastime centers around Chris' new baby, as seen above.....We've been sitting around for hours burning logs and pinecones and marshmallows among other things.......

Evenings well spent......PS it was the snake that slithered away to freedom....

Stars and Potties

I woke up today and thought....hmmmm.....we don't have anything going on today, why not potty train Henry?

With David this process included months of planning, reading every potty training book in the library, consulting everyone I knew who had blazed this path before me and choosing the exact right moment to begin.  Of course my well researched and meticulously detailed plan immediately began to fall apart and I soon discovered that no matter what the books say your toddler probably won't be completely potty trained within a week and you probably will have at least one (hopefully private) screaming fit if you expect everything to be smooth sailing and not to be stripping all of the couch cushion covers off for a washing at least once......or maybe multiple times a day......

Henry on the other hand, like every second child destined for therapy, gets a spur of the moment decision after months and months of feet dragging.  I figured if we were going to do this before baby makes five and/or before Henry turns three we should probably get going while I'm still mobile :)

But how to keep the children occupied and off of the carpet?  Beaded pipe cleaner stars anyone?  David loved it, Henry gave up after about ten minutes and took to picking out beads for me to string for him.  Bead choosing is apparently the absolute best part of this activity.....

The potty training is going much better than it did with David.  Maybe it's because Henry is older than David was or much more compliant or maybe it's because my expectations are so just so much lower this time around.......

I gave him some undies, set a timer to go off every twenty minutes or so and just put the little angel on the potty with the promise of leftover Halloween treats for successful attempts dangling over him.  It's going well but it's going to take some practice.......

Rookie Potty Training Mistake #1:  letting a cute toddler cuddle up on your lap for stories after dosing him with copious amounts of orange juice to help move things along, noticing that he looked a little sleepy but not really caring because it's just so cute when they want to snuggle up......two minutes, there were only two minutes left before our potty timer went off but I needed a whole new outfit and I was in the process of stripping the chair cushions for a wash as it buzzed.......

Rookie Potty Training Mistake #2:  only buying six pairs of undies....really, I really thought six pairs would get me through the day?  Luckily with all of the cushion washing I had plenty of opportunity for undie washing as well....

PS David is now demanding special treats every time he goes to the potty as well....ummmm no.....but he does get a treat for *helping* Henry go--i.e. reading him stories, cheering for him, and giving him hi-fives.  What are big brothers for if not this? :)

{p,h,f,r} Master Bedroom Sprucing

One of my all-time-favorite-blogs-ever gave out a challenge to beautify your master bedroom this week so I thought I might jump in and participate instead of just lurking around as I'm apt to do....besides, I'm in full-on nesting mode and I know you wanted to see pictures of the new house that aren't just the boys' room and our patio anyway :)

{pretty}

Are you loving our ceiling fan?  They are the same all through the house--at least we have a consistent look :)  And they have dimmer switches so that's exciting........

Since Chris insists that we will never, never, never, under  any circumstances downgrade from a king to a queen sized bed I'm left to try to stuff this overlarge monster into tiny base housing bedrooms.  I was pretty impressed with myself for figuring out how to squish the bed plus two nightstands in while still being able to open the bi-fold closet doors--it involved finding just the right placement angle for the roundish table so that the door could open into the perfect section of curve in the top of said table......

I think the $15 old glass door that I picked up a few years back and had Chris stain is still one of my favorite things in the house.  It makes a lovely headboard--goodness knows I don't need an actual king-sized bed to drag around from state to state right now--although I would love a good old fashioned four poster.....one day.........

{happy}

Chris has a tendency to pile things on every flat surface he finds--my ingenious solution--a basket...at least this way his stuff is all semi-contained.  He doesn't posses my same knack for artistic book stacking...or maybe for some reason he just doesn't find it as satisfying as I do?  In any case, having his things neatly contained makes me happy :)  

{funny}

If you do an about face you can see the rest of our room in it's entirety.  Does the size of our tiny room strike you as funny?  The boys' room is bigger but we weren't going to give up the en suite bathroom for a little extra space.......There's room for our armoire and a chair and that's it....well, I think there may also be room for this totally extravagant bassinet.  Judge me if you will for being totally ridiculous and wanting something that expensive that will only be good for six months tops, but after all that's happened this year I just want everything to be perfect for our little guy and, let's face it, we definitely don't have room for the pack n' play that lived in our old bedroom pretty much since Henry was born.  This bassinet is good up to thirty pounds and it has wheels so I can move it around the house to give the baby a safe place to be (i.e. away from his brothers) and I can easily wheel it next to the bed at night and then back out so that we can access the closets, and it has a storage shelf so I can put extra diapers and necessities there (since there isn't anywhere else for them to go)....plus the pack n' play is ugly and I'm pretty sure not meant for daily use for multiple years.....and hopefully we'll be having several more little ones to put in it, so really I'm making an investment for our future, not being silly and making horrible hormone induced decisions right?  Right?  

{real}

Welcome to our master bath.....it's so...cozy...that you can't get a picture of it from the inside.   Are you loving this lovely light fixture as well--I've never seen one mounted to wood before but I suppose every new rental home will also bring new surprises in home decor.  I can't seem to decide what to do with our little rug--it doesn't really fit in front of the shower, or the sink--so I've settled on leaving it laying diagonally on the floor and just scooching it over to where I need it when I'm in there--I know, your're all astounded by my home decorating tips and tricks :)

Chris and I both have a shelf in the cabinet over the toilet to hold our essentials and then the sink cabinet holds a trash can and one basket with my (let's face it, seldom used) hair styling equipment.  This is pretty much how it always looks--you know, not super fancy but oh-so-practical......

And here's a closer look at what I'm sure you are all more interested in than my bathroom--it's pretty, happy, funny and real all rolled in to one :)

And you should definitely pop on over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for more lovely and useful bedroom fixes.

Forward Face

Before Chris started back to work he was hard at work at home doing several big projects I dreamed up while he was away.  First on the list was a set of forward facing bookshelves for the boys room--I wanted something a little sturdier than the rain gutter shelves we had before and I had already given the gutters over to the boys anyway to play with outside :)

We used a tutorial I found here.   They were simple to make but it took a lot longer than we thought since we made so many (these plus four more for the library!).  It was worth it though--says the one who was overseeing the whole process and not actually building anything.......

The boys love them at any rate.  David has taken to "reading" books to Henry which is beyond precious :)

I've come around to the idea of having most of their toys in their room.  I didn't really like it at first, but they've got the biggest room in the house so it didn't make sense not to put their stuff in there.  I imagined giant nightmare messes of dumped out toys to deal with every evening, but they've been keeping it relatively clean and usually just grab one of their baskets and bring it into the living room when they want to play with it.  They're also getting more picky than me about getting the toys back into the correct bin at the end of the day......Our categories right now are as follows......

I also made a little spot for their dress up clothes, repurposing the old coat rack we made last year (as sadly, they really don't need a coat rack in Florida).  It's a perfect costume holder though and the overflow fits nicely into the old suitcase underneath......

I'm not sure what you call this particular costume medley.....superhero knight of the fire station realm?

PS Chris has requested that I take a bit of a poll to find out which you like better, these shelves or the rain gutters?  Feel free to agree with me that these lovely wooden ones were worth the effort :)

Corn is for Stepping Over....

This weekend a semi-close farm was having a military appreciation weekend and gave all military and their families free admission to their various fall themed activities--a corn maze, a hay ride, slides, hay jumping, giant tubs of corn for sitting in, homemade ice cream--in short, everything you would need to get into the fall spirit.

I'm not sure if it's just the weather here in Florida or the fact that it's the end of the season but I don't think I've ever seen a sadder little corn maze in my entire life......

While it wasn't the most challenging corn maze I've ever attempted I wasn't complaining--for one, it was free and for another it made our hasty exit that much easier when David announced that he needed to potty right in the middle.  We just walked straight out, hopping over the not-so-giant rows as we went.

The boys were most assuredly not put off by the sad maze and there were more than a few tears when we declared that their time of fun and frolicking at the farm was up.....

I think the highlight of the trip was the cow train.....(it was worth the drive just to watch Chris squeeze in to the tiny barrel).....

.....and the pigs......who doesn't love to chuck food pellets at giant pigs?

 I hope everyone is enjoying their fall festivities as much as we are!