Andelin Adventures

Our fish tank hasn’t been a happy place for awhile. And so a few weeks ago we totally drained it and put in an undergravel filter and got it all set back up. Then we just let it run for awhile before getting some fish. Last Friday we went and got some fish to put in our tank. We got a catfish, 3 red platies and 2 frogs (at Ethan’s request), and a female beta. The guy at the pet store knew a lot about the different fish, and Kyle and I were quite impressed to actually get someone who knew something about fish. Most of the time when we go and ask questions about our fish or tank, the person in the fish department knows nothing about fish tanks or the fish in them and so to get someone who knew what he was talking about was quite exciting. Well he knew enough about the fish that when fishing out the red platies that Kyle had selected, he got us two female and one male. And he showed Kyle how to tell the difference. Of course hearing that we had both male and female fish I was wondering if we were going to need a nursery for any babies that may come of it, and Kyle said that we didn’t because we have live plants in the tank for the baby fish to hide in.

Saturday our catfish died, I guess he got stressed out in the tank transfer or maybe our tank is still too clean and there was nothing on the bottom for him to eat, or something. The kids were quite sad, but we assured them that that is normal with fish, they don’t all make it, and it’s easy to stress them out. So yesterday we went back to the fish store to return our dead catfish, we got our money back and decided to use it to get a few other fishies. So we got 3 yellow mickey mouse platies (they have a mickey head on their tail fins, so cute) again, two females and one male. And we got 4 of the cheap 12 cent goldfish. Kyle made fun of me because I pointed to the specific fish that I wanted and made the girl fish those specific fish out. She did a good job, though I must say 😉 .

Today Ethan was looking in the tank, very excited to be watching our new fish, and he likes to come over and look for his frogs (frogs like to hide under plants and rocks at the bottom of the tank).  Then he spotted a baby fish! He excitedly called to me to come look at the baby fish, and I said “what?” and I went over and sure enough there was a baby fish. But then as Ethan and I were watching it, one of the gold fish saw it and ate it! Oh well I guess it’s going to happen. There are plants for the babies to hide in, and the ones smart enough to hide will live to be big enough to not get swallowed, and I guess that will help with our fish tank population. It was tough explaining to the kids that sometimes fish see baby fish and it just looks like the fish flakes that we feed them, so they think it’s food….. Ethan and I did see some more baby fish in the tank. I watched one dissapear into the rocks at the bottom of the tank, and I’m sure there will be more baby fish in the future.

Well even though Liesl is still in Utah she has spent the last couple of days visiting with Laurel & Roine’s family and with Karen. Tyra was SO sad when we didn’t bring Liesl back to our house after the Easter dinner at Laurel & Roine’s house. Well today Ethan, Tyra and Jeremy were fighting over who got to cuddle with the pillow and blanket that Liesl used while she was at our house “because they smell like Liesl”:

When they saw me pull out the camera for a picture they all smiled, then went back to arguing over who got the pillow and blanket. Tyra and Jeremy were willing to each share a corner of the blanket, but Ethan wanted both the pillow and the blanket ALL to himself. Earlier, Ethan came out of his room announcing that he was praying that Liesl would be able to come back and spend more time with them. They are so cute. We love you Liesl. 😀

Well I woke up first thing this morning, hoping to wake up before the kids, so they couldn’t go out and find eggs or check out the Easter baskets until everyone was awake. I also woke Kyle up and suggested he take his shower before the kids wake up so that we would have a chance at getting to church on time (church starts at 9 am), but he decided to sleep a little longer. Well I went into the bathroom to get dressed, and when I came out I saw Tyra coming back from the living room all excited. I told her to sit down in the hall and wait for everyone else to wake up and then I went back to my room to wake Kyle up and tell him that the kids are waking up now and now he has to wake up too. So he got up and the other kids were waking up and coming out of their rooms. Here they are waiting for Kyle to get the camera before being given the ‘ok’ to go hunt for the eggs:

You can see that they’ve already found a couple of the eggs in their rooms. Dinah found an egg that the Easter bunny had left in Tyra’s shoe and she decided she was just going to use that as a basket for collecting more. 😉

The kids found all the eggs pretty quickly and checked out their Easter baskets a bit. I was sick of the Easter bunny leaving a ton of candy, so I told him to tone down the candy a bit and maybe leave a toy and a little bit of candy instead of nothing but candy. And I was glad the Easter bunny listened to my request. 😉 Ethan and Jeremy each got a transformer, and Tyra got a couple outfits for her ken doll, and Dinah got a mermaid barbie. Since Liesl was staying with us, the Easter bunny left her some seeds so she can try to have a garden this year (even if it’s just in pots). And the Easter bunny had heard that Kyle has been trying to eat healthier, and lose weight so in addition to the normal couple of candies that he leaves, he left Kyle a bag of carrots 😉

Then I insisted that it was time to get dressed for church. So down the hall we went to get dressed. And then since church starts so early I hussled the kids into the kitchen for breakfast while Kyle took his shower (I told him she should have done it before the kids woke up 😛 ). We ate breakfast and then I insisted that it was time to get in the car to go to church, and surprisingly we got there EARLY. That almost never happens even on a normal Sunday. I was SO excited that we had had such a fun morning, doing all of the Easter traditions, and we all got ready, AND we were at church early enough to listen to prelude music before the meeting started. It was awesome!

This morning we tried going to an egg hunt at a park, but we got there late and all the eggs had already been found and everyone was already leaving. So we came back home and got ready to color our own eggs.

The kids had so much fun and we only had one egg drop, which out of 38 eggs, is really good. (As always, there are more photos posted in the photo gallery.)