So long, bedding!

Yesterday was a rainy day, which meant that Nadia's softball practice was cancelled and our tour of an alpaca farm was postponed one week. So I decided after dinner to make a quick trip to Lewisburg. We were gone for a little over an hour and during that time we went to the library, got gas for the van, donated some things at Goodwill, and shopped for a few things at Walmart. We had two things on our list for Walmart #1 a birthday gift for Grace's birthday party (Friday night) and Ian wanted to buy a Lego set with some money his grandparents gave him recently. I made two other unplanned purchases. First, a hat for next year for St. Patrick's Day for 75 cents and also a yard of Steelers fleece material for the guinea pig cage. I had planned to buy some fabric at a fabric store, but that hadn't happened yet so I made a spontaneous decision as we walked by the fabric. One yard was enough to fit in the cage three times. We still had half a bag of bedding left from the bag I bought three months ago, but the bedding was driving me utterly crazy.

The bedding was ending up ALL over the house, and I was vacuuming the family room more than once a day and sweeping the kitchen even more often than I already did. The hay spills out a little from the cage, but the bedding was the number one annoyance of owning guinea pigs. I also put a Yankee Candle fragrance sphere beside the cage. I had been changing the bedding once a week. I am thinking I'll change it every 2-3 days now. I'll shake it outside and then launder it. Hopefully this will work out much better because finding bedding all over the house was very undesirable.

A few weeks ago I tried to attend a new Sunday School class on marriage, but I was told as I tried to enter that I couldn't attend because my spouse wasn't with me. This past Sunday I attended a class that was just starting a series on parenting. I really like the class I usually attend (we're doing the Gospels right now), but I am planning on attending this parenting class for the next couple of months. The homeschooling mom I sat next to in that class said they got guinea pigs for the first time in January, and she told me they also have a dog and the guinea pigs are much more work than a dog.

I'm not 100% sure if I agree with that considering guinea pigs don't have to be taken for walks every day even when it's cold outside, but I will agree they have created more work than I had anticipated. I am hoping that using the fleece instead of the wood chips will be a big help. I told Nadia that when she turns nine the guinea pig cage will become her responsibility. It's my responsibility as a mom to work myself out of my job.

I have been working on going through the kids' clothes and adding some short sleeve shirts to their dressers. I noticed that Oliver's 4T long sleeve dress shirts were getting really tight on him (especially too short for his arms), and wouldn't you know but the 5T long sleeve dress shirt fit him perfectly this past Sunday. My baby is growing up so fast! Speaking of babies, Wendy's youngest turned four today. There are now three cousins who are four years old (Julianna, Grace, and Oliver). We can't wait to give her a belated birthday hug on Saturday in Chicago!

I've embedded below a video of Nadia saying some verses. We still need to work on them some more before AWANA this evening, but this shows some of what she's been memorizing lately. In the photo above Jenna was chilled out on Nadia's lap while Nadia was doing Rosetta Stone Spanish on our laptop computer this morning.