Turbine Views

There's a wind turbine near us, it's located in some woodland.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Made It In One Piece

Well, it's over. The surgery for Sol that is. All those years, all that worrying and it feels like strange that its finally done. Sol did great, she's a little trooper. We arrived at 8 am and she was anaesthetised by 9am. The surgery lasted 90 minutes and it took Sol another hour to come round. There wasn't a single tear, no complaining, the medical staff all commented on how she's been the best behaved child they have operated on in a long time. :D

 

Her eye looks surprisingly good, the white is red and sore looking but there isn't the bruising that I was expecting. To be honest I am not sure what I expected, whatever it just went really smoothly. The orthoptic person said they are very happy with the results.

 

At the weekend, prior to Sol's surgery we took a little trip into Bangor to the marina, and along to the splash park. Hardly weather for splashing but the children had fun all the same. It was nice to do something fun before Sol was in hospital, not knowing how long Sol would be laid up for instigated it too.

 

 

Oh, and totally off topic ...

my apple trees have gorgeous blossoms right now.

 

 

 

 

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Nose No Trouble

This has been an eventful week indeed!

Our poor wee puppy got bitten by another dog. The other dog was a Blue Staffordshire and decided to take a dislike to Olivia while I had her out for a walk. The other dog bit Olivia and left a nasty wound on her nose.

She bled profusely and for a few minutes it was really hard to stem the bleeding. The children were crying and the owner of the other dog was absolutely mortified that this had happened. We had to take Olivia to the vet and sadly they were unable to do any plastic surgery as the flesh had been torn away. The vet gave my pup antibiotics and an anti inflammatory pain medicine to assist the healing process. It could have been a lot worse, I know we are lucky. It was also an awkward situation, however I am thankfull that the lady was happy to pay the vet bill, otherwise things would have been really different to deal with.

A few days on and my puppy's nose wound has dried up a bit and the swelling subsided. If anything it looks worse but it is healing well despite that. Olivia will always have the fleshy curly part of her nostril missing, I guess that's going to be her bravery story.

 

 

 

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Sun, Sand, And The Wetlands.

What a busy week it has been for me, for us all really. Last weekend the weather was pretty good and we spent a few days on the beach. Not sunbathing beachy stuff, but dog walking and playing in the sand weather. The puppy loves the beach too which is just as we'll considering we live a two minute walk from the sand.

Sadly on the way back from the beach last Monday Sol had a bit of an accident. We were almost home, maybe 30 yards from the house when she walked into a wall and hit her mouth. She badly broke one of her front teeth and hurt her mouth considerably that she couldn't stop crying for quite some time. Lucky for us the emergency dentist was on hand and we were able to get seen within about half an hour of the accident happening. They repaired Sol's tooth with white resin like material and she went back the following day for x-rays. It is left with this repair on it, which actually looks pretty good, and we have to watch for discolouration incase the tooth dies. Sol is fine about it now, but I am still a bit upset at the damage.

Yesterday we went to the wetlands, we've been before and it's not really advanced much since it was created three or four years ago. Still the wildlife must like it as we saw a few birds and came across a frog. The frog was just sitting in the water, we picked it up but didn't realise it was spawning till we got it out the water. Amazing though.

You will see in the photos that Sol is wearing a patch on her eye. The patching has been ongoing due to various eye problems that she has had since birth. She patches three hours a day now and it's an essential part of her treatment even though it isn't nice to look at. Sol is having surgery at the end of the month to help the cosmesis of her eyes, is going to be milestone for her and probably a traumatic time for me. It's taken many many years to get to this stage in her treatment.

 

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New Addition To Our Family

We had been looking for one for a while. A dog that is. We had come across a particular dog lat year called Tasha, she was a four year old boxador and needed a home. She loved the kids and the kids loved her. Sadly is wasn't to be and some other family took her. This, however, whetted our appetites and we had been looking ever since.
I told the family that there would be no puppies. Puppies poo and pee everywhere. Puppies chew. Puppies whine in the night. Definitely not a boy puppy as boy dogs lift their legs everywhere.
Anyway that's what I said.
We saw several dogs over the months, none created that spark, none filled that gap in our lives. Until Easter Monday when we happened to stumble across a chocolate labrador with 11 puppies.
This dog had been given in to the local rescue centre, and they initially thought she was fat. They took her to the vet to get spayed. The vet had her under anaesthesia and realised she was pregnant! Long story short, the vet was concerned that the puppies would be reabsorbed or stillborn so took her home herself to look after this chocolate momma. A few weeks later this tubby chocolate labrador gave birth to 11 perfect, healthy black puppies. So after seeing the momma dog on Facebook we arrived at the animal shelter for doors opening on Easter Tuesday and was almost first in the queue to ask about the puppies. We arranged to go to the vets house to see them, which we did that very day. As I sat on the ground this little female pup came and put her paws on my knee. She then chased the children round in circles until she collapsed in a heap through happiness exhaustion. We had her microchipped to us on the spot, and a week or so later we brought her home.
A puppy! We called her Olivia. She's a beaut and she doesn't chew the furniture, nor does she pee and poop everywhere. I am training her, I have to if I want a good clean house, as I can't get anyone else to do the job right.

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Simon Or Is It Simone?

Today was pretty much run of the mill stuff. We got all the lesson materials laid out for the three little ones so when we returned from our errands we could get stuck in.

We had to run to the pet shop first to get new water bottles for the bunnies. The rabbits have chewed the nozzle on one of the bottles and another one I ruined by washing it in boiling water. In the pet store we had a look at the adoption centre, not the animals for sale but those that are donated for homing for whatever reason. The kids fell in love with a pale brown lop rabbit called Simon. While we were waiting I asked the assistant about Simon and if he were neutered. She said "Oh, sometimes you can tell", so off we went to look at the poor rabbit's private parts. It was funny as the assistant jumped up suddenly in a panic, that rabbit is NOT a boy! That was me, I laughed at the pet store, and they got it wrong.  It's only funny because we made that mistake ourselves a few years ago.  I asked to have a look and sure enough Simon is Simone. So the lop is still in the store but I have a funny feeling we will end up going back for her, she's cute.

Mag stayed home while we went out for errands, just as well really as I needed to get him birthday cards and a few bits for his 16th this week. 16, did I say 16? There's no way Mag is 16. I can hardly believe that 16 years ago I was all excited and nervous about the prospect of giving birth to my first child. I was told the placenta wasn't working so well but he would be just fine if I was induced that week and that they'd keep him in my tummy as long as they could. I had been in hospital for several days and turned out I didn't actually need my labour induced, Mag decided to make an appearance very early one morning himself taking a few staff by surprise.

I am planning on baking big caramel cup cakes tomorrow for the big day on Thursday. Mag expressed he was a bit grown up for a cake, he wanted something more sophisticated than a fun cake yet he felt the cakes he had seen were a little too 'old' for him. He loves my big swirly cup cakes so that's what he's getting, hopefully 16 of them each with a candle. I hope they turn out okay and he's not disappointed. We are planning on going into Belfast for the day to do some birthday shopping and have a little light lunch. I also have a surprise lined up for him, I usually work at nights but I was able to swap my shifts around this week and take the evening off from work. We are going to get Chinese, he loves Chinese food ... Ssshhhhhhh don't tell him if you see him about.

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Bunny Bag

We have been particularly crafty this week.  The girls and I decided to make a couple little tote bags for the girls to carry their purses in when out to the shops.  As the children are mad about rabbits it seemed an obvious choice in fabric.  We made two of them, both very similar now Seb is looking to have one done too. 

Babies are here!

The kits are here! they were born on May 14th much to the delight of the children. The children understand that all these rabbits are going to a new home in a few weeks but I am sure there will still be a few tears. There were eight babies in total, our very own octuplets! Sadly one kit died, we think the mum accidentally squashed him.

This one is called Lucky as he almost died twice. He fell out the nest and had got so cold we actually thought he was gone, just by chance we saw a little twitch as we were disposing of his body. I brought him in and warmed him on a hot water bottle, he survived! This happened again, same thing he was cold and appeared dead and once again we revived him.

Sad News

R.I.P. DILLAN

Well, I hate to report this sad news but the children have been so upset I felt I have to share. Our neighbours two dogs broke into one of our rabbit hutches and killed one of our pet rabbits. Now you have to understand that these are no ordinary rabbits, they are real pets. The rabbits come in the house and are just spoiled rotten. Since this happened the children have been very tearful, its traumatic for them to have their pet destroyed like this.

I was surprised at the depth of the children's feelings as we have experience natural causes deaths before and the children had always been accepting. I am only glad I was home and caught the dogs when I did. the dogs were starting on another hutch, it doesn't bear thinking about what would have happened if I was away from the house. The second hutch had our pregnant lion head bunny in, a Dutch rabbit and two young girls, the devastation would have been awful.

On a lighter note the lion head bunny is due her litter on the 14th April so we are looking forward to that. We have decided, (if its okay with the person who is taking the babies) we are going to keep one of the new rabbits if there is a male.

Did I tell you?

One of my rabbits are pregnant again. This time it wasn't accidental, we bred her deliberately. The rabbit is a lion head and I had a special request for some lion head baby bunnies.

Where have I been?

Where have I been? I know, I know, it has been forever since I last updated the blog. I have ran out of excuses, there are none! I was just dead lazy and I got even lazier when I thought of all the other times I apologised at being lazy and reading other blogs where people do the same thing.

I wont apologise, I am here ... I am posting again, for now. Just accept that if I refrain from posting I am either being lazy or I am super busy, or having a crisis in my life, or out socialising far too many hours, or having a baby (probably not but maybe the rabbits are having babies again), or feeding the dog ..wait I don't have a dog. Oh, I don't know, maybe it is raining!

Babies ....

Well you will never guess what happened in our house. We had two rabbits, and we were told they were boy rabbits. I guess that's where this whole thing was flawed, anyhow ....

We got another rabbit and he too was a male! Or so we thought, in our defence rabbits are difficult to sex. So we put the three rabbits in together and they lived happily ever after, at least they did for a few weeks.

On the 19th of July we discovered 5 baby rabbits in the top level of the hutch! We were shocked to say the least, it seemed that Zebedee had given birth. We very quickly researched how to sex the rabbits and split off the offending male. The next day the other female Dougal (gotta love the name) gave birth to three more rabbits so we ended up with eight babies in total.

This is one of the babies at one day old.

Here are the babies at three weeks old, it is amazing how quickly those little things have grown.

Fun and games!

New Friend

We have a new friend! He is a cheeky little robin that has been spending time with our family. He keeps coming into the kitchen for a look around much to our amusement.

Frogs and Toothpaste

We downsized our fish tank last week, well should I say we were forced to because we are doing work in our house. I needed the large tank out of the dining room so I bought a little 24 inch tank and set it up in the kitchen. Kind of liking the 24 inch tank we decided not to set the large tank back up again.

With the old tank we made a little frog pond in the garden, got a pond plant and some chemicals to make the water good. We did brick steps up to the top and down in the tank too - a haven for frogs (I hope). We do need frogspawn now, but that will be another venture no doubt, the pet shop said they do some but I am sure I can borrow some for educational purposes.

The frog haven led on to a whole discussion about pond life, and I dug out all the pond life keys we had got when we visited the Balloo Wetlands last year. That resulted in an impromptu visit to the wetlands again. It was very cold, and sadly vandals had burned down the bird hide, but it is still a nice place to visit. We had a look around and studied the water for a little while but due to the cold a couple hours found us home again. The children spent the rest of the afternoon looking at amphibians and pond life in their books.

Anyway - here's the photos!

Seb and Sol warming up after we got back. It was only when I downloaded my camera I noticed what the children had laid out on the arm of the chair. Have a look - cars and a tube of toothpaste for some reason.

DEVIL RABBIT

Dougal was out all night it seems. I mean OUT loose in the garden with the driveway gates open onto a road and foxes roaming about.

Roy swears both rabbits were in the hutch last night when he fed them so there is only one other explanation ........

Dougal is a devil rabbit he must have opened his hutch, got out, then bolted his hutch again so that Zebedee couldn't escape. After THE GREAT ESCAPE he merrily had a feast on my nasturtium window boxes which were on the ground.

OUR FAMILY HAS EXPANDED

Our family has grown once again. Long story too so I will only tell you the short one.

Roy has been wandering in and out of pet shops lately looking for rabbits! Not looking for lost rabbits but wanting to buy some for the children. With a rabbits comes an array of equipment so it was going to cost.

Just so happened that a very nice lady was on freecycle last night giving away her two rabbits, and their hutch. The lady seems very happy that we have taken the rabbits though I cant help feling she wil miss them a little bit.

Anyway one rabbit exchange later .......

Here is Dougal (previously known as Del Boy)



Here is Zebedee (previously Darcy)

Sol isn't so sure about the rabbits