Saturday

Josh and I spent Saturday at home being productive. I cleaned the bathrooms and picked up the house, and Josh did our taxes. We both did a fantastic job, and I think we were equally happy not to be stuck doing the other person's task.

We enjoyed an excellent dinner at Indochina with Jim and Karen and managed get in bed early at around 10:30.

It was about 1 in the morning when we heard that tell-tale hiccuping sound that means the cat is about to throw up all over something we want to keep clean. Some nights, including this one, Mariel sleeps curled up right next to my head and on my pillow, so this was extra bad. I went from peaceful sleep to shoving Mariel off the bed and hollering "Get off! Get off!" in less than 1 second. I got her off the bed, and while Mariel was throwing it into reverse on our rug, I looked over to see Josh had jumped entirely out of bed and was frozen in the hockey goalie ready position with a bewildered look on his face. Here is our favorite T-Bird, Calvin Pickard, demonstrating.



I thought this was hilarious, and soon we were both laughing at the situation and our reactions. It is nice to know that at 1am Josh is ready to defend me against anything, even if it just means getting the rug out of the room so we can go back to sleep.

Leonard's Surgery

Leonard had knee surgery on February 16. He has a condition where his knee cap constantly dislocates, especially when he is active. He actually has it in both knees, but the left one was rated at a 3+ on a scale of 1-4 and the right one is a 1+. We had surgery done on his left knee and we are hoping that a healthy left knee will be enough to support the right one.

I drove out to WSU for the surgery, and we are really happy with his recovery progress so far. The first week was really difficult for me. Josh got called out of town for work at the last minute, so it was an unexpected solo mission. Leonard needed medicine every 8 hours and it upset his tummy so we were taking urgent trips outside and he was waking me up at least 3x each night. It seemed like a bad preview of having kids! When Josh got home he was a huge help in taking over some of the trips outside. And there is no way I could have removed the stitches without his help.

It has been a struggle to keep Leonard on restricted activity. We can't let him walk around in the yard because we are afraid he will try to play when we go to bring him inside. Here is a video of him at my office enjoying a toy. I took a toilet paper roll and put some treats inside then taped it with duct tape. It was super cheap and kept him entertained for a good 20 minutes - perfect!



The good news is we have x-rays this week to determine how well things went. We may need to have a minor surgery to remove the pins holding his leg together. Relative to the first recovery period we had to deal with I can't imagine this will be too hard!

This weekend we took him skiing with us and really enjoyed being outside by himself for the first time in almost 6 weeks. He sat just like this for about an hour.



We will keep you posted!

Lumpy

We just laid Lumpy to rest and we have had some time to reflect and think about how wonderful it was to have Lumpy in our lives for so long. I never knew that a turtle could learn to recognize people, or that she could beg for food, or that she could love anything red and orange, or that she would have a favorite food (carrots) and that she would always carry them to her favorite corner to eat them. She was the small one and she was very sick when we got her with Mr. Coug. We nursed her back to health and she got to be so big that even the vet was impressed with her recovery and rapid growth. She was a part of our family and she is definitely going to be missed. I am sad to see her go but I am completely positive that she had an amazing turtle life.

Leonard Discovers Lumpy