A Cerney Periodical

It's official. We have our first pets. We spent much of December renovating this old bird cage found at an antique shop to be the multi-level home for a trio of rats. The sisters were born just before Thanksgiving, but spent their first few weeks with mom. We picked them up just after new years on our drive home from Omaha. This first pic is from day 2, when they were finally brave enough to explore the top of the cage. Much of day one was spent log hiding.  Here's Squeeks (left) and Mooshika (right) hanging out in the log. Squeeks is definitely the skittish scaredy rat of the trio of sisters, so she spent most of the first three days in here.  Mooshi is clearly the alpha daredevil of the three. She has been the first rat to explore new toys, and the most exited to come out and be held. She also has a habit of stealing treats from her sisters to assert dominance.  Brock sewed this awesome hammock for the rats all by himself. It took three days before they had the courage ...

    Brock and Alice have both been getting a little bit more into music, at least evidenced by their ability to remember and request songs by name. By far their favorite song these days is Pigeon Inside  by Prozac Rat. Here's a video of Alice jamming out one school-day morning. Brock would normally be jamming too, but, ya know, minecraft.  There's a pigeon inside you  There's a pigeon inside you We can't get it out We already tried to Alice makes it clear there's a pigeon inside all of us. Except her. She's super clear on that. She got the pigeon out. 

This summer was Brock's first foray into organized baseball. He wasn't completely sold on the idea until he did a week long baseball camp early in the summer. Luckily for us, Oz Park's summer league starts late and we were still able to nab a spot. I signed up to be an assistant coach, and a week before the first game, they emailed the assistant coaches and said they needed two of us to step up and head coach or the league would not run. And that is how I got my first foray into head coaching!  It was a fantastic season of 8 games with no playoffs. The summer league is "sandlot style" with no uniforms and is somewhat lower key. As a head coach, I was way too busy to take any pictures, and when Holly came to games she was usually wrangling Alice, so you'll have to excuse the lack of pictures here.   Grandma and Alice heading to the playground.  Here's Brock pitching! The league was a kid/coach pitch blend. Kids always started on the mound, but if the batter...

 It's almost time for a visit from Cap'n Nog, our holiday mascot! To tide us over (and you all) we got to spend some quality friend with Nog's old frat buddy, Oreo. Oreo lives on the weekdays in Brock's classroom, but he likes to couch serf on the weekends. We got to host Oreo the weekend of Halloween! And sorry, although Brock and I were originally excited to make Oreo a costume, we got too busy with our own and decided it would not really be fun or Oreo. As you can see, Oreo was a hit. Oreo loves fruits, vegetables and his precious "timothy hay".  We had just carved our pumpkins so we let Oreo try a bite. He loved it! Oreo is fast and makes cute sounds. So cute!! The charm! It was a good warm up for our prospective rodent pet project that is in the works...cliff hanger! Stay tuned.

Ok, the first two pictures on here are from a yearish ago. The cute caterpillar and boy montage set in summer. The rest if from last weekend which was the most beautiful fall day there could be! Alice ponders life in her chair. Do you see her hiding in the trees? Brock has neighbor Rex over to jump into the epic remains of the ash tree. Brock has developed an emotional attachment to the renegade maple seed that made it to sapling stage. He insisted that we save it to plant in our back yard one day. I told him that I didn't think we would have room for a giant maple but maybe it could live in a container. So him and Rex dug it up and planted! We'll see what happens! I love our back yard, warm fall days, and adorable children!

Yes, you read that correctly, 2019. Sigh. Here is the post in all of its incomplete and disappointing glory.... Highlights from Brock's annual scavenger hunt... I love it! We are in living in the top floor of our re-renovated house, and this is the downstairs unit which is now our kitchen! Alice appears to have gotten a brick in her Easter basket. Why is it so nice out? These pictures were just on here, I have no idea. But we did make ribs on the smoker so maybe? I miss Alice's play center! "Red, yellow, and blue oo oo"... I can still hear its magic music. And Brock got a marshmallow egg with a dinosaur on it. This post is done!!!! Great work.

This post is part of a new series called "Purge the Blog; adventures in incomplete drafts" (pre editorial title). We got a Christmas tree in 2019 and went here. We liked this place and went back in 2020. Or maybe this is from last year only. Anyhow, tree, Christmas, the children are younger, cocoa, Oregon Trail wagon, this post was not posted because clearly more was needed to flesh it out. Part of the reason we get our tree here is that it is in Woodstock IL where Groundhog day was filmed and there is this great restaurant in the courthouse with amazing mushroom soup. restaurant getting the tree is secondary to what I actually take pictures of? This was the tree we got. Ha ha. We were staying in a 2 bedroom apartment then, so maybe. Or maybe not, maybe it was from last year when we got the biggest tree ever. Very different ending to this adventure but I don't know which is true. Think of this as a Choose Your Own Adventure book. This post IS happening.