Animal pics

For some reason, I just feel like posting pics today. Last week, I was planning on writing a long post about our weekend at my brother’s house but life interfered. Instead, I’ll just post some recent pics that I took here at our house and some in Sierra Vista.

Laying on the top shelf is Susano; on the bottom shelf is Fiona. It is rare to capture a picture of the two of them together as they don’t like each other much.

Our cats are so spoiled. One day we decided to place Susano in the window above our shower. Usually he lays so that he’s facing outside, but occasionally he likes to turn around and watch whoever is in the shower. After we’re done showering, we leave him up in the window until the bathroom starts getting hot from our ridiculously hot summers or until he meows that he’s ready to come down.

These two are attached at the hip and love laying on my desk, whenever there is enough room. Bruno is our baby, the kitten we raised by hand last year. He was only a day old when he came into our house and Susano has been parenting him ever since.

Seeing this rattlesnake was one of the highlights of my weekend with my brother. I had never seen a live one in the wild before. We had just finished doing some offroading in Josh’s 4×4 and were driving along the dirt road back to his house. All of a sudden, we spotted a long snake traveling across the road. I’m sure we barely missed it with the tires. We stopped and ran back to look, just as he slithered into the brush at the side of the road. Josh identified it as a rattlesnake before I did and our suspicions were confirmed when he curled up and starting shaking his rattles at us. Hurray for zoom on cameras!

I recently spotted this dragonfly resting outside my kitchen window. I was washing dishes and feeling a little down when he flew by and landed on a bush. I snuck outside with my camera and managed to get a half decent shot. He stuck around for a few hours before flying off again. I love the deep orange color.

This little guy graces me with his presence every couple of days. There is a tall bush outside the kitchen and he lands on one of the branches sticking out the side of the bush. He’ll sit there for several hours at a time, usually during the hottest part of the day and just look around or groom himself. Until he started visiting, I had never seen a hummingbird sit so still for so long. I hope he keeps coming back.

Someday I’ll own a camera that allows me to zoom in and focus on hummingbirds without producing grainy photographs. 🙂 Until then, I’ll just continue to enjoy all the animals God sends my way.

Praise report

Praise the Lord! Today was a very good day for our car. We visited Jiffy Lube and had an oil change done (expensive, even with a coupon!). Then we had our emissions tested so that we could renew our car registration. The car passed!

I’ve been reading a lot lately. Today I finished the book Unveiled, the story of Tamar, by Francine Rivers. It was a quick read but very good. Tamar’s story is a short one, covered in Genesis 38. Only one chapter is written about her, but the story covers years in time. I had always wondered why Tamar chose to disguise herself as a prostitute, of all things. The book gave me understanding of one possible reason she made that choice.

I found the book at the library. If you have a chance to read it, check it out. It’s a great insight into a strong woman who is included in Christ’s lineage.

Milestone!

I found my 100th geocache tonight! I told Jeff that my next goal will be 1,000 caches, but he said I should aim for 150 first. Probably a smart idea!

This cache is called When Cows Fly. I saved this one for my 100th find because I loved the mural and wanted a memorable cache as my first milestone. The picture shows only half the mural. It covers the entire side of a building and I had no idea it was even there! That’s one of the best parts of geocaching – finding parks and memorials and art that you didn’t even know was part of your neighborhood.

I’m melting

It is almost nine o’clock at night and I’m melting. It’s still 95 degrees outside!! Why do I live here?

I realized today that the state is requiring emissions testing on our car this year before registration is due at the end of the month. I hope it passes!

Today was pretty laid back. Hubby brought home his first full time paycheck. Hurray! I caught up on the dishes, washed some laundry, vacuumed, worked on cleaning off my desk for a few minutes (the never ending chore), and played with the cats. I also wasted a bit of time today playing a free downloaded game – Blocks Annihilator. It’s very similar to the Yahoo game Collapse. A waste of time, yes. But fun. 😉

What???

Is it July already? How did this happen? I just turned around and found that it’s already July. How is it possible that times passes so quickly?

I recieved two great surprises in my email this morning! First, our car registration for 2010 decreased! We’re only paying $89 for one year. I think last year was around $119. I guess that means the value of our car has also decreased, but that’s ok. We’re almost ready to pass 116,000 miles.

The second surprise was our electric bill. When I saw the subject line on that email, I cringed. We finally succomed to the heat and turned the air conditioning on. Last summer, our bills with AC were about $135/month. Our bills when we’re not running heat or AC run around $80. Our bill for June is $100. Not bad! I will admit that the bill is low probably because we only ran our AC for about a week in June. I’m sure July will be much worse.

At least our emergency fund will be replenished by the end of the month! Then I’ll breathe just a little bit easier.

Excursions

I was honored today to accompany my hubby on some of his work appointments. He had to drive to three different locations around the city and drop off some equipment. It was nice spending time together in the car, just talking, no distractions.

There are a few other thoughts floating around but I don’t feel prepared to put them on paper. I think I’ll go take a cold bath to cool down. Even with the AC running occasionally, it’s still hot!

Babies everywhere!

I feel so tortured. Not really, but still… I want a baby. With all my longing and soul I desire to get pregnant and start growing our family.

Before hubby and I married, we discussed children. We decided that we were going to wait at least two years before trying to conceive our first. We wanted time to grow as a couple, get used to marriage, and try to get our finances in order. Near our second anniversary, we started talking again and decided to wait at least another year. Well, our fourth anniversary is in October and we’re still not ready to start trying for a baby.

It’s not that we don’t want children. Hubby knows I do, the more the merrier. Hubby also wants children but wants to be closer to having our debt paid off. $73,000 is a hefty debt chunk to try to pay off on one income while raising children. We started off with almost $95,000 in debt so we’re making good progress. According to my calculations, it will still take several (as in five or so) years to pay it all off.

I don’t want to wait that long but I’m trying to honor my husband’s wishes to wait awhile longer. In the meantime, I fight sadness every month when I have that reminder that we are still waiting. I’m going to be 27 in October and hubby will be 31. I know we’re not too old for kids, but how long until we’re ready?

As I mentioned at the beginning of my post, I feel tortured. The last couple days have been hard as I’ve come across babies on the blogs I read, the forums, and even the latest book I’ve been reading. I’ve been dreaming every night for the past few nights about our first child. Oddly, in my dreams, it’s always a girl.

Oh, well. I will continue to pray that we will know when it’s God’s will for us to have a baby and I will also continue squeezing money out of our budget to pay off our debt. If only I had realized 8 years ago what I was sacrificing when I took out the car loan, student loans, and applied for my first credit card.

AC and raw foods

We turned on our air conditioning last night. We were melting. It was 93 degrees indoors and we just couldn’t tolerate it any longer. We demolished our record from last year, though; we lasted until June 22 this summer! Our electric bill will probably jump from about $80/month to $130/month, but at least we won’t melt.

I’m doing a raw food challenge right now. Today is day 11 of eating 100% raw vegan. If anyone is interested in taking a look at what’s going on, visit my health blog. My longest raw challenge was last spring and I completed 40 days eating just raw foods. I’m actually starting to wonder if I might meet or exceed my attempts from last year but we’ll see what happens.