Larry

Happy 2nd Birthday Cole!  We had so much fun at Cole's birthday party this weekend.  

Jess did a great job on the party and I loved the Tractor cupcake cake she made for Cole.  

At the party we hit a pinata, opened presents and the best part of all for the kids was chasing the baby rabbits and trying to catch them.

Jess and Danny said that if you caught a rabbit, you got to keep it!  Well that got all of the kids cheering and trying even harder to catch the quick little rabbits.  But it got all of the parents booing and telling their kids not to catch one.  Well as you can see, Emily caught one...  Well actually Clint and Hayley caught it and then Emily claimed it.  So lucky us, we came home with a pet rabbit!!

Meet Larry our rabbit:

Okay, Okay, he is pretty cute and very soft and nice.  But still... I vowed to never get another pet after we got rid of Clifford but here we are with a new pet.  

The kids absolutely love him so I couldn't say no.  I know nothing about rabbits so it has been quite interesting.  Larry has lived in a cardboard box for the last few days but he keeps trying to jump out.  We have also had him in the house because it has been really cold at night lately and I didn't want the poor thing to freeze mostly because the kids would be devastated.  But I firmly believe that animals belong outside so we finally went to IFA and got a cage for it.  Yeah that was an interesting trip.  Like said before, I know nothing about rabbits so I am standing there in the rabbit aisle at IFA trying to wrestle three kids while texting Jess to see what to get, and just gaping at the prices on all of the stuff this "free" rabbit needs.  Finally the guy at IFA came and asked me if I needed help and I said "Yes, tell me everything you know about rabbits!"  He just laughed and started telling me what to get.  So $60 later, we walk out of IFA and go home to build a cage for Larry.  I ended up getting a build-it-yourself outdoor cage and a separate dump tray so that if we needed to bring it in we could.  Building the cage was fun too...  It required special pliers to build the cage but I didn't want to spend an extra $10 on a tool we would never use again so I just grabbed my little pocket sized Leatherman from Cabela's and went to work.  Yeah I probably should have bought the pliers because my hands killed afterward but I finally got a system down to bend the clips and after about the first 10 clips, the next 70 went much faster.  And finally the cage was built!  And Larry loved it. (Mostly I think he just loved being outside!)  

Emily has been quite responsibly about remembering to feed Larry and make sure he is okay.  We are thinking of putting her and Larry in 4-H to help her learn about raising animals.  We will see how it goes with moving.  So there you have it. The newest member of our family; Larry the rabbit.