Jr. bites the dust

Jr.

October 2007-April 2009

Kirby's pet rat Jr. has passed away. (No, the cat did not get him, as far as we can tell, it was from natural causes).

Jr was a great pet rat. He never bit anyone, and was the main attraction of Murphy's room. Many a child was amazed and enjoyed playing with the rats.

A memorial service will be held tomorrow evening in the back yard. Jr is survived by his brother Tiger, and will be mourned by his owners, Murphy & Kirby.

So long Jr., may the cheese in heaven be a tastey treat for ya!

Master of the House

It's been a while since I've posted stuff, Febraury was a busy month with all the doctor appointments we had. Nine total! Everything from pink eye to a head examination! Glad it's over, and here's hoping March will be better....

Here's some highlights of the last month

The boys made me a birthday cake!

Kirby decided to start a rock and dead leaf collection at recess one day. He displayed them on the table until I told him to find a permanent place for them outside.

Murphy played with his Legos so much he went crosseyed!

I finally managed to get a good picture of Murphy smiling cute, instead of sticking his tounge out at me! Success! I really need a little girl!

Valentines Day Ideas

I was trying to be helpful and come up with some creative Valentine ideas for Murphy, but for some reason he rejected all of them. I thought they were great. Here they are:
1. We could pass out Band-Aids! The card would say, “Here’s for your broken heart”.
2. Beans! Not jelly beans; I was thinking some kind of pinto or garbanzo beans. The card would say “I don’t give a hill of beans about you!”
3. Dryer lint! Don’t really have a card idea for this one, but hey, it’s free!

Murphy said he’d just like to pass out some heart candy with cards and call it good. So that’s the plan.

Top Ten Things Learned by The Rickett Family-2008

1. Chickens need a coop or at least a fenced in yard to survive the neighbors dogs.
2. Transformers are so dang awesome (according to Kirby)!
3. It only took Tammy three tries to come up with a spending plan in Quicken, and she almost has all the charts figured out. (Who knew that you had to list your paycheck as income instead of expense?)
4. Jared built a shed from scratch, without a recipe!
5. Murphy started piano lessons and played soccer again
6. Kirby played something that resemble tee-ball (Little League, what do ya expect!)
7. We learned how rainy Pennsylvania can be in August, but we still managed to have a fabulous time at the Rickett family farm house!
8. Tammy took a trip to Texas, (how’s that for alliteration!) to photograph Andrea & Rob’s wedding, and learned how great Texas is.
9. Jared learned how to bring batteries back from the dead (and only blew up a few in the process!), and the proper use of transistors.
10. We learned again how grateful we are for our wonderful family and friends!

Merry Christmas!
Love,
Jared, Tammy, Murphy
& Kirby Rickett

(This was our Christmas Card that we sent out!)

December Blurrrrrr

I made it through the Christmas season! This month has been a blur of work at MasterLab, photography, MasterLab, snow, cat issues, and MasterLab! I think I saw my family sometime during this last month.....Anyways, another Christmas down! Maybe tomorrow I'll have enough energy to take down the Christmas tree!

On Christmas eve, we went to my inlaws house, and had a crazy fun time. They had a video camera hooked up to the tv, so you could see yourself while it recorded. Kirby had a great time with this. Here's the video:

Yep, that kids got some moves! I thought it was so cute!

November in a Nutshell

It has been a crazy week and half! I went on a much needed mad cleaning spree of our house. You know you've been doing too much laundry when you start to find little urchins in your dryer!

I also decided to cook my very first turkey this year. We were only having a small group of relatives over, so I figured if I gave them salmonella, it wouldn't be that big of a deal! I was grossed out by the turkey innards, and just about got frost bite trying to remove stuff. Here's a picture...

I was going for the Mr. Bean look, but didn't quite make it! Thanks to Dottie's speacil recipe, the turkey turned out alright, and people actually ate it and said it was good! So far, no illnesses reported...

So I finally had a chance to relax today. I was quietly reading my book, when Kirby asked if he could take some pictures with the digital camera. I said sure, whatever it takes for me to be able to read in peace! I also thought, hmmm. what a great way to get him interested in art and photography, maybe someday he'll follow in my footsteps. I was so proud watching him, he took 112 pictures! Here's a few of them:

Then Murphy thought it would be fun to get in on the action. Well, one boy with a camera is ok, (in fact, I've let Murphy do this before) but two boys with a camera can become a problem!



See what I have to deal with???? Boys and their obsession with toilets and poo

I was appalled to see this last one. Unfortunately, I was laughing too hard to get the point across of how inappropriate this picture is, the lesson was lost on them! Jared was laughing so hard too, that he was no help either!

Here's hoping December is a little less crazy! (Yay right, it's the Christmas season!)

Lucky 7!

Murphy turned 7 years old a couple days ago! I would love to come up with something funny to write about, but my brain is fried and I have two boys behind me bouncing a basketball in the living room! So here's some photos....I spent a small fortune on cupcakes for the whole class

Murphy got two more Lego sets...That brings us up to about 1 billion Legos!

Here's my pyscho cat Dazey about 2 seconds before she tried to bite my mom.

2 Days later, we've built the Lego car!

Close up of the cool Lego car...he also got a Lego airplane.

We couldn't find the birthday candles, I think somebody must have broke into our house and stolen them all! Along with several spoons and the scissors! So, we had to improvise. It only took him 10 tries to blow them out!