Lots of pictures

So, finally, a post that I started writing on Friday but never got beyond one line and a bunch of pictures (out of order). These are the pics of my skiing from our California ski weekend. I can't wait to go back.

Getting strapped into the bi-ski

All strapped in and ready to hit the slopes and trying out the outriggers!

My first hill, on the way down to get in line for the ski lift, I was told to aim for one of the skiers at the bottom, sadly, the kid I was aiming for got away.

Out there hitting the slopes! At one point, some of Laurie's family passed over me on the chair lift, while I was skiing down the bunny slope and started cheering for me - it was such and awesome moment and an amazing feeling to be skiing.

Ok, now I'm really out there on the slope with my instructors! (Laurie loves this picture because I was getting all crazy with the outriggers on the one side.) You can also see me covered in snow on one side because I fell over. The ski seemed to be leaning to the left, so I was over correcting when I was transversing the slope on the right and falling over. The instructors we awesome, they kept making sure I was comfortable and not freezing cold when I was covered in snow. These are sadly few pictures because Laurie's parent's camera was loosing battery, we found out later there was a replacement one in the case, so we should have taken more pictures, oh well. We'll get lots next time!

So, this weekend, we did some major house cleaning in an effort to be able to allow Bennett into the part of the house that will be his roaming area. It's almost there. We were able to extend his area a little bit. He's still using the litter box with the extra space, even though he did mark a few times in the new space. I think that he will mark all of the new space he has because there was a dog living here before us and I'm sure it smells like dog to him everywhere. Luckily, the marking isn't that hard to clean up. We still need to do some bunny proofing in the bedroom, and then he will be an official house rabbit living with his owners, sharing their space. I'm looking forward to it, it's been so cool to peek in on him with the new space. He's not just locked in his room anymore and we can see each other. I even caught him eating hay off of the hay rack, which I've never seen him do before. So these next pictures I took on Friday. He was being pretty cute...

Just a puff ball with ears.

Bennett content. When we pet him, he settles in like this. As he relaxes, his back haunches get higher and higher as his head gets closer and closer to the ground until he's all laid out. It's really sweet and cute.

What? Did you say food?

Come on, mom, I'm on the potty.

A flying leap from the cage. 2 weeks ago, he couldn't jump from the cage to the ground and vise versa.

Bunny mohawk, brought to you by a bored Laurie.

I know the pellets are in there... Just shove my head in a little further!

This is a picture of a perfect bunny nose print on the mirror.

Come on, mom, my bowl's right there, just a few more pellets, please?

This is how the nose prints get on the mirror - he loves himself!

Bennett's weekend

Well, it would have been very silly to take Bennett with us on the trip up to the cabin this weekend, so he stayed home and our former neighbor took care of him. He's recovering very well from the neutering surgery. The wounds are actually left open, they are very small. The first night, they were bleeding a bit and his hair was sticking into them, which the vet told us we needed to watch. We used some ky jelly as hair gel to keep his leg hair out of that area and it worked really well. We checked the wound again Thursday night and it looked really good and the wound had closed. Really, checking the wound is a two person job, because Bennett really doesn't like to be turned on his belly, so I would hold him close to my leg and lift up one of his back legs and Laurie would take a peek. Because of this, I just had our neighbor check the litter box and his surroundings for blood or pus. When we checked them when we got home, they were still looking good but they were open a little bit. This is probably because we've been letting him hop around like he was before the surgery. He was reeking havoc in his cage locked in there and we thought it would just be better to let him do what he thought he could, that and there was really no stopping him. He did really well at the vet hospital. He charmed them all, they were taking pictures of him and thought he was the cutest rabbit they'd seen, with lots of personality. As far as what he's like post surgery, if he was a lover before the surgery, I'm not sure what you'd call him now... He has really mellowed out and want love all the time (in fact I just had to stop typing because he hopped up into my lap and informed me he needed some love). We used to have psycho bunny at night before bed, but now, all he wants is to play and be petted and snuggled. He starting to disassociate my fingers with treats, so he's not nipping them anymore. He's been hanging out here with me all evening while I've been blogging, alternatively all laid out next to me or hopping around playing or requesting love.

Anyways, he gave no trouble to Eileen really. Friday night, apparently he through a hay party in the room and Eileen was having trouble with the vacuum. I guess she didn't realize that we were out of cell range and tried to send a text to my cell but dialed the cabin phone. I didn't even know you could send text messages to land lines. The message was really garbled because a machine was reading it, and it came from a 602 number, so we were trying to figure out who was trying to reach us. Laurie had answered the phone and she said the only word she understood was vacuum. Eileen got the vacuum working and even though Bennett is afraid of it, she said he was brave. She took a picture of him to show her mom, Terry (who was also our neighbor) and Terry decided she had to come over to see his cuteness in person.

Eileen did a really good job of taking care of him.

In other Bennett news, it seems that over the weekend, he began consistently pooping in the litter box. So, he's doing really well with that. Even when we take him into bed with us to watch Lost, he uses the litter box. I think we'll be having guests at the end of February, so I think he might be graduating to more house room pretty soon (since his domain right now is the guest bedroom). We've been planning on extending his territory once he is very consistently litter box trained. He'll be in about half the house, as we don't really want him to chew up our living room furniture or our dining room furniture (even though he's not a chewer, we want to be better safe than sorry). He will be allowed in the laundry room, both bathrooms, our bedroom, the front entry and of course the guest room.

So here are some pics, the last is of the set we took in the kitchen a little while ago and one was taken through a mirror, so it's not the best quality.

The big ski weekend

This past weekend has been pretty eventful, so I'm going to break it up into at least two posts. Unfortunately, there are no pictures from our trip this weekend, I have to get them off of Laurie's parent's camera before I can post them.

Instead of flying everyone out for Christmas this year, Laurie's family decided on a big family ski weekend at their cabin, mostly because it was way less expensive to fly everybody out in January than at Christmas time. Laurie and I were flying in on Thursday, also flying Thursday was her brother and sister-in-law who live in Seattle. Her brother and cousin, who are living in Boston, flew out a little further in advance to see their friends and family for a longer period of time than just a weekend. So we were supposed to leave Thursday evening, but there was a tornado watch here in Phoenix and the airport was basically closed that night. We called before we hauled everything to the airport and our airline didn't inform us that they really weren't flying anymore planes that night, so when we got to the baggage check, we found out we had to haul everything home. Thankfully, there was a 6:20am flight Friday morning that had seats available, so we hopped on that flight in the morning. All the stuff we were hauling included my oxygen concentrator (aka the beast), a lot of snow clothing and the normal stuff, too.

""""""""""""" (<--- Bennett's contribution to this post)

So, we made it to CA (San Jose) in the morning, the flight was not as rough as we (and the pilot) expected and we set out to the cabin in the pouring (and very cold) rain. I waited with the bags at the airport while Laurie took a bus to the parking lot off airport property that her parents had parked a car for us. We were trying to make it to a 2 pm ski lesson for me and it soon became clear that we weren't going to make it. It rained consistently all the way until it started to snow on us. We reached chain control pretty quickly, about 2500 ft in elevation on highway 4. Luckily, we didn't have to bother with chains because we were driving an all wheel drive car with brand new snow tires. We thought we were doing pretty good on time, and then we had to stop for workers to clear trees, which slowed us up considerably. We were surprised at how many trees had fallen from when Laurie's parents had driven up (2:30 am) and us (11 am). We made it to the cabin about 12:30 pm and had no hope of driving up to the resort. It was still snowing pretty hard and there just wasn't going to be enough time (I needed to be at the ski resort at 1 pm for the 2 pm lesson). It was then that we learned about the harrowing tales that Laurie's family had about driving in the night before. Her parents did a 270 in their car with chains on, Laurie's sister and brother-in-law had a tree and power lines fall down right in front of them. We were all thankful that we got there safely. Arriving was also when we found out that there was no power. So much for dragging the beast with us!

I hung out and slept at the cabin for the afternoon and Laurie and almost all of the family when skiing out the back door. Her nephew, who is almost 3 stayed home with me and napped with me. We had Christmas that night, lit with candles and headlamps and flashlights. Mostly, all of us had already exchanged our secret santas but there were plenty of stocking stuffers. Dinner was some delicious salmon and green beans and rice with a delightful brown sugar/ginger/chile pepper/sesame seed/? sauce for the salmon. I went to bed early to rest up for my ski.

The next morning, we had chocolate chip pancakes and about half the family headed out for some downhill skiing at the Bear Valley ski resort. The rest of the family went out and built a sledding run for Laurie's nephews to play on. Unfortunately, some clock issues with the power out led to some miscommunications. Laurie's dad was supposed to head back from sledding so we could leave at noon and had to go be found. We had planned for 45 minutes to get me dressed and in the car, well because different clocks said different things, we ended up with only 20 minutes. So, all in all, we were pulling out of the driveway at about 12:50 pm. We got to highway 4 (about 30 sec worth of driving) and discovered that chains weren't needed and the low pressure tire light had come on. So, we drove back to the driveway, took off chains, added air to tires and headed out again. The road looked good, so we were surprised at finding chain control, oh, about 15 minutes ahead of us. So we put chains back on and made it to the resort about 2:30 pm. The resort was so wonderful about still letting me take the lessons. The lifts close at 4 pm and the lesson was an hour and a half. I used a bi-ski and the two teachers were wonderful about taking out a newbie. I had so much fun. I've never been skiing before, even when I wasn't sick. It was so awesome to be out there with everyone. At one point, some of Laurie's family went over me on a lift while I was on the slope and I could hear them cheering for me, it was just so exciting to be skiing! Adaptive technology has come so far, and I'm so glad. Ok, I'm not saying I was a great skier or anything. When the teachers were helping me balance, I did great, but when I was alone in steering and balancing (they had me tethered so I wouldn't escape) I fell a few times. My arms are so sore from using the outriggers and generally being used in ways they're not used to. I'm so happy that I had the opportunity to do this! Laurie said that she cried when she saw me on the slopes, it was that emotionally charged an experience.

When we got home, I collapsed into bed, very happy (both to be in bed and to have been skiing, Laurie was teasing me because my front teeth were freezing because I was smiling so much while skiing :) ). We had a birthday dinner for Laurie's mom and hung out before going to bed. This whole trip, we spent playing with Laurie's nephews who are 2 and 1. They are both adorable and the 2 year old is at a really fun age. He is always talking, mostly to himself, but there is always a stream of words coming out of his mouth and he has a fantastic imagination. He was a lot of fun to hang out with and Laurie got lots of nephew time in this weekend.

In the morning yesterday, we all packed off and headed off to our respective homes. We were a little worried about the drive from the cabin to the airport but we ended up with plenty of time. Our flights to Phoenix and Seattle were 10 minutes apart, so driving together worked out perfectly. The flight home was uneventful. I was able to spin on the plane, it wasn't very full and Laurie and I had a seat between us. Bennett was very happy to see us when we got home.

All in all, a fantastic weekend. Everyone was relaxed and enjoying each other's company and even without power, the cabin was well enough designed that we could cook and keep warm and even have warm showers. I am so very happy to have had the experience of skiing and we definitely have plans to do it again! (I promise pictures of me actually doing it soon!)

And then there were four

I've been blogging a lot lately about Bennett because I've been very busy with taking care of him and we are finally settling into a routine, so I wanted to talk a bit about what's been going on with me.

On Thursday, I have an appt with the Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) surgeon to see about what's been going on with lump things that keep popping up on me. The general surgery clinic was so backed up that they can't see me until the beginning of February, so my doc and Laurie and I decided we'd go ahead and see the ENT guys because it would be a bit faster. (Although, I am keeping that appt with general surgery.) Two days ago, we discovered another lump, this time on my right cheek. It's not all that noticeable if you don't know that it's there, just looks a little weird from the side. So that makes four: one on my neck/collarbone, one on my back, one on my right leg and now on the right cheek. I'm really kind of nervous about what's going on. I know that there is at least one, probably more, biopsy in my future, which I'm not really looking forward to. We'll see. Hopefully, I won't get stuck by a needle this week, but that they will order more imaging or set up something for the biopsy where I'm sedated or something (I'm not really counting on the sedation, my guess is it will be done with a local). On the other hand, I would really like to get down to the bottom of what's going on and see if something can be done about it, especially so I can get off the extra meds I'm taking. I'm sure I'll be posting back later what becomes of this ENT appt.

Laurie started her new job at the beginning of January, she really enjoys it, even with a longer commute. I don't know if I mentioned this already, but she's able to take the bus into work a few days a week, if she wakes up in time :). I went into work with her yesterday, even though she had the day off, to bring some of her materials that she'd collected from her time at St. Paul's in to her classroom. The school is actually in the Jewish Community Center in Scottsdale, and it's a beautiful campus.

A week ago Sunday, we took a trip to the eye doctor because I needed new sunglasses (my old ones, which I loved, were stolen out of our car sometime last year) and they insisted because it had been longer than a year that I get a new eye exam. Well, it turned out to be the right thing to do because my eye sight had apparently changed quite a bit between now and then. I guess I had just assumed my glasses were always dirty, because I can see so much more clearly with the new prescription. I got a really cute pair of sunglasses, too, 50% off!

This weekend, we're heading back to Laurie's family's cabin in the Sierras, in CA. We're doing a family ski weekend, and the weather is looking wonderful as far as new snowfall! I'll be downhill skiing for the first time ever, and I'm really looking forward to it. The ski resort by the cabin has an adaptive ski program, and I'm going to get some lessons and hit the slopes! I'm a bit worried, because Bennett is being neutered tomorrow and we're leaving Thursday night for CA, but our former neighbor, Eileen, is going to be taking care of him. It should be pretty easy for her because he'll be confined to the cage while he heals a little. I'm excited to see how non-hormone-raging Bennett comes home to us.

We're sitting here, listening to the rain. This weekend, since Bennett has been so good about using the litter box, we extended his territory. He now has almost free reign of the second bedroom, with the couch and the mass of cords for the printer/fax/copier and the internet stuff fenced off. He's just hanging out with me, but I better be going, tuna melts for dinner and I'm hoping to have it done before Laurie gets home. :)

Mr. Binky and the great escape

Life with Bennett has been good. Now that he's using the litter box consistently, he's been a lot easier to take care of - now I only have to clean the litter box every day, and not the whole cage. He's really seeming to finally setting in with us. A few days ago, he started "binky"-ing during his play time with me. I'm glad that I knew what a binky was before he started doing it because I would have been concerned about his neurological health otherwise. A binky is when a bunny jumps straight up in mid air and does a 180 degree turn while in the air. Also, it could mean running along and kicking their heels up. Some people call it dancing, whatever you want to call it, it's hysterically funny to watch. Basically, in bunny language it means that I'm really really happy right now. It's very cute and very endearing. He's been doing it consistently when we play now, so I thing that's a good sign that he's liking living with us. He's been definitely bulking up muscle-wise, which is really good. He can hop from the ground into his cage in one leap and we've opened up his play area a bit and he's ben loving the extra space, especially to binky in. Yesterday, he binkied all the way across the room and into his cage and then looked around like how did I get in here?

Even I've been benefiting from having Bennett around, other than the rewarding company and the feeling good about taking care of him. I've lost a little weight chasing after him, taking care of him and with all the funny I have with him. I'm definitely gaining muscle right with Bennett. :)

A few days ago, my mom and my little brother, Nate, came over for dessert since we had miss our traditional sunday night dinner with them, and they wanted to meet Bennett. So, after I had fed him his evening meal and played around with him for a little bit before dinner, I left the light on in the room (since we were going to go back in there in a little bit) and thankfully, Laurie closed the door behind us. When we went back into the room to get him out of his cage and show him off, when the door opened, he hopped out from under the chair towards me. Yes, he body-checked the cage door and it gave way, letting him free in the room. I'm sooooo glad that Laurie closed the door behind us because he could have been anywhere otherwise. As it was, he didn't reek too much terror. He peed in one spot that we found but that was about it other than turning over his carrier and a litter box and pretty much anything that could be turned over. So, we're doing major cleaning in his room right now, while Bennett and I hang outside. We were really relieved that he hadn't chewed on any of the cords that are in that room. The one kind of bad thing that resulted from his little outing was that the next day, when we were playing, he thought that he could go anywhere he wanted, so we had a little disagreement about where he was allowed to go. He's back to being a good, happy, binky bunny now though. Although, now we are locking the cage door with a suitcase lock so he can't body-check it open again.

Well, it's nearly lunchtime now and someone keeps nudging me for attention, so I'm off. I'm hoping to take some new pictures soon and I still need to take pictures of what I got for Christmas!

Oh happy day!

I'm so excited! I have to share this with someone... Laurie's still in her test and I can't wait! Bennett has been using the litter box to pee in!!!!!! YAY! Let me go back a little, yesterday when I came in to clean his cage and feed him and such, I noticed that the paper in the catch bin was pretty dry. There were some old dried out spots but nothing new, so I was a little worried. We were going to the vet anyway, so I thought I'd mention it there. I checked the litter box cursorily and it didn't look wet so I didn't really think he'd been using it. He peed in the carrier at the vet's office, so I was pretty sure that everything was ok (I'll talk more about the vet visit in a second here) and expected a wet mess for me when I got up this morning to take care of things. Mystified, again there was no wet newspaper at the bottom of the catch bin, none, not even anything dried. I was going to change the litter box today anyways, and when I picked up the hay on top, I was in for a big surprise. He'd been using it! The litter below the hay was soaked. I'm so proud of him! I didn't expect it before the neutering surgery, so I'm really happy right now! No more cleaning the whole cage everyday! Just the litter box - whoohoo! We've had him a week and things are already getting easier for me to take care of him!

Anyways, the vet visit went well. I really liked the Dr. and he seemed really knowledgeable about rabbits, which is really good for us. Some vets only do dogs and cats and rabbits are considered exotics, so finding a good rabbit vet can sometimes be a challenge. Luckily for us, there's a great one not that far from our place. We scheduled the neutering for January 20th. I feel a little bad about this because we're going out of town the next evening, just for the weekend. Our old neighbor Eileen is going to be rabbit-sitting for us. But when I really think about it, it might be easier for her to take care of him when he's recovering from surgery because he'll be confined to the cage for a few days until he's feeling himself, which puts that timeline to right when we get home. I think it'll be good. Ok, more on the vet visit... We got his nails trimmed and some of the mats sheared off of his private parts - he didn't not like either of these things because they had to hold him belly up to reach those parts. I am glad that his nails are shorter though! He doesn't have ear mites, what we had thought might have been ear mites looks to have been a scar from a bite or something from before we got him. The vet did say that his muscle tone is not very good, that he feels like he's been caged most of his life and that we need to work on getting him to get some exercise. We've been playing around with the idea of setting up a rabbit run in the backyard, but for now, we'll be exercising him in the pen or playing around with him in the kitchen so he can work on getting buff. The only other worrying thing is that he seems to have some tooth problems, which aren't unusual in rabbits. They are going to get a better look at what's going on with his teeth while he's under anesthesia for the neuter but it might turn out that we'll need to get his teeth filed every once in awhile. We were also concerned with a little bit of sneezing and discharge from his nose, but since we've had him such a short period of time, we'll just wait and see. If it gets any worse, we'll be making another appt sooner that 4 mo out.

Did I mention that yesterday Bennett was licking me? That's the ultimate sign of bunny affection! I am definitely happy to have him around, work and all! I can now attest to how wonderful bunny kisses are!

Life with Bennett

Well, the first week with a new bunny has been... interesting. I really love him and he's been wonderful to cuddle and play with but he still hasn't figured out the whole litter box thing. He seems to want to pee everywhere but the litter box. When I move the box to the new corner in which he's been doing his business, he just switches corners and sometimes, not even corners, just all over. I think that a lot of his "bad" behavior is due to the crazy hormones he's going though as an adolescent boy bunny who's not been neutered. We're going to the vet today to have him checked out and schedule the neutering surgery. It would be fantastic if we could get it done this weekend, but I'm not sure how likely that is. The vet that we're going to says on his website that he supports rabbits being fed a hay only diet. This would be really nice. The pellets we've been giving Bennett are timothy hay pellets and not alfalfa based, so I don't know if they would fit into this regimen. I'm also wondering how to switch over to hay only, because he seems like he's starving when I give him his pellets, but I'm guessing if he only had hay he would probably start eating it. It'll be an interesting vet visit. We're worried that he has ear mites and he came to us awfully thin, I'm worried he might be sick or something.

All in all, I think Bennett is a laid back rabbit. I've been playing with him for short bits of time out of the cage (he'll get longer once he's potty trained) and he loves to cuddle. Last night, we let him have full run of the kitchen when we where making dinner and he was being adorable. The floor is linoleum, so he kept slipping when he was trying to hop around. After he did some exploring, he found a nice little spot under the desk in the kitchen and just hung out there, chilling. Laurie would throw him the occasional scrap of carrot and parsnip (which he LOVED) and he'd go after it, but definitely at a leisurely pace. We got some really cute pictures of him from his little kitchen outing. It's funny because it seemed like he was posing for the camera! I'm definitely loving having him around, but it's been a lot of work this week. More that I was expecting and to be honest there might have been a moment or two when I thought that it was too much work and we should give him back to Susan... and then he cuddles with me and it's all worth it.

Laurie's going to be gone tonight and tomorrow to go take a test she needs to graduate for her masters. She'll be driving to Las Vegas tonight and home tomorrow night. I'll miss her, but it shouldn't be that long of a time away, but I am bummed that I won't be able to go to our LYS tonight for our normal knit night. And last but certainly not least, before I go make myself lunch, I wanted to wish Mandy a very happy birthday!

A new addition

Well, we made it home safe and sound on the 29th from the cabin. We decided to stay a day later that we had actually planned, Laurie didn't have to go into work on the 29th, so we hung out at the cabin a little bit longer. Laurie's parent's friends join us up at the cabin for the weekend after Christmas. John and Shannon are very much connoisseurs of games, which is awesome because they always have a fun game to play. Laurie isn't all that into playing board games, so having people who want to play was a lot of fun. In fact, we borrowed a game from them and it turns out that Laurie really likes playing it. The game is called Carcassonne, it's sort of a cross between a puzzle and a board game. It's a lot of fun AND Laurie asks to play it! Yay for more game playing in our house! We ordered the game for ourselves and there are expansion packs for it, so we can start building our Carassonne collection.

We spent New Year's Eve with my mom and little brother, everyone else went out to a party. So it was a nice, quiet night with a little bit of Champagne at midnight. Nothing too special, but like I said, very normal, just hanging out with my family and playing Carcassonne for the first time.

On New Year's Day we cleaned the bunny cage we bought of Craigslist and set up everything for Bennett's arrival. Saturday morning, we drove down to Vail, AZ and picked him up from the woman we met at the fiber festival in October. The ride home was uneventful for him. Unfortunately, that morning, I started getting really sick to my stomach. By the time we got home, I was doubled over in pain from cramps and made a run to the bathroom. I spent most of the day running from bed to the toilet, which wasn't my idea of the first day we get the bunny home. :( I was too sick to go to church. Towards the end of the night, things were getting a bit better. My stomach is still iffy and I've had a few cramps here and there, but I seem to be recovered other than that, which is very good because bunnies are lots of work.

So far, the litter box training is not going very well. I think this is partially because Bennett is marking his territory and that he's an adolescent male who is not neutered. We're planning on neutering him, so I need to set up a vet appt. He's a very curious and cuddly bunny, he's very very cute. He's even won Laurie over. She was so sweet to take him outside in the pen and hang out on Saturday, when I was sick. He's had some pee accidents when he's then stepped in it, so I tried to give him a little bath today. It went well. I did it just after I finished grooming him and he didn't seem really freaked out about the water. More than anything, I wanted him to get his paws wet so he could finish cleaning them. He really likes knocking his water bowl over. The water bottle I bought isn't working very well. It requires him to push in a little lever in in order for the water to flow, so right now I'm using a little bowl for water with the plan to get a normal bottle with the little ball because all of this knocking the bowl over is not cool. He seems really skinny to Laurie and I. When you pet him, you can feel all of his bones, so we're trying to keep him really well fed, the thinness is another thing I need to bring up with the vet. Here are some of the pictures I have of the new addition of our lives! The first picture is on Saturday, the day we got him and the others are from grooming this morning.