Twice in the past two weeks, little animals have gotten trapped in our bedroom window well. Both times, we helped them escape. The first little animal was a mouse. We put a board in the window well, as well as a bunch of sticks in the corner for him to climb out on. He wasn't there the next day, so I assume he got out. It actually just occurred to me that maybe a cat got him and that's why he's not there anymore. That's awful. I like to think that he escaped unscathed. Then, yesterday, the bird noises out the window were really loud and it sounded like little chicks cheeping. So I peaked through the blinds and there was a whole family of quail. Except a mother. Anyway, there were six little tiny guys and a dad (I think it was male because it had the feather on its head). I watched them for awhile. The mouse escape board was still in there, but the birds didn't figure it out. The dad kept flying out of the window well and calling and then jumping back down when the babies didn't come. It was so sad. Mike came home for lunch and by that time they had kind of given up and were just roosting under the board. I was going over to the house to work on it after Mike went back to work, and I didn't want to leave them there because we weren't going to be back until after it was dark, so we decided to rescue them. We got gloves and got down in the window well and freaked the poor things out. The dad flew out, but kept running around a safe distance away, calling like crazy. We had to be really careful where we stepped because the babies blended right in with the leaves and we didn't want to squish any of them. The first one I caught, I let go right outside the window well and it freaked out and beelined for our kitchen window well and fell in. Mike rescued it a second time. After that, we learned to take them a little farther away before we put them down. I was worried about the dad taking him back, but after Mike and I came back inside, I could hear him calling again. So yeah, we're pretty much heroes.
Poor little things. I didn't take any pictures of the mouse, but I did shoot a few short videos. Actually, they're kind of a long time to watch a mouse run around in a window well, so don't feel bad if you quit a quarter of the way through. In the beginning of this one, he's burrowed under the leaves, which I thought was extremely cute.
Since it's been awhile since my last post, here's a quick update on what we've been up to:
One of my awesome good friends, Leda Wilkins, got married and is now a Johnson as well. She had twelve bridesmaids (!), of which I was one.
Part of the Elms/roomates classification of bridesmaids. Shaliese, Megan, Jeanette, Claire, me, and Ang.
Mike and I at the reception. The cheesecake was delicious.
We also went to the Lehi Roundup that Saturday. I took a few videos of the bull riders, but none of them made it to eight seconds. I felt like I was jinxing them.
We decided against cowboy gear.
The biggest time consumer, by far, has been getting the house ready to move in to. For those of you that haven't heard, Mike and I are moving to Lehi, to the house his grandpa built. We're incredibly excited about it, even if we are sick of painting a little bit.
We got rid of the carpet that had been in the master bedroom and Mike has been refinishing the floor underneath, which is gorgeous (I love old wood floors). This is before, you can see the discoloration under the window there.
This is Mike applying the second coat of varnish to the floor. We don't have any pictures of the floor all sanded down, because I forgot the camera that day. Anyway, the floor looks great and only 2 more coats to go!!
This is the other bedroom. It was a pinky lavender color, but since we don't know what our future baby will be (that's not an announcement, I'm just saying that we don't know the sex of any babies we may or may not have in the future) we went with yellow.
The living room area and hallways are green. A green I love. Finally. For those of you I haven't complained to already about how hard it was to find a good green, let me now. I tried out 5-6 little quarts of greens that should have looked good but instead looked HORRIBLE. What I mean is every paint chip looked good, but after it was mixed as a paint, turned out to be some other gross color. The first two tries turned out minty green (like hospital scrubs), the next two were basically brown, and the last was much to blue. And there may be another I'm forgetting. Uhg. Similarly, finding a yellow took 4 tries. Thank heavens I only bought the quarts to start off with.
So, Mike and I are hopefully moving stuff into the basement, living room, kitchen, and future baby's room this weekend, then our bedroom on Monday/Tuesday. The varnish on the refinished floor has to try over night after every coat, so that's kind of taking forever. Then we have to paint. But we're pretty much pros by now, so hopefully it won't take too long.
