Rat Park and Year of the Rat

This is going to be quick. Camden has taken over this computer lately. He has immersed himself into some on-line games he plays with his brother. We may need one more computer soon. Cliff needs his to write school papers and do research.

I have blogged before about trying to create a "rat park" life. I never would have guessed that we would own rats about 10 months after I blogged about that. It wasn't even an idea in my head. It didn't even seem appealing.

Well, after a few weeks with our two girl rats, we are looking into building a large rat habitat for them. The medium sized dog kennel is very temporary. And having them loose in the basement for a few hours a day is not permanent either. A friend helped me find some designs on the web. The one that seems most doable for me is from here http://ratfanclub.org/cagepln2.html. I have pasted in the cage photo from that site into this post. Some nice folks are donating their wading pool to us and someone else (from Re-Use-it) is donating some chicken wire.

I mentioned to Holden a few weeks ago that the rats really like me. He then retorted, "Of course mom. Remember you were born in the year of the rat?" That boy has a quick mind and sense of humor. I was indeed born in 1972. And I am much like a rat, although I am not a hoarder of things.

Fall is going just fine here. We are planning a Halloween Party on Friday. Cliff and I have a date Wednesday for our 14th wedding anniversary. Cliff has a short fall break this week as well. So it is going to be a really fun week here. Last night Cliff's uncle Randy from Colorado spent the night. It was fun for Cliff to catch up with him and talk about family history too.

Now I am off to go do something else today while the sun is shining. I already walked the dog and the kids went outside for a bit. I will leave you with some "rat park" life photos from the past week. The drawing is a large pastel crayon one Holden drew last week just for fun. He says it is a house with an old structure which is for chickens on the side. It looks much more interesting and vivid in person. I'd love to frame it. The purple rain clouds are a nice touch.































Chinese zodiac photo credit
http://pinoybusiness.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/2008-year-of-the-rat.jpg

Love to all!

~Heather
x♫x♥x