The Return of the House Bunny

We have one nuclear family member who has not received much screen-time here on the blog. Turtle! Turtle is my house bunny. I got her way back in 2006 when I was working a crazy job and living in an apartment by myself so, instead of a cat I got a 3 year old house bunny. When I lived by myself Turtle had rule of the roost and could and would hop all over the place. But, once we brought a hunting dog into the house we had to re-adjust living arrangements and Turtle was limited to ranging in one room only.

Isn't our carpet amazing?

Now that Sogn's gone for a few weeks Turtle can hop around wherever she wants. She's still guarding her room, bunnies are territorial, but she seems to be enjoying zooming around the house and I like having a little white blur keeping me company these days :)

Still Snowing!

The Start Tribune is reporting that the Twin Cities has received 12 inches of snow so far, and we may have four more inches to go!

I haven't been outside yet today but from what I can see from inside the house I believe the reports of 12 inches. So, I think it's official, we're snowed in!

This picture of the backyard is actually from a few hours ago, but I wanted to be able to post a good during and after pictures so I'm keeping this one for now.

Well, since we're snowed in and didn't make the winter storm grocery run last night like many people probably did, we had to be a little creative this morning for breakfast. Calhoun wanted pancakes but we're out of mix so he found this simple recipe online:

1-3/4 c. flour

2 tbsp sugar

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

1/4 c oil

1-3/4 c. milk

The problem is that we didn't have any milk! We almost always have cream in the house, for our coffee, and some whipped cream and vanilla yogurt, but no milk! So, we got a little creative and substituted egg nog for the milk. We needed to add some extra water to the batter, as egg nog is quite a bit thicker than milk, but the flavor turned out great!

One thing we have been dealing with this morning that's been a little strange is Sogn's behavior. He's has fun in the snow and enjoys it when he's outside, but when he's inside he seems very worried. It's the first time I've noticed him ever just watching out the window, which seems to make him more worried! Calhoun thinks that Turtle the bunny seems a little worried about the weather as well, which is kind of hilarious because she has never been outside and definitely can't see out the window.

With the exception of the nervous animals in the house, it's been a wonderful snowed in morning so far!

No AC - No Problem?

Minnesota is generally a climate of cold and although I enjoy a beautiful sunny day at the lake, I would prefer it if my house was a chilly 65 degrees and I was wearing a Norwegian Sweater. When we were looking for a house to rent we were looking at older houses and most of them didn't have air conditioning. When we found our house and they told us there was central air conditioning we were thrilled. And not just for us - our house is a bit of a zoo. Of course, there's Sogn. But, there's also Turtle! Turtle is my bunny, and we've been together for about four years. She needs the air conditioning too!

But, the air has gone out tonight. It is hot, the windows are open wide and both of the fans are on. It's not really helping out too much, but it's not unbearable. Thankfully, the AC guy is coming by tomorrow, some time between noon and four and he will (hopefully) have a quick, easy, cheap solution to fix our dud air conditioner.

So, we're all hot tonight. But at least the heat has dropped from 87 to 81 in the past hour and hopefully we can all have a good night's sleep. But, I must say, that of the four of us in our small family, I think Sogn, with his cold bath, got the best sans-AC cool down of all of us.