The buckle of the tick belt!

Our skin has been crawling this week! This is something we didn't see or hear about when we were contemplating our move. Evidently, NC is "the buckle of the tick belt."

Yup, those nasty little bugs that attach & suck your blood are very prevalent here! And boy have we had our fill this week!

A couple of weeks ago, Laura found some strange little bug crawling on a pile of clean, folded laundry. She thought maybe bed-bugs (Laura experienced those on her mission) and we started looking out for signs of more. Since then though, I'm convinced it was a tick nymph.

Then, last Sunday right before the closing prayer in sacrament meeting, Keri had an itch on her hand. When she went to scratch, she started a loud whisper of "spider! spider!". When she tried to get it off... it was stuck & wouldn't come off. Panic set in. It was a tick embedded between her fingers. Laura calmed her down & someone in the ward had tweezers in their pocket-knife and pulled it off. After that, our skin was crawling for a couple of days!

Then, just a couple of days later, Laura finds some strange huge bug laying on the stairs. "What is it?" she yells (luckily, I was working from home that day). From researching on www.whatsthatbug.com that Sunday, I immediately recognized it as an already engorged tick!  (this is a picture of the real thing laying on our carpet!!!)  It had already had a feast on someone or something & had fallen off after getting it's fill. We hope it was from the dog! Needless to say, it's dead now.

Then just yesterday, Sarah found another tick crawling on her chest of drawers. It looked just like this picture of a Lone Start tick from the web.  We caught & killed that little bugger!

Needless to say, we're recording dates found & watching for flu-like symptoms very carefully now! We also went and bought a stash of repellant with DEET and are doing regular tick checks now!

I think Holly would love it here!!  :-)

Horses!!

We've started Sarah with some horseback riding lessons here. We found a place that is just around the corner from our house that does them. She loves it! She rides for a couple of hours every Tuesday. They teach them the tacking (putting on the bridle & saddle), grooming, and how to ride and handle the horses.

They seem to concentrate on equestrian style riding at that stable, though that's not Sarah's purpose for taking the lessons. Ever since she was very little, Sarah has loved horses. Her life's ambition (her dream job) has always been to work with handicapped kids and riding horses for therapy. She's planning to go to an agricultural college like Utah State to learn about how animals can be used for therapeutic work. We thought it would be good to get her some close-up exposure to the animals, and let her learn the basics of handling them, preparing them for a ride, and the care & grooming they'd require.

She has a blast at it, and is definitely the highlight of her week.

 

Keri has to go with us every week to pick Sarah up, and we can't drag her away from the stables.  She would love to do this too, but it would be WAY too expensive to have two kids in the program (it's really too expensive for one, but Sarah needs it for her emotional well being right now & for her future plans).

Keri's doing great in school (she's been recommended for the AG - academically gifted programs next year in a couple of subjects) and has a lot of friends there. Again, it's taking a while to find many kids right in our neighborhood to play with though. Maybe when the HOA pool opens next month they'll meet some more kids close by. We know both girls, but especially Keri will be living at the pool as much as Laura will go with her.

Brennen's in 7th heaven... if only he could wake up for it!

Brennen had a picture taken of his early morning seminary class her to send to his former class in Utah.

He loves getting up at 5:30 in the morning (lol!) to meet with his class at the church - oh, and I love getting up to take him just as much.

At least there's cute girls there ... but he's way too tired to care all that much that early in the morning.

Grandma Platt actually loves animals! ... yeah, right.

We got some very unique pictures of Grandma Platt while she was visiting. Who ever thought that she would be smiling while she had animals surrounding, and even sitting on her?

She actually volunteered for these pictures. I think she was really trying to fit in with all the animal lovers in our family.

She's actually petting Tiger! I think she probably got shivers all that night in her bed thinking about touching those icky things. :-)

Driving accross NC...

We had a great, week-long visit from Grandma Platt this week.

The girls made doughnuts and biscuts with her, and she made some great dinners while here - - boy I miss Sunday afternoons at the Platt 'mansion' for dinner!

We also took a nice long 5 hour drive accross NC on the holiday Monday. From Raleigh-Durham to Burlington, to Greensborough, Winston-Salem, and up the mountains to Boone (for Daniel Boon - I think), and back again.

Unknown to me, Boone is also the home of Appalachian State University. You know, the I-AA football team that beat mighty Michigan & took the Nat'l championship?

It's a small, but pretty nice campus, but it was WAY too cold to spend much time out of the van. We took a small 'jaunt' by the tennis courts, and about 3-minutes into it our ears were frozen!

It was a nice drive to see what else is around that we haven't had any time to do since being here.

Laura got a new camera for her birthday. It's one of the nice SLR 10.1mp digitals (the ones that look like 35mm). She wanted to get back into her old photography hobbie, so she wanted a really good camera. We can't believe what good & detailed pictures it takes.

She took this fun closeup of Keri with it to try it out.

I'm not sure if it will show as detailed on the blog, but on this fun picture of Keri, you can actually see the little, usually invisible hairs on her skin under her nose!

Here are some more shots of the kids she had to take the first day.

The Hair and Nails!

It's been a hecktic time trying to get everything settled in preparation for moving to our new house, so the blog has suffered.

But, I promised a picture of the "makeover" Laura got in celbration of selling our Utah house. Really, she just got her hair done (with highlights) and some nails for the first time.

I really like the look!