No Empty Chairs Temple Trip

Our ward has a goal of no empty chairs at the Temple every so often and we decided to attend in October. It is always great to go to the Temple, especially when they have arranged child care for you! We had a wonderful time and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves, too. They are too young to go inside, but they still enjoyed a stroll around the exterior with us.

After some coaxing, we even got them to pose for a picture.

O.K. - Maybe we bribed them with a standard Risdal picture, but the end result was what were were going for.

Hey, Judd, what are these??

Our 30 gallon fish tank has been through quite a bit in it's short 4 month life at our home. We started in July with 4 danios - Quickfin, Coolie, Sparkle, and Lunch (the last one is Brigit's). We then developed a brown algae problem followed by a "wonderful" green algae bloom. Because of the green algae, we could barely see the tower at the opposite end of the tank. In between the brown and the green we added 3 platies and 1 plecostamus - Sunset, Ice, Pumpkin, and Spot. Spot (the plecostamus) did wonders for the brown algae and anything else he decided to eat. Well, the 4 newcomers developed Ich within a week and started to die off one at a time, starting with Ice, then Sunset, followed by Spot. Before Pumpkin could die, we used the return policy at PetCo and brought him back for credit towards the next fish. After that disaster, the danios didn't seem to be phased so we decided to treat the green algae and stabilize the tank before trying to add any more fish. We added an algae killer, removed the carbon filter, and covered the tank with a heavy dark blanket 24/7. We only got to look at the fish when we fed them. It seemed to be working. The water was clearing up. We were almost ready to remove the blanket - and the live plants needed some light before they died too. After removing the blanket one day, I noticed this little "thing" clinging to the side of the tank. Then I saw another, then another. I asked Judd what his guess was and he didn't have any more insight than I did. We thought they kind of looked like baby fish. (Quickfin did look like she has lost a little weight.) So I did a little research online and found out that we have 3 females - Quickfin, Coolie, and Lunch - and 1 male - Sparkle a.k.a Bob. We quickly sucked the fry into container to see if we could raise a few of them. Each day we removed the blanket there were a dozen or more stuck to the side of the tank. We rescued (fry are the danios favorite meal!) as many as we could until we had at least 3 or 4 dozen in our container.

Over our experiment's life we are down to about a dozen and a few of them are getting quite big. Maybe by Christmas we will be able to let them into the rest of the tank.

Let's go back in time...School started!

I'm a little slow the last couple of months, so I am going to try and catch up over the course of the next week (maybe even today!)

Back to school - It was the standard back to school morning - and it was raining. They actually have only had a handfull of days since school started that it was warm enough to go in shorts.

Xander was excited to start school again and see his friends after the "long" summer. Hanna was excited as well, even though she was trying to "fake" an attitude. (Don't worry, she has perfected the attitude!)