Happy Monday!

We love playing outside!  Today's trip to the mailbox took about an hour.  Little man wanted to pick up every rock and stick he could find.  Next time we will bring a wagon for his treasures! 

Bat Eviction

Today we started bat eviction in our house.  After having two in our house so far this summer, we decided it was time to find them a new home.  I have a love hate relationship with the little buggers.  I love that they eat the bugs, but they really freak me out.  Watching them fly out of the side of my house is kind of cool in a "I really wish they were flying out of something other than my house" kind of way.  Apparently I get this from my mother.  

Why not kill them?  Because they eat mosquitos.  And they are protected as colonies.  I didn't do much research into the protection level around here, but let's assume killing them is illegal.  We want them to eat the billions of mosquitos anyway.  Here's a quick google factoid- a single bat can eat up to 1200 mosquitos in an hour!  

So step one of our evacuation plan-  find them somewhere else to live.  I don't want to get them out of one spot in the house only to have them move in again!  Thankfully I have a handy hubby who whipped up this amazing new home for our unwanted tenants.   

Do you want to build a bat house?  Here is a link- http://www.batcon.org/index.php/get-involved/install-a-bat-house/subcategory.html?layout=subcategory

Step two-  Hubby installed some DIY one-way screens.  The bats can get out, but hopefully not back in.  This was a big deal.  We had to wait until the end of maternity season to make sure we weren't trapping babies in the house.  I didn't want to take chances of any angry momma bats trying to fight their way into our house to get the babies.  Eek. Judging by the number of bats I just watched fly out of my house, I'd say the babies got out.  Although I did read that bat colonies can have hundreds of bats living in them.  It worried me to think about how many could be living in our "well-developed" colony.  Because I know they've lived here longer than we have! 

Step 3- Turn the light on!  Bats don't like light so we got a spotlight to shine on their entry point after they've all left for the night.  If the screen does its job, this step probably isn't necessary.  But we aren't messing around here.  We want to keep them out!  After a couple nights of "daylight" the bats are supposed to be deterred from heading to that area for housing.  Although the lights will attract more bugs, so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that this doesn't backfire!

  

I'll be on bat watch again tomorrow night to make sure there isn't any bat chirping or activity coming from our roof.  

And if you are like me and have trouble sleeping after thinking so much about bats, here's a cute picture of Cameron and Pepper.  

Little Farmer

We can't go outside these days without looking for the cows.  It actually starts as soon as we get downstairs in the morning.  He zooms over to the window and calls for the cows. "Moo! Moo!"  So this morning I took some pictures of little man checking on the cows.  

Yep, cows look good.  We can have a nap now.  

First Steps

We came back from vacation wondering if Cameron had been busy walking for grandma.  Turns out he hadn't, but decided to take his first steps about ten minutes after she left!  I don't think blogger will let me post the video I have, so here is a cute picture of Cameron and Pep.  

Each day he takes more and more steps!  He gets really excited about it and giggles and falls over.  He is also learning to stand up on his own- without pulling himself up on things.  I think we are going to be in trouble when he gets the hang of this.  Who has time to walk when they can RUN?!  

Vacation Time!

Hubby and I enjoyed a wonderful vacation last week.  It was the longest we've gone without Cameron!  And guess what- we all survived!  In fact, it was easier being gone than I expected it to be.  

We visited the national park where we had our honeymoon.  It is so beautiful up there.  However instead of having our houseboat we camped the entire week.  We found a perfect little island with a nice beach to call home for our stay.

Other than a few rain storms, a chilly morning, and an annoying little mouse that thought he should sleep on top of our tent, it was perfect!  Oh, I almost forgot about our mosquito friends.  We called them our friendly neighborhood mosquitos because how else do you make light of the swarms that attack immediately as you step out of your tent?   I've never wished for a bottle of 100% deet until this camping trip.  Thankfully we could escape them on the boat and they disbursed to a bearable number when the sun came out from hiding! 

We had one unfortunate boat trip where we ended up trapped by a storm.  I was pretty scared.  The waves were huge and the rain was pouring!  

I took this picture after we made it off the big lake where the water was much calmer.  That's the problem with not having cell service.  No weather map!  I didn't miss anything else about my lack of internet (although we could've used some new music for our honeymoon playlist).   

We made it back to the campsite in time to turn our shade into a rain/wind shelter and clothesline.  The picture of me hiding out with a pile of sopping wet clothes and towels (that I had left out to dry in the hot hot sun. Lesson learned.) is trapped on Hubby's camera that we don't have a cord for! 

Anyway- enough storm talk! Hubby and I turned into quite awesome campfire chefs.  We invested in a really cool Dutch oven and I don't know how we ever camped without it!!  We had fresh biscuits, croissants, cookies, monkey bread, and all kinds of fun things that I never thought we could have on a camping trip!  

It was a great trip!!