Weekend Guests

Wow, what a busy weekend at the Ard household. We kicked off the long weekend by bringing the Gracyn's preschool class pets home. Two Guinea Pigs, Kipling and Dolly came to stay with use for the weekend. The kids LOVED these little animals. They stayed in Gracyn's room, we fed them fruits and veggie, and took them out quite often to play. Our poor dog, Macie, went crazy during their visit. She loved coming into Gracyn's room to watch the Guinea Pigs in the cage but didn't understand why she wasn't allowed to play with them. Michael would pull a char over to Gracyn's dresser and talk in a high pitch to them "Hi, A-pigs." So cute! Both the kids were a little sad to see them go back to preschool.

Our other visitors ( not pictured below ) were 40 dungeness crabs. Dave went out crabbing with 4 friends Saturday morning right outside the Golden Gate Bridge. They came home with 10 a piece (the max you can take during crab season.) I took the kids to Martinez, CA to the docks to see the big cooler full of these crabs. They were huge. I wish I had taken my camera with me. Not long after those poor little guys were cooked in boiling water. 15 of them made them home to our house and we had a crab feed with Dave's buddies families Sunday night.

Now to our next visitor, which is still here....... Gracyn found a preying mantis on Sunday afternoon in our driveway. They are the most amazing looking creatures. We put it in a jar and she took it to school to show all of her classmates. Gracyn couldn't figure out what to name it because we didn't know if it is a boy or a girl. We did a little research on this insect and found out that many people keep them as pets! Yikes...... what should we do? Monday afternoon I went to the pet store and bought some small crickets so the poor thing could eat. I spoke with the pet shop owner and she told me that if we keep it more than 3 days it is ours! If you keep them much longer they can't survive in the wild when you let them go. So, we decided we should let it go the following day. Gracyn wanted the little bug to sleep in her room last night so it did. In the morning I went in to see if t had ate the crickets we put it. It sure did and left us a surprise as well........................

Hanging from the stick in it's cage it an egg sack. Yes, that's right we are expecting 100-200 baby preying mantis!!!!!! Lovely.