The Wood Between the Worlds

8/9/10, one year later...our baby turned 1!!! And because first birthdays {equal} pancakes, we invited the whole world to join us in eating pancakes for dinner!  And we invited everyone within driving distance to join us at our house to share in our stack of pancaking love.  We had a good lot of family and friends join us for the occasion, and everyone ate pancakes and birthday cake to their hearts content.  We requested no gifts {we want to be like hobbits and give away gifts on our birthdays}, but a few people brought some anyway!  Thanks everyone...because your presence was a gift!

How Anders came to our family:

Shortly after we moved to Oregon, this starved looking stray cat started to hang out around our house.  We did not know if she belonged to anyone so we didn't feed her, but she was always on our front porch or in our backyard.  This cat acted wild and was scared of people, but she would hesitantly approach us and would let us pet her.  After a couple of months, we saw that she was noticably pregnant.  We felt badly for her, so we asked around the neighborhood to make sure that she didn't belong to anyone...and when we found that she didn't we started putting food and water out for her.  We put a bed out on the side of our house where she could be alone and sheltered to have her kittens.  Joshua wanted to name her Washington, after George Washington...but seeing as she was a female, we decided to name her Martha.  Martha Washington.

She had her kittens on August 17, 2007...6 little cuties that we named Albert (after Albert Einstein), Anders, Evan, Autumn and Edie.  When the kittens were old enough we adopted them out to good homes and we captured Martha and took her in to get spayed.  It took me 4 hours to capture Martha!  It was a labor of love.  Anders was the last kitty that did not get adopted out, so we ended up keeping him.  And I think that he was the best kitty out of the litter.  He was so friendly and playful with the kids.  Even before we had him neutered he was not aggressive.

Martha finally agreed to live in our garage, but she has always been too scared to come inside our house.  So Martha and Anders have lived happily in our garage for the past two years.  Anders loved to wander around the yard and keep us company while we were gardening.  I couldn't even bend over to pull weeds without him getting in the way.  :-)  In that situation the boys would gladly help me out by petting him while I worked.

Now Martha is once again alone.  This is harder for me than it would normally be because it is so close to Elsa's death.  This is a much smaller loss, but we will all miss him.   

Our "big fat squirrel" Anders,
You will be missed by all of us.  You were the most friendly talkative kitty we've ever had.  The little boys adored you.  We hope that you are with Elsa keeping her company now.
Love, from all of us

...ok now.  Seriously. NO MORE!

Toby received a little goldfish from his Sunday school teacher a few weeks ago. He was so excited. He named him Mr. Fishy. Unfortunately it did not take long for Mr. Fishy to bite the dust. Poor Toby. This was his first experience having a pet die. So later that week, we pulled out a fish tank that a neighbor had given us (we were saving it for 'later'), and we took the boys to the pet store to pick out some new fish!