This weekend, I had 2 big projects I wanted to finish. One was shampooing the carpets - because between watching Mal’s dogs over spring break, the amount of rain and mud we have had with our own dogs and kids, and the fact that we have had a goat inside the house for a few weeks, they were looking awful! Mr. Mackey has been returned to the barn (at least during the day) so it seemed to be an excellent time for it! As you can tell, the kids were super excited about this project! They did end up helping and it did get done….but not without a lot of weirdness!
The second was building a new habitat for the turtles. They came to us in a 50 gallon fish aquarium. I am sure when they were smaller turtles, this was a good set up. Now, they aren’t really small! Since they are in the dining room, whenever I was cooking all I could hear was their shells hitting glass. I felt sorry for them because I’m sure not being able to turn without hitting something is annoying! I was also really worried about them crashing into the glass and breaking it. I just didn’t want to come home someday to a flood.
I might pause here to say thank you to the internet. Not everything on there is bad! I spent the last couple of weeks researching. I found some amazing ideas on how to turn a stock tank into a nice turtle habitat! I also learned a whole lot about canister filtration systems. As a result, poor Jim got a whole lot of my craziness thrown his way! He agreed they needed a bigger space. I think after me showing him the 88th turtle habitat video, he finally decided I wasn’t going to shut up about it, and he ran to tractor supply and brought home a tank for them! Of course, that was by far not the end of my project, and the poor man got sucked into the rabbit hole with me! Have I mentioned how I love this boy?
The filtration turned out amazing. These photos are from the very first minutes of a couple of very happy turtles swimming around without crashing! I forced my children to go to the creek and pull out smooth pebbles for the bottom. Then I washed them, but they were still a little dirty so the water isn’t clear! This morning, after 12 hours of filtering, I can see the bottom!
Jim, The kids, and I worked really hard on this. I know that sometimes I get a little crazy with my ideas and that we now have a stock tank taking up a significant part of the dining room, but I sure do love how it turned out! Considering how long Jim sat and watched them swim and eat raspberries, with a tiny little smile on his face, I am pretty sure he is happy as well! Next week- I am adding plants, goldfish and algae eaters to it. Internet habitat ideas make this seem like a great plan! Sorry Jim- there really is no end to my crazy!
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