Mrowsers on Holiday

After a long morning of mrowsering around the very small hotel room, Mom's butt seemed the perfect place to curl up.

Now, how did we end up in a hotel room? Long story to be told soon.

Happy Easter, Happy Mrowsering!

As often happens in Spokane, around rolls Easter and along comes Spring, dragging her feet three or four steps behind, like an unhappy child. 

Luckily, a quiet, sunny Easter was just what we asked for this year. Brian and I went to my cousin's house for a small Easter brunch before digging up our bikes from beneath all the garage clutter and taking our first bike ride of the year. Overall, a nice quiet day with those who matter most. :) 

Of course, after the festivities of last weekend, this was more than welcome. Brian's oldest sister and her two daughters (pictured left) drove into town for a weekend visit during Whittney's Spring Break. Fun, but definitely a little exhausting. :)

We spent Friday night chatting over dinner at Brian's parents house, Saturday's dinner took place at his sister Kim's house, and that left us to host Sunday's dinner at our house. 

After (a little) frantically cleaning the house Sunday morning and starting the chicken fajitas, Sunday turned out much better than expected! I think Brian enjoyed playing the host and cook, taking control of everything logistically and letting everyone else just mingle and talk. I'm not so sure the kittens can say the same.

As soon as Brian's brother and his wife arrived, two things happened: first, Hank took refuge behind the couch in the living room and a panicked look plastered itself on his face once he realized that he effectively cornered himself into the room. Second, Steve began hamming it up, playing the friendly, kitten with pitiful looks, just pleading with everyone to give him a belly rub.

After a couple hours of festivities, Brian asked me to feed the kittens since Steve decided to make it known that he wanted food, and he wanted it NOW. That involved lots of mrower-ing at Brian's feet in the kitchen.

Meanwhile, poor Hanklin, from his residence behind the living room couch, refused to move even an inch in response to the usual food whistle that typically sends him racing down to the laundry room for dinner. Instead, I brought his food to him, drawing him out from behind the couch before I grabbed him and brought him down to the safety of the basement, thinking that he would want to eat without an audience. 

Not so much. He looked at me, looked at his food, glanced around to the basement rec room, and then walked away. Being the good kitten-mama that I am, I picked Hank up and brought him and his food to his daddy in the kitchen. Where, with the comfort of his daddy nearby, ate most of his food. 

After kitten-dinner, I thought that Hanklin might like to go to his normal hiding place, under our bed. I took him and gently placed him on the stairs leading to our bedroom, nudging him up the stairs. Shockingly, he decided the kitchen floor presented a better option... a better option for getting tripped over!

Hank sat there for a good half hour, eyes always on Brian, looking scared if anyone else dared come into the kitchen besides Brian, Sarah, or me. The poor guy. Scared out of his hammer pants! 

Then, once he got tired of maneuvering around the kitchen to avoid being stepped on, he took residence in the next most comfortable and safe hiding spot in the entire house... between the wall, the toaster oven, and a colander. The poor cat sat there for at least two hours, entirely terrified of all the people (around 15) invading his house.

Not gonna lie, it was entirely sweet the way that he huddled there, and at point he even used the colander as a sort of pillow for his cute, little, fluffy head. The poor terrified kitten. Once everyone left it still took him a while before he felt comfortable enough to emerge from his hiding place and rejoin the rest of the household. 

That night, I woke up at about 3AM to find Hanklin laying on Brian's chest, while Brain gave him head rubs and whispered "You did such a good job today, I'm so proud of you" over and over again. If that wasn't the sweetest thing in the world, I don't know what is. :)

I think Hanklin is very happy that this weekend was nothing like last weekend. :)

And, because this was a primarily Hanklin-post, here's the obligatory cute Steve picture!!!! 

Mrow?

I know, I know, it's been a while!

I really need to work on keeping this blog up-to-date on all of our activities... so far that goal amounts to one big FAIL for the year. So, I'm going to change that But first, let me give you a quick run-down of all the events since the last time I wrote in here.

As of February it appears that I'm headed down to Portland State come September! I got a department graduate assistantship, which means free school! I'm okay with that :) Brian and I are headed down to Portland in a couple weeks to take a look at potential apartments and figure out my living situation.

 I hope that we get a chance to take a tour of the campus, maybe go and poke around in the Sociology Department a bit, and, most of all, explore Portland! This will Brian's first trip to Portland, aside from driving through it a couple of times, so it will be fun to explore and get to know that city with him. I'm thinking that some stops at a few breweries is definitely on the agenda.

Other than that, things have been pretty quiet around here. The cats mrowser their way into trouble on a daily basis. We keep putting their toys back into the Costco box turned toy box and, inevitably, by the end of the day they have gotten in there and pulled out their favorite toys, sometimes along with old favorites they haven't played with in  a while.

Of course, for the past two months, Hank's favorite toy has been an old paper bag from the liquor store that we crumpled up into a ball. Whenever anyone so much as touches that paper ball, he comes running across the room, sometimes skidding to across the tile in the kitchen to our feet.

Earlier today as I attempted to throw it for him, he figured out the perfect opportunity to steal it from me before I threw it. I as standing at the stairs, ready to throw it towards the dining room, when all of a sudden I was standing there without the ball. Hanklin snuck up the stairs while I teased him with fake shot attempts and grabbed the ball when my hand went back to throw, and gave me a pretty satisfied look when I realized what happened.

I'm pretty sure the day that bag eventually gets thrown out is going to seem like the end of the world to Hanklin. Which, of course, means another trip to the liquor store to buy something so we can make him another toy. Or just because our liquor supply keeps dwindling at an alarming rate. ;)

Well, that's all for now.

Happy mrowering!

Mrower Friendly Rooms

Another couple of exciting weeks for the mrowers in our lives!

In the interest of saving everyone money, one of our friends moved into the basement yesterday, so we had to do a number of things to prepare for the move.

The first included cleaning out what we previously dubbed "The Junk Room," which now is the craft room/guest room. We had been in the (slow) process of doing this over the past couple of months, anyway, but since we had to move our guest room this became our top priority since we now needed to fit a queen bed in there. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how its turning out :) Especially since it's going to be mainly my space, which will be nice since I don't really have a space of my own here.

So, after everything was out of the basement, it made sense to paint the main room. With unpainted wall repairs and holes in the walls that desperately needed repairs, the walls looked HORRIBLE! Furthermore, since Brian wants to get the house appraised soon so that he can possibly get rid of mortgage insurance and refinance, we definitely need to work on making this place look as well-kept as possible... and it took me a while (and reading a couple articles on home appraisals) to convince Brian that this wasn't "putting lipstick on a pig."

There are grand plans of renovating this house in the future, but a lot of that is contingent upon getting rid of mortgage insurance/decreasing mortgage payments, so while whatever we paint may end up getting "blown up" sometime in the near future, I think that putting the time to do small, relatively inexpensive projects that result in the highest appraisal possible (and increasing Brian's equity) is probably in his best interest...  so I foresee lots of home improvement projects over the next few months!

As for the craft room and basement, I have pictures on the camera, but they haven't made their way to my computer yet, but soon... so, we chose a nice green for the basement. It scared us a little bit due to the sheer brightness, but since furniture has gone down there it looks A TON better.

For the most part, the room remained a "cat free zone" until we finished, but that didn't mean they weren't allowed to come and visit on occasion. Hanklin was super interested in the process, getting up and sniffing the paint after the cutting in had dried. I caught a few pictures on my phone, but since the basement is pretty dark they didn't turn out the best...

Meanwhile, Steven decided that doing the investigation wasn't so much his thing, but rather he is more the "supervisor" type. Sit back, watch his people to make sure they aren't doing anything too crazy, and enjoy the show. That's typically how it works.

But, we love our mrowers and their weird little antics. It will be interesting to see how they fare with the new addition to the household, and whether they decide to claw up her furniture... in which case there will further restrictions placed upon them. Oh kittens, how we love you... 

Merry Christmas... almost a month late

Merry Christmas!

Yes, almost a month late, but better late than never.

Brian and I spent most of the Christmas season pretty sick... in fact, we didn't even end up getting to go to Christmas dinner because we were afraid of getting his family sick :( But, we stayed the night at my mom's on Christmas Eve and opened presents there, which was fun! Mom got me a sewing machine, which I am excited to get to use (once we have the junk room cleaned up and converted to my craft room, of course), and I got Brian lots of movies, an awesome belt buckle, and a couple other things that I can't remember right now.

After Christmas morning, though, we crashed on the couch and watched a little "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" before heading home to spend our Christmas night sick, but at least in the company of our mrowers... not that Brian had been lacking in feline company. I am going to call him the "Cat Whisperer" from now on... Christmas Eve we were watching TV before bed and I get off the couch for three minutes and come back to find: 

Apparently Lynx and Sosci find him as magnetic as his kittens do. But, then again, he was also running a pretty high fever at this point, so probably the ideal spot for a cold kitten to sleep. :) 

Too tired to do much, we went home and decided to wait to give the kittens their Christmas present until a few days later... and, as per usual, they (and Brian) were more interested in the packaging than the actual gift... 

Hank immediately emerged at the sound of cardboard and crinkly paper, hoping to get a brand new toy... 

Brian, ever the child stuck in an adult's body, wanted in on the fun playing with packing material.

Unfortunately, Brian failed to convince Hanklin that it would be fun to jump through the styrofoam tube. 

Only once we actually took their new toy downstairs and filled it with food, did they realize that maybe it was something they would be interested in... now they'll have food whether we're here or not! Yay!

With Brian's parents getting older, it was getting imperative that we buy them an automatic feeder. Before, we couldn't leave for a few days without finding someone, usually his parents, to come and feed them morning and night. Now, we know that they'll have food if we leave for the weekend and will be fine without anyone checking on them. And, if we're gone for an extended period of time then we only need someone to check on them every couple of days. 

So, really, the gift of freedom for us! And, best of all, we got to utilize this new found freedom over New Years weekend, where we went up to some friend's place near Priest River and played games, had fun with sparklers, and other general merriment. :) 

And, with that I'll leave you with a few gems.

Night!