Our Newest Pets

As you might recall, the kids' first "pets" were their caterpillars they caught this fall. Ever since we had to let them go, the kids (especially Caroline) have been asking to have their own pets. With our house being as busy as it is, Dave and I thought that we might be able to handle fish. So we gave the kids a 10 gallon aquarium for Christmas. We set it up in their bathroom, and have had a fun time decorating it with plants, driftwood and rocks.

They each got to choose 1 platy and one guppy, so now we are the proud owners of 8 fish. Henry has Scuba-Doo and Tux, Caroline has Swishy the Fishy (the second) and Speedy, Evan has Bubbles and Jaws, and Seth has Frisky and Jason. (You've got to love Seth's taste in names...Remember, he was the one that wanted to name his baby brother Fluffy.)

You might have seen that one of Caroline's fish is a second. Unfortunately, Caroline's first fish died a few days ago. We gave Swishy the first a proper "flushing to the sea" burial. After some tears, we decided to draw some pictures of Swishy to put next to the aquarium so that the other fish wouldn't be lonely for her :). She then wanted to write a letter to Swishy, which we did. She ran upstairs with her artwork, but a couple of minutes later, I heard her crying again. I ran upstairs to see what happened. "What's wrong, Caroline?," I asked. "I can't send the letters to Swishy! It won't flush!" Yeah, our toilet was a bit clogged with Caroline's correspondence with her fish.