new elements

Here's what's been going on around here the past few days...

a little of this:and a little bit of this:

Total spur of the moment decision this past weekend. We've been keeping our eyes open for kittens since we got back from vacation, but we were still thinking about waiting and making it more of a Christmas present thing. Then this past weekend there were a bunch of kittens on Craigslist and Sunday afternoon we just decided to do it. So we drove down to Festus and picked up these two little kitties.
They are about 12 weeks old, two of five kittens of a stray cat found in a barn. The couple with the kittens had taken the all the kittens into their home for the last four weeks to get them acclimated to people so they could find homes. They didn't however, have any little kids around and the kittens really only formed a bond with the one lady so unfortunately, they are still not very comfortable. One is painfully shy and skiddish when it comes to us touching her or holding her. The black and white one, the boy, is a little friendlier and starts purring up a storm when we do make him let us hold him. He actually jumped up on my lap today on his own accord, so that's a start! He's a fun little guy. Hopefully the girl will be better with us soon. They will play with the kids when they get the cat toys out, they just don't like to be held or approached. It's gonna take a little "kitty therapy", but I'm hoping in time we can shape them into friendly little kitties.

And names? Well we're sticking with my chemistry geek of a husband's name book for pets... The Periodic Table. Yes, you read that right. We name our pets from the Periodic Table. I don't know how this habit got started and now I don't know when it will end. The two cats Ryan had before he met me he named Argon and Ally (short for Aluminum). We got two kittens shortly after we were married and they were named Niko (for Nickel) and Ruthie (Ruthenium). (We had to leave Ruthie and Niko in Oregon by the way; Ryan's parents were kind enough to adopt them when we moved.)

I thought for once we would get away with just naming our pets nice, normal cat names, since Savannah is old enough to help us come up with names now. Well, it turned out it was a mistake quite amusing to brainstorm names with the kids. Sawyer wanted to name a cat "Giggle Giggle" or "Bonk", and Savannah was convinced she had to have a cat named "Ariel", of course. When she finally realized I wasn't going to budge on that one, she started making up names like "Mazilla" and "Kindalee". Finally she focused a bit and came up with and fell in love with the name Ruby (she actually wanted Max and Ruby, but I vetoed that). I liked the name Ruby but didn't know if Ryan would go for a non-scientific name. LOL!
But, as luck would have it, guess what is atomic #37 on the Periodic Table is? Rubidium.
So Ruby it is. And Ruby's brother's name is Oz, otherwise known as Osmium. So here are the newest members of our family...

Ruby

and little Oz

"We are not amused..."