In the meantime we have been trying to do things to have fun and to keep busy while we are waiting for Tater to do her last bits of growth and development. Things like putting the house together the way we’ll need it when Tater comes home, unpacking, organizing and even vegetable gardening have been a few of our pastimes these days (other than my excessive napping).

It has sure been quite a critter filled weekend for us though! Late last week we were out in the front yard planting some of the free iris’ we were given. I was working under the tree planting them and N was working under the mailbox.

All of the sudden this frog comes hopping out of the grass at me. I was pretty surprised by it but was also excited because I have never really played with a frog. We didn’t have many water sources in Arizona so in turn we didn’t have many frogs to encounter. Here with the water pond behind our house the frogs are everywhere so I got to play with one for a bit while gardening. Is this a frog or toad though?

Then on Saturday we were out on the deck enjoying the warm morning and planting some seeds when we noticed our outdoor cat, Haley, acting a bit odd. Dixie, our dog, was also quite interested in what Haley had going on. It turns out the cat caught a garden snake and was playing it to death.

N rescued it with a rake and we were sad that it’s head and body were bleeding. We grabbed it away from the cat mainly because we wanted to see if we could get some photos of it and figure out what kind of snake it was. The reason we were so curious about the type of snake is because we are pretty sure a much larger snake got Dixie a few weeks ago.

We noticed she was trying to get at something that went under the deck, she dug a huge hole that went under the deck. We also suspect she got bit while digging that hole. She’s been limping and babying her one paw for about 2 weeks. It is getting better now and she is doing fine but we are sure it was a bite of some sort. Hopefully not from a bigger snake!

Anyway, after taking some photos to reference and compare to what we’ve found online we let the poor garden snake slither off to safety. We still have no idea what kind of snake it is.

Haley was a bit bummed to have her torture subject freed but she got over it pretty quick.

We’ve got frogs frolicking in the back yard, snakes slithering in the brush and we even have huge scary spiders crawling through our grass (with egg sacks on their backs) as I discovered while putting a bunny out to run the yard. The critter fun never seemed to end!

The rabbits seem to be loving the supervised play time in the yard and Dixie is getting very good at not going crazy over the rabbits running free. I recorded a few videos of N, Dixie and Maybelle out in the yard.

Here N has a moment with Dixie, he is telling her how she’ll need to watch over Tater soon…

I also recorded a video of some crazy kicking of the belly while we were watching American Idol last week. The lightening is poor but you can still see the jabs and kicks (and you get to hear the song recaps too. LOL).

The post Critters in my back yard: Rabbits, snakes, spiders, frogs and more. appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

For those of us old school video game children getting used to the newest and greatest video game systems is hard stuff. On Christmas night after N got off work we sat down and started playing the new Wii for the first time. Actually, N got to play Wii at a holiday party earlier this month so he had some more experience than me.

The bowling game was easy to pick up on for me but the pool game was hard stuff! Literally it took me 20 minutes to figure out how to hit the cue ball! N was laughing his butt off the whole time and I was getting super frustrated.

The Wii is tons of fun! We haven’t busted out the Wii Fit yet, we’ll have tons to keep us occupied this weekend! Oh, N was nice enough to make a video of me struggling with the Wii for your viewing pleasure, enjoy!

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