How to keep a goldfish alive

Here is our goldfish Goldie. She is 2 and a half years old. I've read on some of your blogs that you've had goldfish, but can't keep them alive for more than a few days. Well, I've decided to share with you my advice on keeping a goldfish alive. Really, it's probably not the greatest advice or the best care instructions, but it's worked for me and we have a 2 year old goldfish to prove it. Well, it's not really gold anymore, more of a creamy white goldfish. I'll explain the color issue later.

How to keep a goldfish alive:

1. Give the bowl a good cleaning, scrub down once to twice a month. Seriously, this is the only time I change the water. I move Goldie into another bowl. I dump out the old water, put the rocks into a separate container, clean out the bowl with dish soap and warm water. Then I rinse the rocks off. I usually squirt a little bit of dish soap in the rocks and then rinse them until the water runs clear (no more bubbles). I try to make sure there's no more soap on the rocks. Supposedly, you're not suppose to use dish soap when cleaning fish stuff, but I use it anyway. Then I dump the rocks back into the bowl, fill it up with cold water, and then let the water clear up a little bit. After the water looks clear, I move Goldie back into her clean, fresh bowl.

2. Feed the fish every two days or so. Sometimes I forget for like three days. I'm so bad! I feed it just one time the day I do decide to feed it and it's just a little pinch of goldfish food (the flaky kind). I think this is why I can get away with not cleaning her bowl very often. When you over feed a fish the bowl gets dirty way too fast.

3. That's it! I've been doing that for two years now and somehow our little goldfish has survived my terrible attempts at caring for it. So that's how you keep a goldfish alive. Well, at least it's worked for me. Back to the whole color issue. We did a little research online. They can turn white due to lack of sunshine or really dirty bowls. I think ours is due to the latter. But we do try to move her bowl into a patch of sunlight when we remember.

All three

I forgot that I didn't post any pictures of our little photo shoot with all three kids. So here are some pictures of that day. I think we're going to attempt another try with all three. Logan didn't really want to cooperate.




Don't you love how they all look like they really want to be there?

I guess Logan was happy in this one.

Dax, Dylen, Afton and Kya

We got some cute ones of Afton and Dax.

Not the best, but I love the yellow grass field.

A big step

We've been trying to teach Afton how to tie her shoe for a while now. On the 17th of November she did it for the first time by herself. I had been teaching her with one of my shoes, just showing her and she tried a few times. She would get frustrated and then wouldn't want to try anymore. Well, I saw this little red shoe that goes to her cabbage patch doll and I thought that she could practice with that. And it worked! On the second try she actually tied the shoe. We are so proud of her! She's been wearing her lace up shoes to school a lot more since she can tie them herself. The day after she learned to tie she took the little red shoe to school so she could show her teacher. Her teacher was so proud of her that she gave her a certificate. Afton was beaming! She is now the third person in her class that can tie their shoe. We are so proud of our little girl.

Baptism

On Sunday, November 16th, Afton's good friend, Paris, was baptized. We were invited to her baptism and then later to her house for some dinner. Afton and Dax were so excited to see their friend get baptized. It's so great that they have these older friends who are setting such great examples for them. Paris is a wonderful little girl. Afton just loves her and looks up to her so much. Paris is kind, smart, beautiful, fun, and we just love being around her. Not to mention she has a great family too. We love the Thompsons! Thanks so much for inviting us to Paris' baptism. Congratulations Paris!

All of the crazy kids at the Thompson's house

They're always willing to do funny faces.

Jason gave Logan an Oreo cookie and this is what became of it. People were running away from him because they didn't want him to touch them.

Grandma and Grandpa

Here are some fun pics of the kids with Rex and Sharon when they came to visit us. I wanted to get some of them with the kids. They had a great time hanging out with their grandparents, aunt and cousin and miss them so much already. We had so much fun with all of them. Thanks again for coming to see us and thanks Rex for building us an awesome and beautiful deck. We love it!

The kids had just gotten through with eating yogurt and Kya had it all over so I had to snap a picture.

Aren't they the cutest cousins ever? They had so much fun playing together.

Rex with his grandkids

I love this one of Logan. You can tell he's smiling behind his thumb.

Kya and Dax were playing cars together and she made this long car train on the back of our couch.


Logan was playing with this basket and sat in it and was having a hard time getting out. He eventually made it out. I guess when you have a big belly it can be tough trying to get out of places.

THE DECK

I wish I would've gotten a picture before they started to build the deck. There was just a hill covered in weeds. We've been wondering what to do with this hill for a very long time and Jason decided that it would be cool to put a deck on it so that's what we did.

Ta-Da! Isn't it great? We love it! I especially love the built-in bench.

Jason wants to eventually build some stairs from the patio to the deck. So when we have more time and money we'll do that. And we have to put some railing on the other side of the deck.

The kids love it.

This is a storage shed that Jason's dad gave to him. We brought it back with us awhile ago and Jason was storing it down at his work and he finally brought it to our house and this is where he put it. Isn't it lovely? They were moving it into the backyard and sat it there because they weren't done with the deck and Jason had thought about putting it over there. Well, it's still sitting right there in our backyard. He hasn't decided where he's putting it so for now it's staying tipped over on it's side right there. I guess it adds some variety and spunk to our yard.

Photo Shoot

On Monday, November 1oth, I finally got some pictures of my kids. I've been wanting to get some new photos of them and didn't really want to do the whole studio thing, so I asked my good friend Amber to take some for me. She loves to take pictures and is very talented so I was really excited to have them taken. My in-laws were still in town, so Sharon and Kari came along with us and we got some with Kya too. The pictures turned out so good. Amber did an amazing job and I was so excited when I looked through all of them. There are so many good ones. So I'm going to be posting lots of pictures.

That morning we headed to Modesto to check out the store Crazy 8. Kari wanted to go there so we tagged along and I ended up getting way too much stuff. They were having a sale and I got some really cute things for the kids. In the mall they have this projection screen that shines down on the floor with fun stuff for the kids to jump around on. They had a blast with this thing.

Just a preview of how Logan was for pictures. He absolutely hated it. Well, we got some great ones in the beginning, but right after that he was the grumpiest little guy. He just sat down on the ground and cried.

Here are the great pictures that I'm so excited to share with all of you.

Some of my favorites of Afton.

Dax favorites. He has the funniest fake smile. We got a few of the fake one and then we got him to actually laugh and Amber got some great ones of him.

My favorites of Logan.

Amber played with the saturation on the picture to make his blue eyes really pop.

He wouldn't let go of the rocks. That's what made him happy.



I love the boogers!

I love this black and white one!

I know it was a lot of pictures, but there were so many great ones. There are some of them all together, but I'll post those later.