Huzzah

Today is my Dad's birthday! For once it does not coincide with a Jewish holiday, so that's a relaxing change. Yay! I bought him a little bamboo plant. I also gave  him a muffin recipe.

The cats loved the presents :) - Sasha would climb into the boxes we opened before we could even see what was inside! Mom went to a farmers marker in Decatur today and bought a bunch of raspberries and figs and pineapple and stuff, so that's good too! Since it's Dad's birthday, we bought a cake from Alon's, instead of having Dad make one. It's called a truffle cake.

Truffle cakes are really good! They have three thin layers of chocolatey cake stuff in creamy mousse with glossy chocolate coating around the top and edge. It's not to rich, and is very tasty! Dad is going out with Mom tonight, so we had cake in the afternoon.

Normally we would give the kittens some wet food to celebrate, but they just had wet food yesterday for Shabbot (we forgot Friday), and we really are trying to get them on a diet.

What's the deal with that???

Sasha's the deal with that! When Sasha is hungry, sometimes it's hard for her to stop eating - she doesn't realize that she's full. They've actually done a lot of tests about this sort of thing with people. Sasha isn't unhealthy or anything, just a little bit plumper than one might expect from a kitten her age.

What we've done so far with the kittens is to keep the food bowl full at all times. This is what you should do with young kittens - they are growing and developing so fast and burn so much energy that they need a constant supply. Our kittens are older now, though, and don't need as much food. Being spayed actually lowered their metabolism by 30%. We had been advised to start a feeding schedule when they were one year old, but since Sasha needs more defined meals, we're starting that earlier. (They are currently 8 months old.)

What we did with Lili is that she would get two scoops of food in the morning, to eat throughout the day. With our two kittens, the current plan is a scoop in the morning and a scoop at about five in the afternoon. Hopefully we can keep Sasha as stable as she is now, weight-wise.

We haven't actually been able to start this - if the kittens are without food and hungry, they will probably try to attack the bag of cat food. Although we're sure they'll adjust with time, we want to find a separate container for the cat food to avoid temptation.

That's basically all the cat news right now. I'm sorry to have missed school this past week, although I've made up most of my homework, I think. I'm actually thinking my history paper will be postponed till next week, as I didn't really have any time to learn much these past few days (aside from several facts I scrapped together on the internet).

I'll of course be returning to school Monday, and hopefully this week will be more productive.

Thanks for tuning in!
~Julia

Feline Fiesta

Hooray! As of this monday, our kittens are now 6 MONTHS OLD!!!
(That's one year on a cat-to-schubert ratio!)
(Actually, it would technically be a schubert-to-cat ratio. But whatever.)
(Just wanted to point out how I edited out the initial flashy cat-to-mozart tangent for more accuracy!
Yay! We have had them for over 4 months. It feels like a very long time. Although I am very happy that my little muffins are maturing well, it's a bit tainted for two reasons. One, of course, is nostalgia. I get nostalgic easily, and even though Sasha and Maya are still just as frisky and playful and fun as they were two months ago, it's still sad that they are already half way through their official kitten-hood. The second reason is that it was also the birthday of my kittens' sisters and brothers.
This is sad because I know NOTHING ABOUT THEM. Not their new home, not their new names, not how they look at six months rather than two. I'm hopeful that I will eventually be able to contact their new families through Furkids.
Anyways, monday was our day of celebration! We presented the kittens with their first taste of wet food, some lactose free milk, a birthday ribbon and paper hat to destroy, and a new toy. The lactose free milk thing was weird. So, as I said in my electrons, most kittens (and cats) are lactose intolerant. We had given them lfm only one other time.
At first they were both very interested. When Maya lost the vibe, Sasha plowed on. I tried to get a cute picture, but no matter how fast I pressed the button, nor how many shots I would snap consecutively, I could never catch Sasha's tongue. It moved to fast. I did get a couple of this weird ghost tongue though, which I suppose was a shadow of where her tongue had been before it moved.

You can see her little tongue shadow...

While Maya played with a rug nearby, Sasha continued her guzzling until, randomly, something changed. She abruptly switched opinions, and immediately dove into a complex, orderly dance of scraping the floor by the bowl (an instinct cats have when they smell something bad - the motion intending to bury the stench with dirt). Sasha was bizarrely thorough, rotating calmly as she obsessively turned on her most recent treat. I have a chunk of this episode on camera.

Sorry for the bad camera skills.

Luckily, the wet food was met with a much more passionate reaction. Sasha and Maya devoured half a can of each of two flavors. "Salmon Surprise" and "Chef's Seafood Palate" or something. We have to more cans ready for the next couple Shabbots as a treat.

Sasha and Maya were very pleased with their new toy. Sasha got so worked up that she started panting! Cats are not supposed to pant. It means that they are overheated or overworked. Or stressed. I was taken aback. 

Benjamin: Mom, Sasha's panting.

Mom: Really? I didn't know cats could pant... (typing on email or facebook or work or whatever)

Me: I don't think they're supposed to (typing on skype or something)

Benjamin: Well she is. I think she's excited.

Mom: That's weird.

Me: Well, Sasha does sort of huff her breath a bit when she gets worked up. Maybe that's what he's hearing.

Benjamin: Do cats pant?

Mom: I am googling that right now!

(pause)

Mom: No, cats are not supposed to pant. 'If a cat pants, it means they are overheating or feeling stressed. Panting can also be a sign of liver problems blah blah blah..." Hmm. If a cat is panting, that's probably not good.

Me: She's probably just huffing a bit

Benjamin: Can you hear that?

Me: No.

Benjamin: It's pretty loud...

Me: *sigh* Fine (Logs off skype)

(walks to the living room)

Me: Benj, she's probably not really-

!

Sasha: PANTPANTPANTPANTPANT

Me: !!!

Sasha: GASPGASPGASPGASP

Me: OHMYGOD SHE"S PANTING OMG MOOOM AAAAAAAAH!!!!

Sasha: HUFFHUFFHUFFHUFFHUFF

It was scary. Like, she didn't seem in danger or blown out or anything. But her jaw was pumping and her sides were heaving and it's just like, not something cats do.

Then Sasha had to have some isolation to cool off.

I spent most of my morning at home following them around and paparazzing them, just because it's so hard to get good pictures of them when they move so fast, and often the lighting isn't good. I'm hoping to try to get a lot more better pictures before school starts.

Here are some of my better pictures....

So yeah. Pretty cute.

I wanted to post on their actual birthday, but I started feeling really sick, so didn't get around to starting it till today. Hopefully you can all enjoy it at you leisure later this week.

Now that our kittens are half a year old, they will probably get spayed around the beginning of August... I hope it goes okay! Furkids kitten season is still in full swing... Clarissa and I found the CUTEST pair! I think Clarissa should adopt them, cuz they are UNBELIEVABLY cute!

The one on the left is Lizzie and the one on the right is Lula. Lula has the cutest eyes! Huge and blue and adorable! They look and sound really fun.

That's all for now. I hope you guys can still appreciate this post, even if it's late!

I will see you arooooooooound....

~Julia

Purple Mountains Majesties

I just got back from Colorado.... woop!
This was our annual cousin reunion. We were staying in a vacation home in the mountains, at an elevation of 8,000 feet, which was very high. Little oxygen. Thin air. The house was great! It had five bedrooms and on the bottom floor was this room with bunk beds.

Above: living room
Sides: Staircases
Below: Cousin Anna (7) in a bottom bunk

Anna! Yay!

Actually, there was a lot of stuff on the bottom floor. There was a pool table, a shuffleboard... board, a bar, a dartboard (with darts), several metal barrels, a bathroom, a large clay jug, and....

That's right. A jukebox. 

For you modern hipsters who are unaware, jukeboxes are big cd-playing things from the 60s or something. You put in a quarter or whatever and punch in the number of the cd track and album. The cd bank spins around and puts the right one in a little cd/record player thing, kind of like an old fashioned musical vending machine.
We didn't need money to operate ours, even though it had a slot.

There was a very large garage. Inside it were skis and snowboards.

Anyways, various members of our clan spent a lot of time devoted to playing pool. I actually got not bad at it. I nearly won twice, then scratched on the 8 ball. The 11 ball is my favorite. It is magical.

 

Dad playing pool

Dad playing shuffleboard

There were many other things in the house. There was a two story deck with a large hot tub, a nicely furnished living room, a kitchen and dining room, and balconies. It was a mega-house.

We spent a lot of time hanging out in the house. Our main activities consisted of:

-Hide and Seek
Lots of good hiding places! Spots included trash cans in the garage, under the pool tarp, behind the juke box, in barrels, under beds, in hose compartments, in empty coolers, under shelves in the pantry and behind the furnace, etc.

-Band

Super-sonic Borthwick band hard at work in one of many rehearsals.

Alex on triangle, Anna on maracas/rainstick, Zack on drum, me on violin, and B conducting. We just made up random tunes and figured out the arrangement. Then we put on little concerts. Margot was a little jealous. She wanted to use the triangle and stick to mimic a fiddle. It was really cute when she did, but she was unhappy to have the triangle taken away.
Our band was dubbed the SuperSonicBorthwickBand

-Hot Tub

Benj and me gettin' comfy. 

Woo! Hot tub was fun and hot. And bubbly. Us cousins enjoyed splashing around.

-Scavenger Hunts
Benj and Zack would make little scavenger hunts that we (the girls) would fallow to win little prizes like jam jars or packets of bunny grams. It was fun, if frustrating at times.

Then Margot had her own agenda with me altogether. We tap danced together, according to Margot's instruction. I messed up a lot. Oops.

 Left - Margot behind a large grey pot. Above- Margot and I reading on the couch.

So we did some pretty fun minor trails and hikes by rivers and stuff. Not only because there were younger cousins, but because the altitude was so high. If you ran up part of a steep hill, your lungs and throat would like, collapse. You wouldn't be physically exhausted, but you would be flopping on the ground, gasping for air. It was so frustrating, because even if your legs were fine, you would have to rest for a while, though. It was nice though. The weather was fine.
But on these hikes, I encountered terrifying mutant squirrels! First of all, they were tiny, like the size of chipmunks. Their tails were black, short, and slick on their backs. They made sort of cooing squirrel sounds. But the part that was most bizarre was their HEADS. Their heads were just normal sized squirrel heads - but they didn't even really shaped like squirrel heads! They looked like mouse heads, with squirrel ears! They sounded like squirrels. They acted like squirrels. We all agreed that they WERE SQUIRRELS. It was weird.
Then, the last full day, we went to the Winter Park... Park! It wasn't too big, or too crowded actually, but it was super fun. There was a maze, really big and made of these plastic wall things and you had to run around in it until you found hole punches for the letters M, A, Z, and E. It was actually really hard. My best time was 7 minutes, but it took some people over 20.

There was a bungee jump, that I didn't do, because it didn't seem to go as high as the one at Morningside and I didn't want to be disappointed. There was a miniature golf course, that didn't seem that impressive or particularly creative, but somewhere in the middle probably, and seemed fun. We didn't actually get around to play it though. Anna did this thing where  you buy a bag of mineral enriched sand or whatever and sieve through it on a water mill thing. She got some neat gems and things.
But the most awesome thing by far was....

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUN...

THE ALPINE SLIDE!!!

Gasp gasp!
Q & A About the Alpine Slide:
-What is an alpine slide?
An alpine slide is a long trail-like slide going down a mountain. A person sits in a little yellow cart thing and zooms down the trail. It's super exciting.
-How fast do you go?
There is a throttle in front of you - pull back to break, push forwards to accelerate. It's default-set on slow, so you have a lot of control. At the end, you need to slow down though.
How do people prevent crashes?
Well, there are two lanes - a fast lane and a slow lane. Beginners go in the slow lane - people in the slow lane MUST GO SLOW. Sometimes idiots in the slow lane will speed way faster than some people in the fast lane. One word: COLLISION. We all started in the slow lane, just to get a handle on it the first time, but we were all ready to go super fast the next time around.
What were some special features?
There would be little warning signs in blue: S-turns, dips, ripples, etc. Some were irrelevant, like "Comet Bridge" and there would just be some logs on either side of the slides. The features were actually really fun, especially the ripples and dips going really fast.
-How do you get there?
You take a ski lift! You stand on a yellow pad on footprints, and it swings behind and off you go! It was actually a relatively slow ski lift, and very long, so although it was extremely exciting the first time, it got a little boring later on. Once you get to the top, you lift the bar, and then once the ski lift reaches a yellow stripe, you jump off and run as fast as you can.

-How bad were the lines?
Well, as people went up the ski lifts and down the slides at an even rate, the lines at the top were contained, so even though lines to get on the ski lift could get hefty, you at least got the illusion that you weren't waiting long.
-Traumatic experiences?
The very last time B and the cousins got to go, it started to rain, right as they were a the front of the line. They waited in line for like half an hour, and then finally got to go up. At the bottom of the slide, it started to rain again. They were stuck between a ridiculously slow guy (in the fast lane) and a really inconsiderate fast person. Benj ended up bumping into Zack, but they didn't derail.
-What the heck was the bog?
GOOD. QUESTION.
What the heck is the bog???? I have no idea. Remember those little blue signs? Well one of the was like: THE BOG. I was like "What the heck is the bog?" and then like 5 seconds later it was all "S turns!" and I was like "agh what the heck".
I mean, unlike the comet bridge, which was random, but tangible, there was no physical evidence of anything in my surroundings that might provoke the label "Bog"
It irked me.

After a while Dad and I decided to go up a really high, steep, fast ski lift to walk around the top of the mountain. The ski lift was really fun, because it was so fast. There was one point when it stopped and just swung violently back and forth, which I actually enjoyed. This was a ski lift that these bikers would ride up, with all this extreme gear and stuff, to bike down these traumatizing bike trails back down he mountain, but people were aloud to just walk around.

Dad and his family used to ski up here in Colorado, so we looked around at all the different trails. It got to be rather cold, so we ski-lifted back down, which was just as fun.
Here's us:

That was really great for me, but as I said earlier, it began to rain, and we ran for shelter and drove home, satisfied.

The next day was our last. We had to clear out by 10:00, so it was a cleaning scramble. We departed and went our separate ways.

My family went on to the Rocky Mountain Nation Park. It was certainly great scenery there. We looked and looked all over the park on different levels. And guess what we found...
A MOOOOOOSE!
It was a bit far away though, female. As a result, our picture turned out a little fuzzy.

Can you see it there? It's there, I promise you. Right in the middle.

It was fun just to sort of roam the woods and walk along the Colorado River.

It was starting to get rather hot though, so we fled to higher ground.

DUM DUM DUUUUUUUM.

Nearly 12,000 feet in altitude. One of the highest roads in the United States above sea level. Completely cut off from the outside world.

We were driving along up here, and what did I spy? Elk a herd of elk in the crest of the mountain. We sped to the nearest parking spot around the curve and took off running. It was pretty intense. Just us, alone on a mountain-side tundra, in the cold and mist, chasing after a herd of elk. It was wild. Amazing. I loved it. We ran down the foggy slopes, around the mountain -

THERE WERE NO ELK. None. Fresh poop, padded grass, they had been there recently ago - less than a minute. And yet no physical elk remained. None anywhere in sight, and our sight stretched on for miles and miles of empty ground.

WHAT THE HECK.

I was kind of freaking out and everyone was like "Are you sure you saw them" and I was like "YES!" and Mom said she saw them too.

It started to kind of rain (very dramatically) and so we retreated to the car. Once we got there there was a solitary elk sitting right there on the hill. It was really big.

After that, we went to Boulder to spend the afternoon and eat dinner. After that we drove to Denver, and we flew back home the next day.

That's all for now....

~Julia

P.S. We found this on our back door on the second night! :)

Benjamin is Birthdayed

Benjamin is now 9! Sob sob. Born at 5:12 (that's a month before the day of his birthday!) on June 12th (see!). Yay!
For B's party he invited three friends (Quinn, Julia, and Jack) to this trampoline place, with HUGE trampoline courts where you can just jump, or bounce up walls, or play dodgeball (on a huge trampoline), or shoot at a basket, or bounce down a trampoline alley into a huge pit of soft foam.
Perfect for Benjamin. We only stayed an hour and a half, but that was plenty.
Then we came back to the house. Last year Mom and I had made this elaborate board game type thing in chalk on the driveway, with squares telling you to sing, or act something out, or pretend to be a gorilla, or move back or forward a certain amount of spaces, or imitate Benjamin, or go BACK to the gorilla square. This year Benjamin made one himself, and scrawled it on the driveway, but it rained! :(
Benjamin was crushed, but he and his friends kept themselves occupied back at the house.
The cats had a blast attacking party hats and flying around in wrapping paper.
That morning dad had made blueberry pancakes, which were had with blueberries, syrup, chocolate caramel hazelnut sauce, banana and whipped cream. Yuuuum. At least, yum until the cat knocks off the top of the container and starts EATING them.
Today we opened presents. Mom and Dad gave him a cool digital watch (and not one of those bulbous neon clunky ones) and a wallet. I gave him some cat sleepover tickets and a cool clear bubble umbrella. Benjamin also got some books, some gift cards, and then (dum dum duuuuuuuuum....)
A solar powered H2o remote controlled car.
It's like, this car, that's all cool with green and white and clear bubble windows, about the size of a small-ish book. You have to connect a bunch of wires and tubes and stuff to motors and things inside. And then (this totally geeks me out) it came with this whole gas station recharging thing! Like this cool elliptical cylinder thing with a clear curved plastic window with a little H2o logo on it and you can see the little chargy thingy inside it. And then (this is so totally awesome) it's attatched to this little green wire pump (kinda like you see at gas stations) that you PLUG INTO THE CAR in this little valve you attatch.
EPIC. Then you can hook a solar panel onto the recharger thing. Dad and Benjamin and I have been assembling that nearly all this evening (with breaks for cake and phone calls).
YAAAY BENJAMIN!!!
Finally, In honor of the birth of my brother, I compiled some pictures of my little Benjamin....

(Do you guys remember this from my Bat Mitzvah :) ?)

Okay, can't wait to post this tomorrow! Wish Benjamin a happy birthday! He says his plan for being nine is to be happy. Huzzah to that Benj!

~Julia