Melt down, Meows, and a Moose

Three weeks of sunshine!!! We have all been soaking it up, and the snow has been rapidly disappearing. Every day there has been a little bit more grass and even more driveway. In effort to try and keep the water under control as our backyard doesn't drain very well, we found a big puddle that currently seems to be a low spot in the yard and pumped it out to the ditch. 

Later Jared half buried a bucket that he drilled a bunch of holes into which allowed the hose side of the pump to stay below the water line. The idea is that we can turn it on for an hour or so at a time and get a good amount of water to the ditch and hopefully have less of a swamp in the backyard. 

With the snow melting, we also found the boat back and Jared is already toying with ideas of how to possibly fix it. 

Lots of animals have also started waking up and coming out with the coming of spring such as a cougar (which a few in our neighborhood have seen and heard😬), deer, bears, moose and mice. To deal with the mice Jared picked up a few kittens, which have been quite cute and fun the last few days, as well as a steep learning curve. 

The black one is Pirate, one of his eyes must have gotten scratched so it was closed when we first got him, but it's getting better already.

The grey one is Bolt, because the marking on his face and nose made me think of a lightening bolt. Unfortunately the first grey one we got was too curious 😥

The video below is Hazel's first time seeing the kittens, so far she likes them, is excited to go see them and handles them pretty well. Though she has learned a few times that their claws are pretty sharp so she is starting to get a bit leery. 

Today I got the very amazing experience of seeing a moose quite up close! It was a bit scary at first, but once it kept walking on it was sooo amazing! I was walking to the wood shed to get some firewood, I thought I heard something, but I excused it as my footsteps echo or something, but once I got to the woodshed I saw something moving through the gaps in the wood. Suddenly nervous I grabbed Hazel and looked up to see a moose (I think a yearling) standing by my maple tree! We stared at each other for a while and then the moose moved on and walked over the fence! 😅 My phone was in the house so I don't have any pictures to share, but it was quite the experience!!!!