Meet Clair

This is Anna's new little hamster. She is a dwarf blueberry hamster. She has a good disposition and doesn't seem to mind being picked up. But she is so fast that you can't hold her more than a second or two because she jumps out so fast. She fits in the palm of our hand and we can cup the other hand over her. I should have put a dime or quarter next to her so you could get an idea of how small she is. It was hard enough to get a picture because she zips around like a ball in a pinball machine.

In Memory of Cocoa

Anna's second hamster, Cocoa, died on Easter. We only had her since November but we will miss the little Cocoa puff. The Tuesday before I had taken her to the vet and found out she had a big tumor in her tummy. So we knew she didn't have much longer to live, but it still didn't make it any easier for Anna when her time came.

Here's Cocoa! (and Anna)

Cocoa is quickly getting used to us, albeit she's still a little jumpy. We let her out to run in the pen last night and after taking about 20 pictures, I managed to get a couple of good ones. She moves very quickly and it's hard to focus on her. In this picture you can see her white paws and a little bit of the white stripe that goes from her chin down to her chest.


Isn't she adorable? She is much taller than she looks in these pictures.


And here's Anna in her Halloween costume from two years ago. The fourth through sixth graders gave a musical performance at school today and they could dress up as Americans throughout history. Anna wanted to be a Native American. Isn't she adorable?

As we were getting Anna's backpack after the show to get ready to leave, a woman asked me if Anna was my daughter. I said yes. She said she likes watching Anna sing because she has such rhythm and really gets into it. She can pick her out every time. I said yes, she does and I think it is great. Most of the kids just stand there and sing without expression because they are suppose to, but you can tell Anna really enjoys it.


Frank is out of town on business so I was planning on videotaping the performance for him. I arrived at school and found a good standing spot for seeing Anna. When they started the first song, I turned on the camera and taped some of it but the battery indicator started flashing. I turned it off to save power. Yes, I did charge the battery last night!(and our back-up battery died a while ago). When Anna's class started singing their song on their own, I turned it on again, but alas, it was done in two seconds. Oh well, Frank missed out.

I think the battery has had it and it may just be time to get a new smaller, lighter, digital video camera (we are still using the old fashioned tape kind). I did think about bringing my pocket camera as a back-up as it does some video, but I really didn't want to have to mess with two things.