June

It has been a fun and busy month!

The best part about June is the Parade of Homes!  The most wonderful time of year!  We went mostly with my mom and Kylie, but also just as a couple sometimes.  Going to houses normally means lots of criticizing poor taste, getting sodas, and laughing plenty!

This Scandinavian-inspired house was so cool!  We loved it!

This year I also did the Hidden Gardens tour with my mom and grandma.  So much fun!  I loved seeing what people do with their space, especially when they add their personal touch to their gardens.

My cousin Allison graduated high school which is just crazy!  Her graduation ceremony was very unique and very cool.  She's heading to San Diego this fall for school and I'm already so excited to visit her there!

On top of working part time at the gardens, I have been doing some babysitting for my aunt.  It has been fun hanging out with my little cousins!  We have eaten lots of Chick-fil-a and been to lots of Thanksgiving Point venues.  Kylie and Warden often meet up with us which always makes my day!

Can you spot my friend? 

Bailey and I took a weekend to go to St. George with Allie and Austin.  We had so much fun hiking, visiting the temple, and of course, eating steaks at Anasazi!

Seiji, Kylie, Bailey, and I made some sushi for dinner one night.  They were just simple California rolls, but they sure are tasty with some eel sauce and sriracha mayo!

I finally bought an adventure hat!  For so long I thought I couldn't wear hats, but it turns out you just have to find the kind of hats that work for you.  No beanies for me.

Yuki

Today was a very sad day.

As you may know, on Black Friday of November 2017, we adopted a puffball and named her Yuki. The employees told us that little dwarf hamsters are mean and will bite, but we took a chances on our new friend. She was so nervous on the drive home and once she got into her cage, but after about a week she warmed up to her new situation and was our best little friend! She never bit us (on purpose at least, sometime she thought my fingers were food and would nibble a little before realizing it was me) and loved attention.

We didn’t know much about dwarf hamsters but we quickly learned how loud the little guys can be! She was pretty quiet throughout the day, but once the sun went down it was run time. She would run on her wheel so fast and so loud! Sometimes I would watch her and it was like she had a workout routine. Run for a few minutes on the wheel, touch the edge of the cage, go up the tube to level 2, jump off, repeat. My favorite athletic event of hers was when she went up to level 3 of her cage, climbed up the wall, and did monkey bars across the top of her cage! Impressive! Needless to say, she and her cage spent the nights in the bathtub for the first year, and then on the bookshelf in the living room after that.

Sometimes we would block off part of the hallway and let her run free and climb up our arms. She also enjoyed running around in her plastic ball, although she hated the process of getting into it!

I knew we’d be fond of her but I never could have imagined how much she would mean to us and how much joy she’d bring into our lives. Holding her always made my hard days better even though she wasn’t much of a snuggler.

She was a favorite of our nieces and cousins. Everyone thought she was so cute with her perfect roundness and tiny little nub tail! Her favorite treats were sunflower seeds and her doughnut treats, and when she heard me opening up a bag of treats her little nose would suddenly appear out of her green igloo home.  If she woke up and there wasn't a treat, sometimes she would show me how grumpy she felt!

I knew we wouldn’t have a ton of time with her, but we were lucky to have the 18 months that we did. Up until yesterday she was an energetic little ham, though a few months ago she did start showing signs of old age.

This morning we went to feed her and were surprised that she didn’t move at the sound of her treat bag opening up. I saw that she was breathing slowly so we left her to sleep for a few hours. After some research we learned that that could be hibernating and that she needed to be woken up as soon as possible with warmth. So I snuggled her up to me and warmed my hands with a rice bag. We hung out like that for a while and she started to stir a few times. Eventually she gave a big stretch, and we were so happy because we thought she was waking up! But then I had this sinking feeling because she stopped breathing and no longer had a pulse. Our Yuki baby had passed away.

We are way more heartbroken than we thought we would be over our tiny little fluffball. But we feel so lucky that we were able to both be with her when she went. It was sad for her to die in my hands but that’s how I would have chosen it to happen. We buried her in a little red box under a lilac bush in my parents yard. We will miss her so much and will never forget our sweet hamster friend.

A quick drawing of our family Bailey made at work.