*~ October Shenanigans ~*

 Do I ever have a tale to tell you!
October shenanigans going on around here!
 Last night, our dog started barking at the top of the stairs. I woke up and I too could hear something in the basement. 
Oh, dread! I was afraid that a skunk had fallen into the window well, and that was what we were hearing.
 My sweet husband ran downstairs and checked things out. He could hear something, but then the noise stopped.
He told me it was a kitten that he had heard. 
Down the street, a mother cat that is wild had a litter of kittens and we have seen them running all around the neighbourhood.
We went back to sleep and it seemed that the kitten had run off and we had just heard the mewing coming from outside the window.
  Then... this morning as I was outside pulling up annuals, I heard the mewing again.
 I looked and looked for that kitten. 
I looked on the roof, the rain gutters, under the smoker and bbq, in the window wells, etc.. etc..
 Finally, I called our youngest son and he and his wife came over. 
He listened and looked and looked and listened. Our daughter~ in love told me that she thought the mewing was coming from inside the furnace vent. 
  No way. I knew that there wasn't any way that the kitten could have gotten into our HVAC system!
 Our son ran back down to my husband's office and the kitten was mewing. 
 Somehow, that kitten was inside the wall of my husband's office?????!!!!!!!!

 I grabbed a small utility knife and Spencer cut a peephole in the drywall that is in a storage closet on the opposite side of my husband's office wall.
 I handed him a small mirror and the mewing got louder and louder.
Bingo! He could see the kitten. 
He then cut an access hole nearer to the floor in the closet. I handed him some leather gloves and handed his wife a blanket. 
He reached through the hole and got the kitten!
Oh, my goodness!! 
You can only imagine how thankful I am that he was able to locate and rescue the kitten!!
 Then, Spencer found where the kitten had crawled up inside a teeny tiny hole where the bay windows are next to the French doors and somehow made its way past the sill plate and into the basement wall.
Kittens are very mischievous critters!
 My husband's brother has a massive cattle ranch just across town, so we are going to re~home the kitten to the farm.

 We were due to get tons and tons of rain.
Nope.
We haven't even received enough rain to make the flower beds wet.
I had been waiting until it rained and softened the dirt so that I could finish pulling out the annuals and cleaning out the veg bed.

 As I pulled up the last of the squash, lo and behold two more butternut squash were clinging to the vine!
Yay!
One little butternut squash plant yeilded us a total of seven nice butternut squash.

 Looking across the meadow, with the clouds clinging low to the mountain, I had high hopes of a real thunder~buster kind of storm.

For you can see how very dry the meadow is, and how badly we need rain. 
  Well, I can tell you one thing... October is starting off with some real shenanigans. 
  Hoping that we get some more rain, and enough to truely soften the dirt in the borders and flower beds, then I can pull up all the rest of the leggy annuals. 
  My sweet husband is stopping by the hardware store on his way home and picking up rigid foam insulation in order to cover that teeny tiny hole and also a half sheet of drywall, for we will be repairing the access hole and the peephole. 
  I was so afraid that the kitten wouldn't make it! 
I just could not imagine how awful it would have been if the kitten stopped mewing and we couldn't find it.
 So grateful that we found and rescued that little kitten.
If it wasn't so wild and such a feral cat, one could keep it and give it a name such as ~Sheena.. for shenanigans!
Or Dennis, as in Dennis the menace!!

Attitude of gratitude:
  ~Feeling thankful for the crock pot.. again. 
How nice and easy it is to have such a wonderful way to make a meal. Last night it was tortellini bake, with enough leftovers to have tonight. 
 ~Grateful that my husband and I were able to get up to the lake and he was able to get in a bit of end of summer fishing. 
We had a picnic, and it was so peaceful and beautiful in the mountains.
 I am so grateful that we live so close to our incredible mountains.
 ~ So grateful that this coming weekend is General Conference. 
 Semiannual General conference truly feeds me spiritually and gives me a renewed focus of being the best daughter to our Heavenly Father that I can be.