2023- The Year of the Rabbit

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!! We went back to Illinois to see my family over Christmas, we played board games and had a really good time visiting with family and my best friend Nicole. After a few days we went to Kentucky to see Parker's family to celebrate Christmas number 2 and the New Year with them. Parker's friends had planned a surprise party for one of his friend's birthday where we ate some hot chicken and went to this SUPER FUN place Activate (link is the name) where we jumped over lasers, shot targets. rock climbed and ran around to jump on the lit up squares on the floor; I highly recommend clicking the link to see what its like and planning a visit! We hiked around in Kentucky, I do miss all those trails. It was pretty seeing a view of the Kentucky river from the bluffs.

Then on Monday, Parker, his brother, his sister and I were all hanging out in town and to kill some time stopped in the pet store. We saw this sweet little fluffy bunny🐰 who was a rescue with a scar on her nose and cut up ears and we fell in love, we had to rescue her again and give her a home. We decided we would come back the next day and hold her and if she was sweet we would take her home to Louisiana. That night we prayed that if she was happy to be held and sweet we would take her because the 11 hour drive back home would be hard on a rabbit that is impatient with us or didn't like us. The next day I woke up to a text from Parker's brother that said it must be fate because it is the year of the rabbit for 2023, that is where I got the blog title name from. When we came back she was absolutely perfect, all the pet store employees said she was the sweetest rabbit they had and she let me, Parker and other family members hold her without fussing at all. Parker came up with her name- Scarlett O'Hare. She was only $30 because she was a rescue, all the pet store employees knew about her was that she is a female and about a year old. After we got everything it was a little over $100. I just have to say rabbits are very cheap pets and I have decided they are perfect pets for rentals or apartments. 

Fast forward about 24 hours and I gave Scarlett a towel in her crate for the travel to hold on to and she loved it. Parker and I ate supper, came back to her and she is pulling her hair out. I was worried that she didn't like us anymore or was nervous so Parker looked up what she was doing. Google said she could be bored (no, she has plenty of toys), nervous (no, she is letting us pet her), NESTING (surely not...) or false nesting (this is more likely). Nope. We look up from the phone and she was giving birth in front of us- right. in. front. of. us- eating the placenta and all. 4 wriggling, small pink babies- which is the best outcome seeing as how rabbits can have up to 12! 

Scarlett is a good mom to them because the 11 hour car ride went as good as it could have, she even ate and drank. Since we have been home she is really settling in, when we pick her up she doesn't even squirm, I assume she knows that she gets petted good, can nap or explore our living room after she gets held. All the babies are doing good and Parker and I have been working on holding them a little more to get them used to humans. Actually the first one I held peed in my hand but that's just what happens. 

It has been awesome getting back to work because I really love my job. I love our little house. It was nice to be with family but being home is so relaxing. Parker and I went hunting today and how he is playing bass with his band. 

School starts next week. My classes this semester are conservation biology, genetics, evolution. and game birds management. After this I only have 1 more semester left until I graduate!!!! I am so close, by December 2023 I'll be done with my bachelors degree in ecology. 

My Bible verse for this blog is good because sometimes we are so involved in our lives not to remember why God sent his son for us, and because his son is fully God AND fully man at the same time he was able to take on the sins of the world and sacrificed for us but since he is fully God it doesn't end there because Jesus was raised from the dead and is living today. "For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful humanity to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in human flesh"-Romans 8:3.  Jesus is why we can pray to God directly because God, through Jesus, sees us as perfect and without sin. Why is sin so bad, why is it such a "scary" word- especially for Christians? It is because sin keeps us away from God. It keeps us from living our best life that God intends for us. When people say they want to stop sinning it is a way of saying they want God in their life because his way is better than their way of living. 

-Nichole💜