This is Annie.  She is our garage sale dog.  No kidding...she actually came from a garage sale.  We don't really know what breeds of which she's made but we're guessing lab and shepherd.  She is an AWESOME dog!  We love her to pieces.  She loves her ball to pieces.  Just so you get an idea of what a great dog she is...earlier today Ryan was riding her like horse and she was just joyfully giving him a ride.

I never realized toads could be so much work.  We've been catching flies for our new toads but that's not the easiest task in the world.  So today we decided to venture to the pet store to buy some crickets.  Never in my life did I picture myself in a pet store buying some crickets much less, food to feed the crazy things!  I went in sheepishly asking for crickets for our toads.  Much to my surprise was the clerks response.  It seems that housing and caring for toads is actually a quite normal endeavor, a *normal* pet.  And here I thought that raising a few toad added to our squareness.  

Bringing home 50 crickets wasn't enough though.  We decided to re-do our toad habitat.  We discarded the few remaining lake fish to add more dirt for the toads to roam on.  In the process of changing out the entire guts of the tank we lost our grasshopper but we found our worm.  

In the craziness of all the changes I let the boys put one of the toads on the floor.  Sammy found the toad to be quite intriguing.  It moved!  It must be worthy of either playing with or hunting.  Sammy's fascination with toads ended when they were all safely tucked back into their home up on the dresser.

We fed the toads a few crickets but the toads were too stressed from their move to eat.  Feeling very sorry for them I captured a dozen or so flies and released them in the tank.  It's pretty awesome to watch toads get excited and hunt their prey.  

I think we're going to really enjoy our toads.  

By the way...dog food is an amazing attractant for flies!