RIP Fili

 My little old ham, Fili passed away earlier this week.  He was about 2 years and 9 months old which is super old for a hamster and why he earned the nickname as my immortal ham.  I got Fili in March of 2020 (along with his brother Kili) from the Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control right before we went on lockdown for the pandemic.  Kili passed away back in April 2022, but Fili lived on for another 7 months.  Fili loved food but got progressively grumpier over the last 6 months and seemed happy being mostly left alone, so that's what I did.  After Kili passed away, Fili became my favorite office buddy because he took over spending a lot of time awake during the day to get snacks and go for a run on his wheel.  However the last couple of weeks, Fili really wasn't out and about much, so I knew that his age was finally catching up with him.  Each day that he would wobble out of his little hut to grab a drink and putter around doing hamster things brought a smile to my face knowing he made it to yet another day.  I'm gonna miss the little guy!  Below are some pictures I never ended up posting of him, including the last 6 pictures which were taken just last week.  💗

Happy Hams

These are more of the pictures I took back in August.  I wasn't sure I would still post them, but I actually don't have any newer pictures of the hamsters, so I figured I may as well get these out there.  Fili is amazingly still alive and well!  He's now 2 years and 8 months old which is pretty much ancient at this point.  He's a wobbly old ham, but he sure does love running on his wheel, and often wakes up multiple times even during the day to go for a run.  This does mean he distracts me quite a lot when I'm trying to work.  Hahaha!

For the last month or so, I really wanted to upgrade my hamster enclosures for hopefully the last time.  I wanted something bigger than the 130L Samla bins I had, something that would be both hamster proof and cat proof, and I wanted two enclosures so I could always have two hamsters.  (Let's be real, I'm never gonna get back under that 3 pet limit Joe tried to enforce.  Hahahaha!)  I looked at so many options, sketched out numerous designs, and spent hours pricing materials.  The biggest factor was always figuring out a layout in our office that could work to accommodate 2 bigger hamster enclosures with all the other stuff that needed to stay to keep the office functional as my work place.  In the end, Joe figured out a layout for the office that is perfect, and I decided to go with a couple 40 gallon aquariums from Petco which I got for 50% off during their sale.  We have had the new aquariums and setup for a couple of weeks now, and I LOVE the way our office looks now!  It feels so much more spacious and classy.  I also LOVE being able to see (and photograph!) the hamsters through the glass instead of the semi-translucent plastic.  It allows me to see into their personal lives a bit better which is so cool!

I did decide that with Fili's age and the fact that he is a dwarf hamster, he truly did not need more space and would be much more comfortable living out the rest of his days in his bin instead of being moved into one of the new aquariums.  So for now we do have his bin just chilling on the floor.  I also already have a new occupant in the other aquarium.  😁  I hope to do a proper introduction next week!  👀

Haleth was very quickly promoted from a bin to an aquarium.  Female Syrian hamsters are notorious for never being pleased no matter how gigantic their enclosure is.  So I knew she'd gladly accept more space, even though she is also getting quite old.  She definitely LOVES her new home!  She is still quite shy, but I don't think she feels too exposed behind the glass as she now has even more places to hide if she gets spooked.  She also hasn't gotten sassy with me when cleaning her aquarium the way she sometimes would when I'd clean her bin, so I call that a win.  I love my little sweet potato and am glad she can live in such luxury.  Hahahaha!

Board Game Table with Cup Holders

There is actually more to the awesome story of our new dining room furniture that I didn't share last week.  But first a bit of history.  After Joe and I got married, while he was still finishing up his degree and working at IPFW, he became interested in joining a D&D group that met weekly.  Being newlyweds, I wanted to spend as much time as I could with Joe, even though I had no intention of joining the group, so I told Joe to offer for us to host the group at our house.  At first my involvement was just providing snacks (we went through a lot of chips and salsa 😅) and baking treats (they were my gracious guinea pigs as I developed my skills as a baker 😁).  

Over the years, as life progressed and members of the group moved away or got too busy, the D&D sessions stopped, but our weekly get togethers continued with a smaller, core group of friends.  By the time Joe and I bought a house and moved, these weekly get togethers had turned into eating dinner together, playing board games, eating lots of desserts, watching movies, playing games on the Nintendo Switch, or just hanging out.  We do still occasionally have bigger parties and hangout with the others from the original group that still live in town.  It has been so awesome being a part of this group whose original goal was just to play D&D, but over time became friends who do life together.  We've been a part of weddings and helped with many moves.  We've watched the group grow as children were born and new relationships formed.  It's been such a joy and a blessing to us.

Anyways, some of our closest friends bought a house this past summer.  Through the days of painting, moving, and ripping out their kitchen, we've been able to help them plan for upcoming projects, remember some of Joe and my personal horrors as well as joys of being homeowners, and dream about future goals for our homes.  One day as we all sat around our dining room table talking about life, they asked when we were going to get a board game table and chairs.  We told them we had decided to wait, and when they offered to pay for the table, we declined and said we'd get one eventually.  This went on for at least another week.  It was during this time that I became aware of Wayfair's open box chairs for super cheap.  Joe and I decided the chairs were too good of a deal to pass up, so when 4 open boxes became available, we bought them up as fast as we could!  We decided to reconsider our plan on waiting to get a board game table as we felt that we probably could go ahead with it, especially if we could sell the table we had for a few hundred.  But the next day when our friends were over and we told them we snatched up a great deal on new chairs, they again said they would buy the board game table for us, and we finally agreed.  

The timing of making the arrangements to get rid of the old stuff to various people, the delivery of the new stuff on two different days, and then assembling the new stuff when it came happened so fast and yet was literally so smooth and fit perfectly in our busy schedule, which was such a blessing to me as I can't handle mess and extra clutter in my house.  😂  We absolutely LOVE all of our new furniture and feel so blessed to be able to share our home and our lives with such wonderful friends.  💗

Again, these pictures are a month old, but I just had to share how cute the hams look trying out the cup holders we got to go with the board game table.  Fili is still doing well.  I've been seeing more of him this past week, especially as he runs on his wheel.  He definitely doesn't run nearly as fast as he used to, and he doesn't stay running for long before he stops to take a break, but I think he still gets his steps in each day.  Hahaha!  

I love how perfectly Haleth fits in the cup holder!  She was being soooo cute as she looked around.  I couldn't decide which picture I liked the best so you get a bunch even though they are so similar.  Haha!

 

Wayfair Chairs

So these pictures are actually almost a month old.  😐  But I have an awesome story to share about our dining room furniture.  Earlier this past year, Joe and I had decided that we wanted to finally buy a board game table and new chairs which he's been talking about for years.  So we priced out the table with the accessories we wanted and started looking at chairs.  It honestly took a while to agree on chairs we liked and even then, we each had our favorites.  But around that same time, we were planning a vacation to celebrate our 10 year anniversary.  Even with doing a shorter, cheaper vacation, we figured that we really shouldn't spend the money to get the chairs and table this year as we had other upcoming expenses to think about.  I knew it was the right decision, but I was disappointed because I knew how long Joe had already waited, and I felt bad putting it off again.

During the process of picking out chairs we liked, I couldn't help but notice how much the price would fluctuate from day to day, specifically on 2 different chairs we liked on Wayfair.  Despite the fact I knew our plan was to wait, my curiosity and my love for a good sale caused me to habitually check Wayfair's website for the price of the two styles of chairs we liked.  At one point, the chairs Joe liked best went the lowest I'd ever seen at about $70 per chair.  (The chairs I liked didn't seem to drop below $120 per chair.  😒)  We briefly talked about buying them, but decided to wait and the price quickly jumped back up.  

Eventually our vacation came and went.  We had a wonderful time and actually spent a little less than we'd thought which was nice.  Another month passed and I was still regularly checking the prices of the chairs.  One morning I saw that they had an open box which was about $55 for the set of 2 chairs instead of the normal price of around $250 for the set.  😮  I told Joe, and we briefly discussed getting it just to see if they would be worth the full price, but he had to get to work and I forgot about it.  A couple of days later, Joe texted me while he was at work saying that Wayfair had 4 open boxes so we could get all 8 chairs for about $250 total.  I quickly said yes, and he placed the order!  

Less than a week later, our new chairs arrived, and we put them together that evening.  We still can't believe how nice they are!  We were also pleasantly surprised that only 1 of the 4 boxes had any evidence of having been opened, and even then, not a single screw or nut was missing.  None of the chairs showed any signs of damage.  We initially felt guilty that we got what seemed like brand new chairs for only $250 instead of the $1,000 we expected.  But then I thought back to the months of checking nearly daily to see if the price had changed to something we felt we could afford.  Our diligence and patience paid off.  We LOVE our new chairs!!

Now onto hamsters.  😊  Fili is still alive doing all his hamster business.  His age has definitely caught up with him.  He is over 2 years and 7 months old now which is just crazy to me.  He is thinning and a bit more wobbly on his feet than he used to be.  But when he's awake, he still runs around his cage, uses his wheel, and generally just seems to be enjoying life.  I'm not sure if I've been busier or if he is sleeping more, but I haven't noticed him getting up during the day as much this last month.  I feel like a broken record at this point, but I can't imagine he has that much time left.  I do enjoy spoiling him in the meantime!

Haleth is so sweet and cute!  I realized that I've been so focused on how ancient Fili is that I haven't considered that Haleth is actually getting quite old herself.  😔  She is almost exactly a year younger than Fili, which means she's only 1 year and 7 months old.  But from my experience, female Syrian hamsters don't make it to 2 years old as often as the males.  So I have been spoiling my pretty lady even more than I had been.  💓

Intrism Mini

The school year has started and along with that, all the craziness of so much extra stuff.  I'll be honest that this year was a more difficult transition than I anticipated after coming from a wonderful summer together.  I thought that my years of experience dealing with this would be enough.  But Joe has had so many meetings that in order to spend time with each other, we've been staying up late and missing out on sleep.  We are both feeling pretty tired.  But the meetings should slow down soon, and we'll once again find our normal rhythm.  Along with that, I intend to get back to regularly taking pictures of the hams.  😊

For our anniversary in July, I bought this Intrism puzzle.  We enjoyed working together to assemble it and love trying to conquer it.  It's actually really difficult.  It has 3 levels to complete and they get progressively harder.  I'm very impressed with it!

Fili is such a happy little guy and is taking old age like a champ.  He's now 2 and a half years old!  He seems so content as he putters around just living his life.  I recently had to trim his nails which he doesn't like, but we've figured out a method that works for us so it's really not too bad.

 

Haleth is sweet, but she can be so stinky.  This week was tricky, and I missed cleaning her bin and giving her fresh sand on Monday and then didn't get to it until Wednesday.  It was so gross.  But I can't resist that precious face and perfectly pink nose!  Haha!

Bike Locks

Summer has a way of taking me by the hand and leading me away from my schedule and routines that I try so hard to cling to.  I used to get very stressed out about this.  But I'm learning to embrace finding a different way to balance this time of my life as I reorganize my priorities around spending more time with Joe during his summer break.  I try to acknowledge the natural seasons and cycles in my life and allow them to each take up the appropriate time and space before allowing one to pass and the next one to start.  So I guess all of that is to say that I'm not gonna apologize for the lack of posts as this just isn't as high a priority for me during summer break.  I'm sure that when Joe is back at work for long hours each day, if I start getting bored and/or lonely, I'll spend more time taking pictures of the pets and I'll make this a higher priority again.  In the meantime, Joe and I are enjoying extra time with friends and family, trying out new restaurants, actually playing board games together, and exploring more of the area around us on our bikes.

I'm happy to report that Fili is still alive at 29 months old!  He is sleeping a little more but still very active and gets around just fine.  That said, I know that with how old he is, he really could go at any time, even though he still seems to be in very good health.  I love watching him do all his hamster things.  He's so cute and even just hearing him awake brings a smile to my face.  😊

Haleth has finally embraced the deep bedding she has always had in her bin and has started making her own burrows instead of exclusively sleeping in a tissue box.  I feel like she's finally all grown up!  😂  And I'm no longer worried about not having enough empty tissue boxes that she can have.  She used to go through about one a week...  😬

Rear Rack Bike Bags

I've been meaning to post these pictures for weeks now...  It's summer break for Joe, but not for me!  Haha!  I've been busy and managed to pick up the flu in the midst of everything.  But I'm almost completely better, and thankfully, it didn't really mess up my work or schedule too much so it didn't add extra stress.  Right at the start of summer break, Joe and I got bikes and had been going on daily rides.  But between sickness and this excessive heat wave, we did take a break from doing that.  So I'm looking forward to getting back into riding because I actually really love it!  We were also able to go on rides with my brother and a friend who both live close which has made this new hobby even more enjoyable!  We bought fun accessories like these rear bike rack bags so that we can carry more stuff with us like drinks, snacks, and even our drone.  😊

Fili is still quite active and doesn't really show signs of aging any more than a bit of weight loss, which was probably good for him anyways.  Although I kinda miss how perfectly round he was.  😂  I can barely believe it, but Fili is 28 months old now, and it's already been 2 months since his brother Kili died.  As you can see, Fili still doesn't care much for carrots and preferred to explore the bike bag.

 

Haleth did a magic trick and made that carrot disappear within like 3 seconds of coming into contact with it.  She truly has a gift.  😂  I think she was hoping a new one would appear, but she had no such luck.  She is super cute and easy to spoil though.