She's Alive!!!

Okay, chances are if you are reading THIS post, it's because you noticed the hidden phrase in the "Samantha Survived" story on the other blog site. Good for you!!! You will have to read all the other posts on this site to catch up on what that means.

So, here is the 'Behind the Scenes' story on Samantha: Last summer, TJ picked up Samantha off the road on his way home from work. The girls were so excited to have a pet! They couldn't decide what to name 'it'. Niah spent hours researching turtles on the computer to find out whether the turtle was a boy or a girl. After all her research, she concluded that the turtle was a girl. I am not really sure where she came up with the name Samantha, but that's the name that was given the new friend.

Niah researched more to find out what turtles eat, how to tell if they are healthy, where they like to live, how much water do they need, etc. The girls helped dig a hole for her home by the water spout. They filled the hole with water on hot summer days so that she would have a place to keep cool.

As the colder weather approached, Niah (along with Daddy's help) did some more research to see how Samantha would survive through the winter. We looked into trying to make her a home in the garage or house, but that seemed to be highly discourage in all the information we read. The best suggestion was just to let her hibernate naturally, but we were afraid that it was already too late--it was already November and the first snow was only days away. We weren't sure that she had been given enough "undisturbed" time to actually get settled in for the winter. When Samantha would begin to dig a hole, Aliya or Niah would mess with the hole and fill it back up. We tried to tell the girls just to leave her alone, but that was very hard for them to do. They loved playing with her and taking care of her. All winter we wondered if we would see her again--today was that day! We were so happy to see her alive! Samantha has won her way into our hearts!


--Heidi