R.I.P Ben

We had a bit of a tragedy today.

Ashleigh's pet siamese fighter fish "Ben" died today - at the hands of her younger sister Lauren.

This fish has suffered a great deal in his short lifetime. He was knocked off the dressing table and tossed around the floor by Thomas (our cat). He survived us going away for 2 weeks to New Zealand (with Uncle Nay Nay watching over him of course) but today he gave up the ghost ..... and for good reason!

I had fallen asleep on the lounge this afternoon as we had a bad night's sleep last night due to Lauren waking up 3 times and Lauren came up to me and said "Mum, Mum look fishy".

I smiled at her and said "yes, good" and closed my eyes again not realising what she had actually said to me. Then after about 3 seconds of processing what she had said I jumped up off the lounge and ran over to her - sure enough she was holding Ben in her hands with a HUGE smile on her face, so proud of what she had done. She got bored and decided to go fishing!

I grabbed the fish and ran it back to Ashleigh's fish bowl. He started breathing again but very slowly. There was a second I actually thought he might survive the ordeal but when we got home from picking up Ashleigh at school she noticed he was dead.

Oh, the tears. And then after finding out what had happened, oh, the anger. She screamed at Lauren for "killing" her fish.

After about an hour of grieving and flushing him down the toilet Ashleigh was excited about the prospect of buying a new fish! How easily things can be replaced at this age!

So we're off to the pet shop tomorrow to choose another fish. Fun, fun.

I'll leave you with a few more photos from NZ.


The girls at grandma's house.



The girls with grandma(Aaron's grandmother on his Dad's side)

This year Aaron celebrated his 34th Birthday in NZ - the first time in about 11 years!