Oh me oh my! Geckos!

Well, Brent and I are officially into the herp adventure now! We have a nice little collection, and got our FIRST leopard gecko eggs this week! It was like Christmas when I found them! They very quickly were warm and snug in our incubator. This clutch came from our gecko named Leia.

We also added 5 baby crested geckos to our collection, from my friend, Dagan. She was looking to re-home them and gave us a great deal! They are all so cute and little! They are adjusting nicely to their new homes, too! Dagan also told me about a great website where I can keep up with all of our animals now. The best part is, it's free! I can put photos on there, and all the information I want for record keeping! It's awesome. Brent and I love having everything in one place to look at. We keep written records as well, but this site allows me to put feeding, shedding, and all kinds of info in that I usually don't take the time to write down. It is a lot easier to just put it in on iHerp. What even cooler, is that I can link our page on iHerp anytime I want so that people like you can see it if you'd like to see our collection! All of the animals we have are on there, so it's good place to see them! Here ya go: http://www.iherp.com/HerpAlicious

Brent and I also decided on a name for our "business"- HerpAlicious Reptiles. Herpalicious is our user name for some of the reptile forums we frequent.. I made it up, thought it was funny, and we decided it would make a good name. At some point we may have a website to sell our animals, but Brent and are just starting this venture! We are breeding Leopard Geckos this season, but we will breed Crested Geckos as well as Ball Pythons in the future.

We are so excited to be expecting baby geckos here in a couple of months. It could take up to 90 days for our first clutch of eggs to hatch since we are temping for females, which is a lower temp.. generally, the lower the incubation temperature, the longer it takes for them to hatch. I will be sure to post here when we do find hatchlings, though!

The pictures below are of our baby crested gecko, Harley, and our female gargoyle gecko, Mya. Those are the geckos that we got at the Dixie Reptile Show. The other photos are of the leopard geckos eggs!









As far as things non-herp related with us, things are well! Leeland is a busy as ever, and has finally started to sign for me on a regular basis! Right now all he is doing is "more", though. He had been sick with a not-so-fun diarrhea virus, but he is all better now! He amazes me every day with the new things he is doing and learning. He's doing more animal noises, and it's so cute! I really should try to video it sometime! I feel so blessed to have such an amazing son! He is such a happy kid.. we giggle and crack each other up most of the day. God definitely answered all my prayers with Leeland.

Brent is still looking for another job. He's had a few jobs that he's been able to apply for at ORNL, but he has not heard anything back yet. Bruce said yesterday that the person that needs to look over Brent's resume for the last one that he applied for is in France right now. We are so hoping and praying that Brent gets the opportunity to interview for that position! We would love it if you prayed for that as well.. especially for Brent to get a new job that can support us, and that he is very happy with!

We found another reptile show to check out next weekend in Corbin, KY, which is right under 2 hours away from us. Our friend, Dagan is coming with us and we all are very excited. It should be bigger than the one we just went to, and lots of fun!

For those of you reading this that we don't see often, we love you guys and miss you! To everyone else, thanks for reading!

Dixie Reptile Show

The above picture is Leeland in the car on the way to Birmingham. He was such a good boy! Birmingham is about 4 hours away from us. Brent wanted to be there close to opening time, which was 10 a.m., so that meant we had to leave EARLY! Brent and I got up at 5:30 a.m.! I waited until the last second to wake Leeland up, and just changed his diaper and left his PJ's on. We left our house about 6 a.m. and headed to Dunkin Donuts for some wake-up coffee! I put a portable DVD player on the back of Leeland's seat for the trip, since he is still rear-facing and can't see the one installed in the van. I thought for sure he would go back to sleep, but he enjoyed watching a Little People DVD.

The day trip to Birmingham was very fun! Brent and I had never been to a reptile show before, so it was a cool experience. As far as shows go, it was not very big, but there was enough for us to look at! There were some awesome animals there, and some of the most interesting and beautiful snakes we've seen so far! One of my favorites was a banana morph ball python. The baby bearded dragons were so cute and had such nice color! I was very tempted to bring one home! After looking around, we decided to purchase a young adult female gargoyle gecko, and a baby crested gecko. Both geckos are settled in nicely at our home now, and are doing well! We also bought a BUNCH of bugs for feeders! A box of 1,000 crickets AND superworms! We also got superworm food from the guy selling the insects, so he gave us these worms he called reptiworms for free to try. He said that they have the nutritional value of two crickets.. whatever.. they are gross, most of the geckos won't eat them, and we don't like them! They are actually just black fly larvae.. YUCK!

After we had everything we needed, we decided to go back home since it was still pretty early in the afternoon. We were wiped by the time we got home and got everything we needed for our new additions and got them settled in their new homes.

As for the photos from the show, the first on is a Piebald morhp ball python.. that animal is amazing! It's so expensive because of all the white it has. Most Piebalds just have floating "islands" of white.

The second one is baby leopard turtles! I held a baby redfoot, but the pic that Brent took is blurry. I want a turtle SO BAD, but it's illegal to have them as pets in TN!

The third and forth ones are of the adorable baby bearded dragons.

The fifth photo is of the Banana morph ball python that I liked so much.

Just some pictures!

Okay, since the last post was so long, here's another one just for the pictures!

Critters:










Leeland:

A great start to 2011

So, I am terrible at updating this thing. My friend Angela was asking on Facebook if anyone had a blog and I remembered this.. I really need to be better about updating this.. so maybe that can be my new years resolution! Yes, I know it's February, but hey, gotta start somewhere, right? I'll try to update this on a monthly basis at least to keep all of you guys that we love, but don't get to see often, up-to-date.

So far, we've had a pretty good 2011! Leeland is growing up so fast and getting so big. He's not only walking like a pro, but he runs now! He is such a sweet boy, but he is learning how to assert himself..aka is learning to throw fits.. haha. It can be very trying of our patience, but we do our best to stick to our guns and stay cool-headed. Leeland is jabbering all the time now, as he is learning to talk and make all kinds of new sounds. The only words he says reliably right now are "dada", "dog", "mama", "more", and "milk". Not even all of those are crystal clear yet. He has said some crazy things a time or two like "dinosaur", my friend, Melissa's name, and other things he's asked about. He's not repeating those yet, but boy, is he like a little sponge right now! He wants to know what everything is! Leeland is also getting very good at pointing, especially when we ask him to show us something in a book.. it's pretty cute!

At Leeland's last check-up a few weeks ago, he was still only 17 1/2 lbs, and 31 inches long! His percentiles are in the average range except for weight, and he's weigh below off the chart for that, but what else would you expect from a Siefken, hehe! He always gets a great, clean bill of health, and our pediatrician is always so sweet and encouraging to me, telling me that I am doing a great job.

Leeland really enjoys playing outside and going new places now. I try to take him somewhere out of the house once a week, and I try to take him out on daily basis, provided the weather cooperates.

As far as happenings other than Leeland, Brent and I have been getting into herpetology. We now own 12 geckos- 11 leopard geckos, and 1 crested gecko. We are currently in the process of breeding the leopard geckos. We have had two successful pairing so far, so we should have our first eggs in a few weeks! Brent and I love all kinds of critters, and reptiles are, in general, pretty easy to care for.. especially when you have previous experience. We found a local online forum here in Knoxville that is a community for other people who are into keeping reptiles as well. We've made some great friends from there, and it's proved to be a great resource. All but one of our geckos have come from someone that belongs to the forum. Right now, we keep most of our geckos in what is called a rack system. They live in plastic boxes that are all in a shelving unit that has heat tape in the back that keeps them warm. It's not the most luxurious way to live, but they don't mind, and it saves space and is a very efficient way to keep a bunch of reptiles. We are having a lot of fun, and we have a good little variety of geckos right now. It's been really neat to learn all about the genetics and what you'll get when you breed this one to that one, etc. It's a great hobby. We are very excited to see what kind of babies we'll get!

This past weekend, we actually met up with our forum friends and a bunch of us went to a place in Sevierville called Rainforest Adventures. It's basically an exotic zoo. They have all kinds of neat reptiles, birds, and furry critters! They even have caymans and lemurs! We got to see a live show, and that was really fun! We got to pet all kinds of exotic animals- including a porcupine, a young alligator, and the BIGGEST albino Burmese python that I have ever seen! She was easily twelve feet long! I talked to a parrot who told me "Happy Birthday!" and held a blue-tongued skink. We all had a great time getting to see all the critters and look around. We got Leeland this little stretchy, rubbery type centipede bug thing.. haha, it's hard to explain. Anyways, he LOVES this thing! He carries it around everywhere, and even sleeps with it! It's like his little lovey. It's funny.

Here soon, we plan on going to the Dixie Reptile Show in Birmingham, AL. It'll be a great place to acquire more critters, as well as get a great deal on food for all our guys and maybe even another rack. I will be sure to take pictures and do a blog update about it afterwards!


We've also been working on upgrading our salt-water aquarium. The biggest change is new LED lights-- they look awesome!

Okay, whew! I'm done for now! I'm going to leave you with some recent pictures of Leeland, and of our geckos so you all can see what I am talking about! We send our love to everyone reading this, and we hope all of you are well! <3