I don't know what the heck got into me...and other oddities

Our neighborhood has been swarming with voles. We have these deep, deep window wells in our backyard. Voles have been falling in our window wells and getting stuck in there! 6 in fact. The first 1 we found and let go in a field. A while later we found the other 5. 3 dead, 2 living. I don't know what possessed me, but Jonah and I got those voles out of the well and put them in our tortoises terrarium. Even as I was doing it I was getting whole body shivers of disgust. I felt the need to scrub myself with antibacterial soap excessively too even though I didn't actually touch the voles. Here they are and in total vole heaven. Celeste researched them and learned they could live happily on the same diet as our tortoise. The kids were so excited!!!
Unfortunately, our tortoise was not in heaven. They seemed to quite annoy her. After about 10 days, we realized they needed to go. They just couldn't refrain from pooping all the time in poor Lizzie's water dish. Lizzie's our tortoise btw. They also were total pigs and ate all her food.
The kids got this idea to keep the voles as pets, but to just put them back in the window well with their own food and water. The window well is very secure with how deep it is and also has rocks covering the bottom quite well. And it's also very outside of the house. (Why didn't I think of that?!) So back they went. Now everyone is happy again. Me, the kids, Lizzie, and even Mickie and Clover; which is what the kids named the voles. Now the kids love to admire their rodent pets outside or through our basement window.

___

The day before Mother's Day was mine and Steve anniversary. 12th! We didn't do a mini-moon this year because we are saving up $ and time for Africa. But we had a fantastic day-long date around the area. Charity tagged along during all of it except the temple when Janice watched all of the kiddos. She was so cute in the backpack with her hair standing up like that!
We went to the gardens. A favorite place for us.
Last Saturday for Family Fun Day we went up to the Camp that our YW are going to this Summer for Girls Camp, to check it all out. It was so fun! We had a good time exploring it all as a family.
See if you can spy what we saw lurking here:
3 deer back there.

_____

Finally, as if voles weren't enough, our city has had a traumatic experience these past couple weeks. We kept hearing about people getting sick. More and more people kept getting sick. Everyone started to refer to it as "That nasty stomach bug." I personally can think of at least 8 families that I associated with come down with this. Charity then got it. On Wednesday I started to feel horrible! Horrible doesn't really describe it. More like Hell-ible. The thought kept crossing my mind that I might actually die from this, and maybe I should go to the hospital. Then the other part of me would think, there was NO way feeling the way I did, I was gonna get myself out of bed and dressed and actually sit/lie in a hospital in the condition I was in. So I just stayed in bed and cried and felt like I was back trying to live through natural child birth again because that was the intensity of the pain in my stomach, back, and body. Then came the pooping blood for over 24 hours. I got well enough to actually get up and dressed to get into the doctor who said it was a form of e coli.
Turns out the city's water was "possibly contaminated". ("Possibly" my eye!) There were "7 confirmed cases of campylobactor or whatever the heck they called that". ("7" my eye!) They ordered everyone to boil all their water until further notice. It was not a fun few days. And we are still drinking purchased bottled water even after the order was lifted because we don't trust it.

Still no explanation of what caused this awful incident in our city. I found myself picturing this:

Doing this:
In our city's this:

I wanted to give that cow a big kick in the butt.