The Passing of Nemo

April 23, 2010 - For Christmas 2008, Grandma Boman gave Logan his very first pet. It was a blue beta fish that Logan named Nemo.
Logan was SO excited to be a pet owner!!! I love his cute face in this picture on Christmas. At first, Nemo was a very exciting spectacle at our house. The kids would climb up on the counter and watch him swim and laugh at him all the time. But after awhile, Nemo became less of a novelty and more of a decoration on the kitchen counter that the kids payed pretty little attention to.
Nemo did really well for a long time and was a pretty hearty fish. If we went out of town for a few days and didn't feed him, Nemo was just fine. Towards the end he started to get a little weird and kind of just floated around limply and looked a little dead a lot of the time. I think our trip to Vegas finally killed him off. I was pretty sad that he died and worried about what to tell the kids. We had Nemo for 16 months, which is a record at our house and really good for a fish! When Darren and I were first married, we decided to try pets before we had kids. We didn't do so well.... We killed off everything we had. We tried a few different tree frogs, and also a hermit crab, which are supposed to be indestructible, but we still killed it! We finally decided pets were not for us and maybe kids would be easier.
It was a little hard to tell Logan Nemo was gone. He was pretty emotional for a minute, then turned to Rylee and said, "RYLEE! What did you DO??? Did you squeeze him?" Apparently there had to be someone to blame. We had to explain that fish don't last forever. We decided to bury Nemo in our backyard.
Here is the official funeral - We buried him in a Jello box in our yard.
Rylee watching the burial
After Nemo was buried, Logan wrote his name on the spot in the dirt. I thought that was really cute. Logan has been talking about new pets for a while now, but we haven't settled on one yet. He has wanted a hamster for awhile, but I am not on board with that. We have talked about another fish, or lately he has said he wants a turtle. My favorite one that he has talked about the most is that he wants a Venus fly trap! Such a funny kid. RIP Nemo. We will miss you!