Friday Fifteen...

(squirrel on the roof!)


(sunshine on the oaks)


(flooded yard)


(mostly cleaned out garage)


(table project, not yet underway)


(favorite mug)


(Sarah)


(girls bunks)


(new color for the laundry room)


(Papaw's yard clean-up)


(book purging)


(kitchen in the morning)


(bird and/or cat watching)


(Papaw)


(Sarah's friend)

CUTENESS!!!!

Maezy(might need a home-laid back curious personality)


Bijou(has gone to her forever home in the country-with 6 kids no less!)


Biscuit(needs a home-sweet but fiesty personality)


Macaroni(probably staying with us-smart, very sweet personality)

What's been going on...

Thanksgiving started off with a bittersweet event. I looked out the kitchen window to see a large hound running across the neighbor's yard toward the street(we live on a busy corner). Sarah ran to see it and was just in time to see the hound's partner get hit and killed by a truck. The driver didn't even stop. We brought the hound in, hoping he had a tag. He was so sweet and stayed with us for 2 nights, sleeping on the bed with us. His owners had gone out of town for a funeral and came back Saturday afternoon. I hated having to tell them about their schnauzer mix.


Sonny and Sarah

We went the next weekend to collect our Christmas tree from Danville Farms. This is our favorite tree farm and we've been coming here almost 10 years. Of course this is not the first one that wasn't properly measured. The tag said 9 feet. I can understand 9.5 or even 9.9 or something, but 11 feet 7 inches?? That is WAAAAAAY off! We cut 10 inches off the trunk and it was still too big to fit under the ceiling beam.



We were pressed for time so there aren't many pictures. Here's Jasper doing his part to keep the tissue paper under control.







Meanwhile...



Fozzie was a busy boy and fathered, despite our best efforts to keep them apart, a litter of puppies with Sparkle. She went into labor on December 6th, exactly a year from the day we brought her home. Doesn't she look miserable?





Her babies, all female, are 1 week old now and we are in love with them!


Bijou, Biscuit, Maezy, and Macaroni

I hope everyone is having a wonderful, peaceful holiday season! I don't blog nearly as much as I want to, things are crazy with three extremely social kids.

Some video...

Mark finally loaded the software for Amy's video camera. Here's some of our goofy animals and our record setting SNOW from mid-February.

ICE

Sarah and Amy have had fun playing with ice this past week. Since we've had such whack-a-do freezing temps they've discovered things that would otherwise remain a mystery. Such as hammers frozen in ice filled buckets...



And frozen swimming pools...



Yesterday I told them about an artist I know named Margaret Oomen lives up north and has fun freezing objects in bowls and such to make beautiful, but temporary, art. We were going to go online and look but got busy doing other things. This morning when I took Sparkle out for her doggy time...




(Sparkle IS in this picture! Hint, she's in the round)

I saw the bowl and remembered Sarah telling me she had put some leaves and berries in it to freeze. I popped the ice out of the bowl and hung it on the fence so I could run get the camera. When I got back it had fallen and broke into 2 pieces but all was not lost...

The post in which I hone my housework avoidance skills...

By posting pictures of our recent activity...


(Sarah swinging. this one is worth clicking to enlarge!)


(Sarah took this picture at the park, I think it is amazing, enlarge it too!)



(December sun on my black shelf)



(December clouds)


(first outing on the leash)



(next time I'll make it bigger and use a yarn that doesn't show the decrease holes. majorly modified from this pattern)



(December clouds again)

A Lucky Dog...

About a month ago Sarah started in on us about getting a puppy for Christmas. Of course we immediately and resoundingly said "NO". We already have 3 big dogs, half-dozen cats, and half-dozen guinea pigs, another dog was NOT in our plans! Apparently the powers that be took that as a challenge on Sarah's behalf. They saw an opportunity to play a great joke....

One night last week, maybe Wednesday or Thursday, Mark mentioned that there had been a stray dog or puppy under a storage building at the place he works for a few days. I didn't think too much of it, dogs wander around a lot and we figured it would be long gone.

It wasn't.

We briefly discussed the possibility of making Sarah's Christmas wish come true but were 90% sure the dog would move on.

With temperatures expected to dip into the low twenties, the puppy didn't have much of a chance Friday night so the employees worked Thursday afternoon and all day Friday to lure her out with no luck. She would come out about a foot and then scoot back under, causing them much frustration. The boss finally brought a trap and baited it with turkey legs, something they'd fed the dog the day before. I think he was afraid she'd die under his building and they'd have to move it to get her out.

At 8pm Mark and I drove down(an hour 1-way) to check the trap. Nothing. We were able to see her back under the building so we parked across the alley and waited. Nothing. Except that Mark's boss drove up and checked the trap too. I felt much better seeing that. We could expect that someone would be around if she ended up caught. Still it was hard to drive away without that puppy knowing she'd probably be dead in the morning.

Saturday morning, still nothing.

Sunday around noon his boss called to let us know that she'd been caught if we wanted her. We were in the car less than 5 minutes later, telling the kids that Mark needed to go on a "pick-up" run to Carthage and I was going to ride with him to discuss Christmas presents. They had NO IDEA.

I think Sarah was in shock when I walked through the door with a puppy! She has been quick to let me know that she does NOT like surprises.

So, here she is. We have named her Pashmina. The vet says she's about 10 weeks old, 6.5 pounds, and probably a good bit Schnauzer.

Merry Christmas Pashmina!! We sure hope you love living with us!

Ready for Fall....

Colors burst in wild explosions
Fiery, flaming shades of fall
All in accord with my pounding heart
Behold the autumn-weaver
In bronze and yellow dying
Colors unfold into dreams
In hordes of a thousand and one
The bleeding
Unwearing their masks to the last notes of summer
Their flutes and horns in nightly swarming
Colors burst within
Spare me those unending fires
Bestowed upon the flaming shades of fall.
-Dark Tranquility, With the Flaming Shades of Fall

But I remember more dearly autumn afternoons in bottoms that lay intensely silent under old great trees - C. S. Lewis

I am SO ready for the Autumn season! And really, really ready for the rain to stop already. Please? I think we're on day 8 of rain or something like that. Possibly up to 10 inches or more so far. I now realize that what I love is a good, dramatic, thunderstorm rather than incessant dripping, dripping rain.

Fall sports some of my favorite colors, the temperature is more agreeable, and there is just something about the angle of sunlight that seems more beautiful than other times of the year.



(on the side of the house)


(looking out to our front yard)


(sunset from our driveway)


(over the pool fence)

Anyway...



We lost our sweet Puppy-girl a few days ago, unexpectedly but not. She would have been 15 years old on October 7th and had declined in health over the summer. We are sad to see her go but glad she won't suffer through another unkind winter.

I have a felty crafty thing going on but can't share pictures yet because the camera is with the kids in North Carolina. Its based on this cuteness from turkey feathers(in my blogroll) but will be a banner(and a necklace) instead of a mobile. I made Mark go collect leaves for me last weekend while we were watching football so I'd have something to keep me occupied in between touchdowns. If I can figure out how, I will share the patterns here.

We are collecting the kids this weekend in Birmingham. I can't wait to get them home so we can get back into a routine. Sarah has missed 3 weeks of AWANAs so she'll have lots to work on. Amy and Ryan are anxious to see their friends again. And, I'm ready to have some noise in the house during the day! It has been too quiet here.