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Readjustment

Now that the holidays are over, it will be interesting to see just how long it takes the girls to readjust to my work schedule.

This scene was repeated over and over yesterday. It’s a good thing I wasn’t busy…

My girls can be quite demanding at times. After I’d let them out a gazillion times, all K wanted was to sit on my lap. Having her there tends to put a crimp in my typing speed, however.

With my handy new point-and-shoot, which I can keep by my side at all times, I snapped a couple shots of K on my lap. Then, last night, I did some editing with PS Elements and this is what I ended up with…

I applied some different lighting, color and texture effects. Then I framed it. What do you think?

I took Wednesday off to go skiing with my baby boy. I am determined to take advantage of some $21 all-day lift ticket specials this year.

Wish me luck. It’s still damn cold. Tomorrow’s forecasted high is 20 degrees with snow showers and some wind, so it will feel like 8 degrees. If I dress appropriately, all should be fine. Right?

Snow conditions are great. They’ve had 63″ so far this year and expect some more overnight tonight. We’ll be driving out to the WV place this evening if all goes as planned. That’s about an hour away from Wisp and just outside the snow belt, so we shouldn’t have any problems.

If you want to see how things are going for us on Wednesday, check out the Wisp web cams.

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Friends in All the Right Places

Gift-wise, this has been an interesting Christmas.

I mean that in a good way, of course.

The first gift Hubby and I received came all of the way from Alaska. And, it arrived in the middle of a blizzard, which was awesome. It, by the way, was a box of home-made goodies from Mike’s cousin, June, and her family. The box contained yummy cookies–oatmeal, pecan sandies and chocolate chip (made with pretzel stix)–trail mix (a variety of nuts and dried fruits) and some homemade soaps.

There’s nothing like homemade goodness. The oatmeal cookies served as Hubby’s fuel on Sunday as he shoveled a path down the driveway through the 23 inches of snow we had. And Joey LOVED the trail mix. We all liked it, but he loved it!

Another very nice surprise gift was this intriguing and way cool object d’art.

It is made out of super-compressed graphite. That’s the stuff they make pencils with. So, not only is it cool to look at, every surface of the object writes like a pencil. Neat, eh? I LOVE stuff like this.

The leaf is about 6 inches long and fits perfectly in my hand, for when I need to write something of course.

This bath scrubby of mine was selected and paid for by my granddaughter, Brianna (age 9).

Our oldest grandson, Gaige (age 6), shopped and paid for Hubby’s gift…

… a small, ceramic dog. It’s about 5 inches long and 3 inches tall, at its tallest point. Gaige apparently knows that Pop loves dogs.

Meg is wearing one of the gifts I got from Hubby. The big blue and white thing hanging from her collar is my new Pet’s Eye View Camera, also known as a doggie cam. We can’t wait to go to the WV place so we can see what she sees on the way to and from Buddy’s house. Hubby also got me a digital picture frame, which I have wanted for years. Oh yeah, and a teleconverter lens for my camera, among other things.

My parents really surprised me with 3 bags of Seattle’s Best Hazelnut Coffee, which Mom had shipped direct from Washington state with the help of a wonderful friend. I got some shopping money, too. And a short story book. I’m addicted to short story books, in case you didn’t already know.

A dear friend sent Hubby and I a gift, which was accompanied by this card…

…that for some reason made her think of me. LOL!

As awesome as the card is, the gift is even cooler…

… real Belgian chocolate. YUUUMMMMMMM.

Oddly enough, we received it on the same day we received this…

This is the chocolate Mrs. Mac posted about that inspired me to try, and quickly become addicted to, Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramels.

According to the Lindt Web site, this stuff “will surprise your taste buds with an unexpected alliance of nicely bitter, silky dark chocolate refined with tiniest crystals of “Fleur du Sel” – the flower, or the crown of the sea salt.”

It was personally hand-delivered by Mrs. Mac, who came all the way from Switzerland just to see us, and her family, and her friends, and her former co-workers, etc.

It is quite delectable. You have to like dark chocolate, though, which I do. Hubby and I may be fighting over this one.

Speaking of chocolate… I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the Rheb’s candy, which Hubby and I gave several folks for Christmas. We bought ourselves a box, too, of course.

This image shows chocoholic Meg who is simultaneously wondering “Why, oh why, is Mama taking pictures of all of her chocolate?” and “Is she going to give me some? Is she? I like chocolate!”

This is a snowman ornament I’ve had for years. I can’t remember if it was given to me by one of my girlfriends, or if I bought it myself.

I have the same issue with this ornament. Though I am pretty sure this was a gift from a girlfriend in a previous year.

I couldn’t resist sharing this doggie picture. K and Belle were jealous that I was taking Meg’s picture. So they joined in.

Wanna know why K looks so short?

It’s because she sits on the steps with her butt on one step and her front feet on the step below that. We think it is easier for her to sit that way because of her very long forelegs.

I hope you enjoyed this little gift recap. I hope you have friends in fun places, too.

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Catching Up is Hard to Do

The blizzard of 2009 hit just over a week ago on December 19, 2009. I love snow. I have always loved snow. But I REALLY love watching the dogs play in the snow. They absolutely love it.

Between Hubby and I, we took hundreds of pictures of the dogs playing in the snow.

With all the stuff needing to be done in preparation for Christmas, I haven’t had a lot of spare time to go through all the images, re-size them, tweak as needed, etc.

These may seem a bit untimely since the snow has pretty much all melted. But, so it goes.

My favorites are posted below…









If you want to see the whole set of snow dog pics, you can go to my FLICKR page, or watch the slide show embedded below.

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Oh, the Weather Outside is SNOWY

When I went to bed last night, the weather man said we might get about three inches of snow overnight. That was to be topped off by up to 12 inches on Saturday.

Not too long after I came downstairs this morning (Saturday), I decided to take a picture of Shannon’s car.

The snow was a bit deeper than a few inches.

This image was taken five hours after the first one.

This shot was after another three hours had passed.

And this was taken after another two and a half hours (around 7:00 PM).

By just after 9:00, the door handle could no longer be seen and the mirror had almost disappeared. The entire car had almost vanished. But it may have FINALLY stopped snowing.

Wanna see my car? It’s much bigger than Shannon’s, after all.

Good thing there’s a mirror on the side, eh?

The airport won’t release the official numbers until after midnight. I’m going to guess we got at least 23 inches of snow in less than 24 hours.

But, you know what? I LOVE snow. The dogs and I had a blast outside today.

Here you can see Meg completely airborne. The snow brings out her inner puppy.

She’s even in the lead as the girls all cavort around the yard. (This picture was shown on the local TV station — ABC2News — after I submitted it by e-mail.)

You know I had to include at least one picture with Belle’s ears flying, right?

The previous four shots were taken around noon. The snow wasn’t very deep then. Yet Belle still looked like this…

We didn’t go out again until about 4:00. The snow was so deep by then, Belle’s body created a plow effect as she ran.

That doesn’t help her snowball issue at all.

But she sure enjoys running through the snow.

The snow was so deep by 4:00 that our wall was almost completely hidden. Belle is the only one that cleared the wall cleanly. Meg did a face plant into the snow. Poor K forgot the wall was there and ran right into it.

She was a bit shaken by that, and was slow to get back into the swing of playtime.

She even went and sat on the step for a bit.

But soon enough she was back to normal.


Even Meg was still feeling pretty feisty. That’s her inner puppy again. She is absolutely exhausted now, though.

The dogs really do love the snow.

So I had to let them out to play again after dinner. Even if that did mean I would have to de-ball Belle yet again. She’s pretty good about not giving me a hard time while I brush the MANY snowballs out of her hair.

After K’s wall incident, I shoveled out a spot so the wall could clearly be seen by all.

I think it’s a really cool picture. It was taken earlier this evening. Since it may have actually stopped snowing, perhaps I can go out and get some more nighttime snow shots.

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Not Such a Happy Dog After All

K has been with us for a whole month now. She really feels like part of the family. But then, she’s fit in right from the start.

Those of you who have been following the transition have seen how happy she looks. Or has looked, I should say.

She’s not looking so happy anymore.

Yes, there is a specific reason for that.

I think she is now convinced that we are total weirdos.

Seriously.

Does she look happy to you? She’s not.

Do you want to know why she’s now so unhappy?

Why I think she thinks we are weirdos?

It’s sort of a longish story, which I’ll do my best to shorten.

It’s actually Meg’s fault. You see, Meg is a brown dog with a white tail. The woods around our West Virginia place are full of deer, which are brown with white tails. (They aren’t call whitetailed deer for nothing!) Although there’s no hunting allowed in our community, hunters aren’t always the smartest bunch. And I didn’t want Meg to be mistaken for a deer.

She’s too dear to use for that (pun intended). So, I outfitted her and CeCe with what I call “don’t shoot me” vests.

Since Belle joined the family after hunting season, she didn’t have one. We let Belle borrow CeCe’s vest during our last WV visit. But it still says “CeCe“. So I made her one of her own.

Of course, K didn’t have one either. So she got a new “don’t shoot me” vest, too. Which is why she is so unhappy.

Apparently, K much prefers running around naked. Not only did she not want me to put the thing on her, once she had it on she didn’t want to move.

She was giving me this look as if to say, “This is stupid. I feel like a huge dork. I am not going anywhere until you take this thing off of me.”

As you can see, she finally relented. When outside, K is not one to stand in one place for very long. She wasn’t happy about it, but she didn’t want to stay still either.

She got used to it after a while. Maybe she figured if Belle and Meg were wearing outfits, it must be okay for her, too.

Soon enough she was back to her happy self. Maybe that was because I declared the fitting session over and let her get back to cavorting naked through the yard?

I guess her previous owners didn’t play dress-up with her.

I suppose she does still have some more adjusting to do after all.

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And So It Goes

I do realize we’re almost eleven days into December and I have done a seriously crappy job finding taste-free Christmas stuff. I have encountered some other taste-free stuff that I would totally love to blog about. Because, really, it is AB-sah-LUTE-ly (you have to pronounce that like you’re from the UK) hysterical yet, at the same time, sad. Pathetic sad and just plain unfortunate sad. But that’s a can of slime I’d rather leave covered. So…

Did you notice that for like two whole days there were pictures of my oldest daughter, Shannon, from various stages of her youth posted here? She turned 31 on Tuesday, and that’s how I decided to celebrate/spread the word. She’s halfway around the world in India now, you know.

On another topic, I got a note from K’s foster Mom this morning saying, essentially, “Enough already, send more pics!” So, I snapped a photo or two (or 100) today while the dogs were out on their various potty breaks.

The first picture below might just be my absolute, all-time favorite (in the humor category).

Belle and her weird expressions crack me up. It’s not like she’s trying to make weird faces, I just happen to snap quite a few pics of her wearing odd expressions.

Other times, like when she’s sleeping, she just looks really cute. Just like a kid. Who would ever think this cute little girl can go from Sleeping Beauty to…

… a crazy little dynamo that LOVES chasing K anywhere and everywhere?

Speaking of K, she looks pretty cute when she is sleeping, too.




Hubby and I just love the coloring on her feet. And her brown toes. Her bald belly is pretty cool, too.

Have you been wondering what life with three dogs is really like?

It’s just like this. Meg and I meander aimlessly while K and Belle rip around the yard like tasmanian devil-dogs.

Meg really is quite happy to have K around as the focus for Belle’s “play with me” games. And I have been very well entertained. In this picture, it looks like Meg is at a standstill. Compared to them, she is. Those young ones are FAST.

Anyway… just one last little dog anecdote before I call it a night.

Meg is and always has been very stubborn and demanding. She snorts, forces out sneezes, mumbles, growls, and does whatever else she needs to do to get our attention when she wants our attention. When it’s close to dinner time and she thinks we should be feeding her, which usually happens to be right in the middle of our preparing to feed the people in the house, she licks out the dog bowls. Not just a quick lick, lick, lick either. Long, slow, loud forceful licks that make the bowl slide all over the floor. It’s annoying.

Yes, we should ignore her. But IT IS ANNOYING. So, like last night, when I heard the above scenario being played out, I said “Meg!” quite sternly.

And then I looked up and saw this…

It wasn’t Meg after all. It was our cute little Tinkerbelle. She actually had both front feet on the rim of the bowl. But, by the time I’d snatched the camera off the counter to fire off the above shot, she’d already removed one foot.

Doesn’t she look pathetic? That’s even her bowl.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll encounter some taste-free Christmas stuff to share. Or maybe I’ll just snap some more dog pics.