Wednesday, January 27, 2010

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Wildlife Photos from Pea Ridge

My Mom has a very fancy camera and takes incredible photos of the wildlife around her house. Here are some of her pictures from last July:






Friday, January 22, 2010

Sammy Lends a Helping Hand (Paw?)


Sammy thinks the dishwasher is a great place to hide his tennis balls -- I even washed one the other day inadvertently!


What he really wants is for me to fish it out and throw it in the air so he can catch it. But sometimes he pitches in and helps wash the dishes instead -- isn't Sammy helpful?



Our weather was downright balmy today -- sunny and winds from the south. Tiger took advantage of it from his favorite perch in the office:


HAPPY WEEKEND!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Greetings from Sunny AZ!

Baby Bean and I headed to Sunny AZ last weekend to escape the gloomy weather here and to visit two of our best girlfriends, Merrymar and Addie-bean, and their newest family member, Buddy the Lapdog. I know lots of you have had frigid weather this year, so I thought you might enjoy some snapshots of our trip. Here are a few pics of the views we enjoyed daily:



We were in the desert, so it was warm and sunny during the day, but got cold at night. So the girls went swimming in a heated pool one afternoon, and we gathered round the outdoor fireplace at night with blankets and the fixings for s'mores. FUN!!

Buddy the Lapdog -- five months old -- enjoyed hanging around and playing with the girls inside and outside:

Buddy helped pick oranges and he snoopervised the process of making fresh-squeezed orange juice from regular oranges and blood oranges:


They smelled heavenly, fresh-picked oranges! BB and Addie-bean cut and squeezed the oranges. Aren't they a lovely color? Check out Merrymar's vintage juice press. It works really well.


BB and AB like their juice strained:



YUM!

We also did some hiking and saw some great views:





We are home now, but we can't wait to go back!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Sitting for Treats


Sammy acts very good when he thinks he might get a treat; Alice is always good. Look how much bigger than Alice Sammy is now! He will be 7 months old on January 24th.

I'm very sorry that I haven't gotten round to make many visits lately (or post for that matter). I've been doing lots of mundane, unfun administrative stuff that I shoved aside from July last year until now as I was trying to finish my dissertation. And would you believe that my Christmas tree is still up? I'm starting to not notice it and I don't think that is a good sign!

Sammy takes up lots of time, too. He is just like a toddler -- you can't leave him unsupervised for a moment! He's really learning lots, though, and he is a sweet-natured boy. We just love him! After learning about flyball over from our friend Dennis the Vizsla, we decided to investigate it for Sammy. Sammy is signed up for beginner flyball training starting the last week of January. We'll let you know how it goes!

Finally, GK and Tiger think they have been neglected on the blog, so I have promised to do a post on them sometime soon. They send all of their kitty friends their very fondest meows.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Sunday Random Roundup

Hello, friends!  Last week was largely spent learning how to use various digital platforms for distance learning as well as the ever-popular...