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!

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!

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.

Alice is a Good Study Buddy

BB tutors Alice! Alice is much more cooperative than somebody else we know:

Christmas Highlights

As we slowly dig out from Christmas, we thought we would share some highlights of our holiday. For one thing, we had a white Christmas for the first time EVER!

Although Alice sent Santa a letter asking him to relocate Sammy, Santa Paws just gave her some rawhide candy canes. Alice was a little disappointed, and truth to tell, she has been a bit cranky with Sammy when he tries to take away her rawhide chewies. Sammy got a big rawhide turkey leg that he was very pleased with:


Santa brought Baby Bean a beautiful western saddle with a matching bridle:

Here are two of my favorite gifts -- a Navajo cuff bracelet and a Papago basket embellished with Grandmother Spider:

GK and Tiger received gifts as well, but were too lazy to get up and look at them -- it was very cold and they spent the whole day snoozing in bed!

I'm back!

Hey I'm back! I will be posting again so check out the sniffy tails soon!

Merry Christmas to All!

Merry Christmas to all our blog friends!