Snow & Such

Wow, two blog posts in a month!  Is this possible?  LOL

Bought the dogs each a coat and they arrived on Friday.  Luce accepted her coat without qualm, but Blaze was paralyzed in his.  Just stood there and would barely move.  Had to drag him outside while Luce was bouncing all around him.  The next time I brought The Ball out with me ... that took his mind off of the jacket  :-)

Common picture here when The Ball is out.  Luce waiting for Blaze who is waiting for The Ball to move.

Today is Saturday and it is snowing.  The states further south of us are getting dumped upon but we only have maybe an inch so far.

The Koi are hibernating

Blaze is getting used to his coat ... he still thinks he is going to die when I first put it on, but getting used to quicker and quicker now.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

First, Happy New Year!

And so I start 2009 ... being very, very tired because we stayed up way past midnight. New Years Eve is hard for someone who usually falls asleep by 10pm :-)

I'm waiting for the rest of the household to wake up, so I hopped on to the blog.

Last week was a PIP. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly all rolled into one week!

Let's start with The Bad & The Ugly and get that over with. Where to start? Mom fell off a stepladder 2 weeks before Christmas while decorating the Christmas tree and shattered her left knee. Had to have surgery with pins or screws and she is still in the hospital. It will be weeks before she can put weight on that leg and then months and months of rehab. She told me yesterday that the doctor said she had "destroyed" her knee.

The Sunday before Christmas had everything all covered with ice. Luce ran out on to the yard and couldn't stop and bent her outside toenail on her back right paw. Took her in on Tuesday as she was still not putting weight on it and she had to have her toenail removed. However, she is now fine and not limping at all.


Looking pitiful on Christmas Day with her bandaged foot.

Something went wrong with the hot water heater on Christmas Eve, so we only had a bit of hot water every few hours. Which really sucks when you are trying to clean up after a prime rib roast on Christmas Eve, a turkey on Christmas Day and about to have company. It was still under warranty and the company sent out a new part (a control board I think)

Then there was the fiasco in the master bathroom the day after Christmas ... pipe came apart or something and flooded the cabinet and into the kitchen ceiling and the kitchen window seat ceiling.



Enough of that and on to The Good! Well, it was Christmas :-) And, wheee!! I got a Wii! Didn't get a Wii Fit yet though ... they are hard to come by and I don't want one badly enough to pay double for it. The boys laughed when I said I wanted one and Hugh said he wouldn't use it, but, gee, guess what has received a LOT of use since Christmas? :-)



Blaze was in heaven on Christmas - he got a new can of tennis balls! Which one to play with first, oh, the decisions!



And 3 days before Christmas, I got a new car - a Honda Element! Hugh had driven out to Pittsburgh to pick up Evan for Christmas break and said the transmission was slipping in my Envoy. It had a lot of miles on it, so he started looking for a new car for me. Now that I don't have to car pool for middle or high school, I could expand my list of cars. The primary purpose will be for driving the dogs around and the Honda Element is considered one of the ultimate dog cars as it is easy to clean out and it is very boxy in shape which makes it easier for dog crates. It also gets better gas mileage than the Envoy. Oh, and it has an outlet for my iPod with volume controls in the steering wheel - a huge selling feature for me right there :-)



The bumble bee in the inset is an antenna topper that I got for Christmas ... helps me find my car in the sea of silver SUV's in the parking lot :-) My choices of colors were silver, silver and silver. I really like the Element - it is fun and peppy to drive. And surprisingly peppy on the highway as well. Hugh will build a shelf for the crates to sit on in the back and that will give me storage underneath them. We will take out the back seats as well.

Oh, just before Christmas we also bought two chairs for the living room at a company that is going out of business. I really like them. Next will be a footstool or ottoman, but that will wait until I find what I like. Unfortunately, I hate furniture shopping (almost as much as I dislike clothes shopping!) and there doesn't seem to be an Ottomans R Us store around here, so it might be a while :-)



We have had two sets of company this past week, so the house is cleaner than it was. Note, that I didn't say "clean" But it is getting there.

So, I think that is about it. We don't have snow even though it sounds like the rest of the country does ... even places like Seattle, Vancouver and Arizona. We just have either 60 degrees and mud or freezing cold and ice.

Happy New Year!