Ready for the Iditarod?

Our dogs will do anything for a cookie. Including learning how to be the world's goofiest sled dogs!

growing up so fast...

Today we registered Milo for kindergarten. We can't believe Milo's going to be going to school in the fall! It seems like just last week we were still changing his diapies and giving him bottles. Milo is a little nervous about going to school, but he's excited about it too. We have several more visits to the school before September, so he can get used to being there and get an idea of how the days will be. It's very exciting, for Corey and I anyway. If you asked Milo if anything interesting happened today, he would say "I took a big poop that stood up like a lever!" instead of "Mommy and Daddy took me to big kid school to register for kindergarten."

And the snow fun continues

Yesterday was pretty crummy. My streak of bad luck continued when I stepped outside this morning, to check on the snow-clearing job ahead of us so I could go to work, and saw this.

Yep. That's a tree. On, around and in front of my truck.

Amazingly enough, for the size of the branch, there was no damage to the truck at all. The antenna isn't even bent!
Since its the neighbor's tree, Corey just cut enough of the branches away to get the truck out from under it. The tree is pretty much frozen to the ground, so we can't move it until it thaws. Once it thaws, we're hauling it further over into the neighbors yard so its not blocking the driveway anymore. Since there was no damage to the truck we're not making a big stink about it to them. Once the branch is on their property completely, they can clean it up at their leisure.

And a pretty moment, the sun shining through the ice on the maple out front.

The view from the end of our driveway. Corey took this while he took a break from cleaning up the snow.

I ended up staying home from work today, to be on the safe side. The tree on the truck was a sure sign from whoever runs the universe, and for once I listened to the instructions. Losing two days worth of pay is worth still being alive!

Us girls gotta stick together

The usual morning scene before the hustle and bustle of getting ready for work and school. Milo's not awake yet, and I'm able to sit still, drink my coffee and watch the morning news...the animals take full advantage of my lap!

Some snow day

More like a slush day. Argh. Its a very frustrating day, that's for sure. Things have been happening around here in perfect storm fashion all morning. As in, Milo is in the process of getting poop all over his hands while he's wiping his butt, the phone is ringing and he actually got up off the pot to answer it, I was trying to put away laundry and had to race to intercept him and then tripped over the dogs and almost got my foot bitten off because I scared the crap out of Quinn.

Then, I was trying to give the dogs their daily medicines, which involves me sticking my hands halfway down their throats. Normally this is a non issue and the dogs just choke down their pills. Not today. As Lily kept spitting her meds out, I hear "OH NO!!" from Milo's room. Milo spilled an entire cup of pomegranate juice on his light beige rug. He wanted to clean it up himself and I had to frantically finish dealing with the dogs and then go round up the portable steam cleaner to get the vibrant red stains out of the rug. Of course, the phone started ringing again.

THEN I was cleaning up the juice spill (the portable cleaner is AWESOME, at least that went right!!) and Milo decided he was going to use the phone. I had said he could make one phone call, but who the heck knows who he was talking to. I asked him who he called and he said "I dunno. I was trying to call you at work and some lady answered." After I took a VERY deep breath, I asked him "Why would you call me at work when I AM STANDING RIGHT HERE?" and he said "Because you couldnt' hear me over the noise of the rug scrubber." Um, do I have a phone attached to my butt? I don't think so. Especially not a work phone!

AND THEN. We went outside to play and start clearing the extremely heavy wet snow from the driveway and patio. Milo was outside for five whole minutes before he started screaming because snow got inside his boots. I sent him inside (and went in with him to set up the tv for video-watching, and managed to track a ton of snow all over the place because it wasn't worth taking off all my gear after just struggling into it five minutes before that). I attempted to snow blow the driveway. I got a good start over by Corey's car and then the blower quit on me and I couldn't get it started again. I came inside to check on Milo, all seemed well. Then I realized that I had forgotten that the dogs were still out back. Poor things had been out there for ages in the wet, and they were soaked! Those two pups were never so happy to come inside. The stoopid snowblower still won't start and Corey is at work. There is NO WAY I'm shoveling that heavy snow on my lonesome, so its just going to have to wait till he gets home. If he gets home. Who knows when that will be. Yes, I'm having a crappy day. I was hoping to have a real, fun snow day but so far it's turned out to be a major PMS instigator!!

By the way, if anyone reading this works for Onstar: Quit calling here. WE ARE NOT INTERESTED. Plus you Onstar people always call at the worst possible moments. Save your breath and my patience, please.

And the word of the day is...

Ludicrous.

It means "silly or ridiculous" as according to Milo, who used it in perfect context today. When I asked him what ludicrous meant, that's what he told me, and he is absolutely right.

We were leaving the house this morning and going through our usual goodbye routine with the dogs, which consists of locking them in the kitchen and saying "Have a good day, behave, don't eat anything you're not supposed to," as we give them a hug. Milo added "And don't do anything LUDICROUS, Lily!!" as we were walking out the door. I about fell over laughing, because that is the perfect word to describe that hound!

Milo's first model airplane

This past Sunday was rainy and gloomy, so Milo and I built a model airplane together. He really enjoyed it painting it, after I did all the necessary gluing. It turned out really great!

The kid definitely has my taste in colors!

Naked Cat

Monet is getting older, and the older she gets, the less she takes care of herself. The lil' furry slob gets matted pretty easily, and doesn't really let us brush her as often as she needs to be brushed, so I solved the problem by cutting her hair off. I had done it once before, with my scissors and much patience, but this time around I borrowed Corey's dad's animal clippers. They weren't powerful enough to really get through her woolly undercoat as nicely as I would have liked. We ended up buying heavy duty animal clippers that go through Monet and Quinn's forests of hair like buttah. I practiced a bit on Quinn, just trimming up his shaggy bits on his tummy and legs, and giving him a much needed butt-cut to keep his hiney clean, and then I turned the clippers back on Monet. She was not happy to be put through torture two days in a row, but she feels so much better because of it! And now that we have clippers of our own, I can trim her hair regularly to keep her from turning into the fuzzball that she was before. And Quinn can get a full on summer hair cut when it gets warmer out! (Can you tell that I miss playing with my Barbie head?!)



This pile o' hair is from round one of clipping Monet. It took me an hour or so to do this to her. The next night, with the tougher clippers, it took another hour and I got just as much fur off her again!

Haircut #1. It was definitely rough around the edges and you could really see where I had messed up and cut her hair too short. For all her caterwauling though, Monet held pretty still as long as I plied her with tuna fish.

Haircut #2. Much better!

Oh Mom. You're embarrassing me! But I do look 10 pounds skinnier!

Its all butts from here on out

My life at home pretty much revolves around poop and/or puke. If I'm not scraping crap or barf off of something, I'm wiping somebody's butt. It would be nice to just be responsible for my own butt for a while, but unfortunately, it looks like that is never going to happen. By the time Milo is finally able to wipe his own butt without assistance and the dogs drop dead, my parents will totally enfeebled and will be needing me to wipe their butts. And then Corey will be too old and fat to wipe his butt so I'll have to take care of him too. Who, I ask, WHO is going to wipe my butt when I can't reach it anymore???

The reason for this tirade is the current goings on at our house. Quinn had to go back to the vet again for digestion problems. He was not near death this time (whew!) but he had been throwing up a lot recently and having horrible awful stinky gas for days at a time, and occasionally icky poops. The dumb dog is a stress mess and is causing his own tummy to be in turmoil, so the diagnosis is that he has to stay on low dose antibiotics for the rest of his life, eat easy to digest food (expensive!! The bag of food the vet sold me is 8lbs and costs $24!) and try to stay out of stressful situations. Since living is a stressful situation for Quinn, we have to look into ways to keep him calm. I would opt for doggie prozac but the vet said no. So I've been doing lots of research on homeopathic calming methods. We have one thing called Rescue Remedy that is a liquid potion of flower essences, that seems to help Quinn keep his cool. We'll see what happens in the long run. In the meantime I'm also researching different dog foods to see what else is out there that is comparable to what the vet sold me, but won't cost a small fortune. I can see into my future now, that I'll be buying whole chickens and boiling them up for the damn dog, along with his daily ration of rice that he already eats. I'll be one of those dog owners, which I vowed I would never be!

In other digestive tract news, Lily managed to get hold of our outdoor thermometer today and ate it. Glass and all. We're pretty sure it was an alcohol thermometer, as the stuff inside it was red, so hopefully Lily won't croak of mercury poisoning. The glass shards are going to feel really good moving through her insides. I don't know what gets into that dumb dog sometimes. The other day I found some sort of horrid spiky seed pod thing in her poop; it looked like a smaller version of those gumball things that fall off trees. Why in heck would that even look inviting to eat? Can you imagine what that felt like coming out the other end?? Jeez. No wonder the dog howls instead of barks! I would howl a lot too if my butt was always on fire from something I ate.

At least Milo isn't having any weird problems. Yet.

This and that

We took Tuckerton to the vet today for a full checkup. He is hale and hearty and has no health problems at all. The vet said Tuckerton is in excellent condition for being 10 years old. Woo hoo! I finally picked a healthy animal! Hopefully he will stay that way.

Monet has accepted Tuckerton's presence in the basement and deigns to look at him once in a while. There was some hissing and spatting going on yesterday but today they were both probably thinking "We're too old for this crap, I'm just going to put up with that other one." Tuckerton took to the dogs right away and they did the same to him. Tuckerton spends most of his time hanging out in the basement, and comes upstairs once in a while to check on us and make sure we're still around to feed and brush him. He is purely a pleasure to have here. So far. Give me a month or so, when Tuckerton starts acting like Monet and barfing in my shoes and treating me as if I only exist for feeding purposes.

And now on to today's random pictures:
We had a brief snowstorm the other day. I thought the light was pretty neat, coming through the snow clouds, and reflecting off the little bit of snow on the ground.

Milo pulled a practical joke on me. He said he was brushing his teeth, and I heard him banging around in the bathroom and using his electric toothbrush, so I assumed he was doing what he said. Then I went in there to check the progress, and Milo turned around and grinned at me. He was brushing his gold bling-bling teeth! I cracked up laughing, because it totally reminded me of the scene in the Christmas Story when all the kids in the classroom have their fake teeth in and say "Good morning Miss Shields."

Note to self

Next time we make home-made dumplings, use the stand mixer and dough hook. The hand mixer just don't cut it. Plus it makes a big giant mess. And dough gets so far up inside the mixer that a person has to take it apart to clean it out. I was not happy when I thought I had the crud all cleaned up, and turned the mixer on sans attachments to see what would happen....and oodles of gummy dough oozed out! Much cursing and a few minutes later, I had the mixer apart to find this lovely mess. Corey's a great cook, but he can be a bit hard on my kitchen electronics!!


I did finally get most of the goop out, using toothpicks and the last tiny shreds of my patience.

Christmas came....and went

It was the same ol' stuff as always, except we were awakened VERY early by a very excited little boy. After opening gifts here we were off to our usual round of traipsing to other people's houses. The part I like best about Christmas is keeping the magic in it for Milo, the part I like least is having to go visiting all day long when I would be much happier curled up on the couch. The things we do for our families!! Milo had an awesome Christmas, and we had fun because of him, and that is what is most important.

A few pictures to chronicle the events....

Our version of winter wonderland

Well, we got about 15-18 inches of snow yesterday. Its hard to tell for sure because the wind blew a lot of the snow around. Anyway it provided for many photo opportunities. View our fun here!

SNOW SHOW!!!

If you have the tv on this morning, you know the world is stopping because of the SNOWSTORM that is churning up the east coast and causing all kinds of havoc. Are you all prepared for the storm of the century? Here's the list of essentials that you absolutely must have, as carefully compiled by Corey and myself after years of working in the supermarket industry.

1. Milk, bread and eggs. Snowstorms apparently trigger our inborn need for French toast. Even if you don't normally drink milk or eat French toast, you do when it's snowing.

2. Potato chips and hard salami and/or stick pepperoni. If you're going to have French toast for breakfast, lunch and dinner while you're "snowed in," you have to follow up with a nice light snack.

3. Lottery tickets, preferably scratch offs. You know if you can't get out to get your scratch offs, you're going to miss out on the big one! It's especially good if you buy your scratch offs, go home, scratch em and see that you've won 2 dollars. This gives you a reason to go back out on the dangerous roads and go back to the store, so you can collect your big jackpot, and take the opportunity to tell the employees that "The roads are awful. It's a mess out there. You people should be closed by now."

As Yukon Cornelius says in Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, you gotta stock up on your essentials: Cornmeal and dog food, hamhocks and guitar strings. Never mind buying the things that are actually sensible for snowstorm preparedness, like maybe bottled water and batteries for if the power goes out, and some rock salt for the driveway.

The point of my rant: What is it about snow storms that makes people behave this way? It's just snow! Drive safely, if you have to drive at all, get the stuff you might actually need if you have to stay home for more than a day, and settle in for some quiet time, or as we do in our house, go outside and play with your kids (and dogs)!

the latest and greatest

More pictures! See November and December fun when you click.

A little Christmas magic...

We had our first Santa sighting today....and Santa was undercover! Milo and I were on way out of school this afternoon, when we walked by the office. There was an older gentleman sitting at one of the desks in the office, and the man had white hair, a little bald on top, and a full white beard and mustache, plus he was a bit portly. He was dressed in regular old guy clothes: tan sansabelt slacks and a yellow polo shirt. Milo's eyes got really huge and he whispered "Mommy...that's SANTA!" I said, "Let's go find out!"

Miss Ethel (the guard at the door) buzzed us back into the school, and we went into the office. Milo got really shy, and the old guy asked us what we needed. Milo finally took a step towards him and said "Are you....are you SANTA???" The old guy said "Why, yes, son, I am. And who are you?" Milo said "I'm Milo. M-I-L-O. Write it down." Santa dutifully pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote down the kid's name. Then Santa asked Milo what he wanted for Christmas, and Milo told him "A red robot with wheels that looks like Fred. But he's red." Santa wrote all this down too, while looking at me like "What the hell is he talking about?" I said "It's a good thing Santa has a helper to keep track of all those notes, huh?" Santa got the gist and said "Yes, I will make sure I keep your name and request at the top of my list." Then I asked Milo why he thought Santa was hanging out at the school in regular clothes. Milo's answer: "To check on all the children!" Santa said "That's right, I have to check my list twice to see who's been naughty or nice!" With that, Milo said "Merry Christmas, Santa!" and we left. Milo talked all the way home about how we saw Santa in his time off, and that he doesn't have to mail his Christmas list now because he was able to tell Santa himself before the other kids got to.

How cool is that though, that the old guy totally played along with Milo's pure belief in Santa, and didn't once let on that he wasn't the big guy. How are we to know he wasn't, actually?

this month is kicking my butt!

Argh. It never ends this month!! First the water heater blows out. Then Quinn gets some almost-killed him bacterial infection. My dad had to go for 3 more stents in his heart, for a total of 5. My sister is currently in Jefferson Hospital recuperating from a major brain surgery to remove a melangioma (not sure if I spelled that right?) sitting on her optic nerve. Turns out that the doctors couldn't get all of the tumor for fear of damaging her optic nerve, so after she is finally recuperated from the operation (as in months from now), she will have to go back for more radiation treatments.

As if all that isn't enough, now Milo has strep throat / scarlet tina or scarlet fever. He came down with 102 fever yesterday afternoon and complained of a bellyache; the fever hung around all through today and then Milo broke out in a itchy red rash all over his body. Off to the doctor we went, to find out he's highly contagious and we have to stay home for at least the next 24 hours, but it would be better if we stayed home all weekend. I've been suffering from near-migraines all week, probably from all the stress in my life, and Corey's been coughing for like a month now.

On the bright side, all our bills are paid. And maybe I'll get to take a nap tomorrow, since I get to hang around with Milo all day instead of going to work.

What a handsome boy!

Milo, 4 years old, for his first school picture. He picked out his clothes himself, he was so psyched about "picture day." And made me do his hair up special that morning. He is so GQ now, I can't wait to see what sort of fashionister he is when he's older!

Things I learned today

1. They make handheld mixers much more powerful than they used to be. I bought myself one today at Walmart for ridiculously cheap ($6!!!) and used it to whip up a pound cake for Corey...on low, it almost blew the mix out of the bowl! Cool! I still love my stand mixer, but the hand held job is good for quick stuff.

2. Dogs really love pumpkin. I sort of figured that out on my own when we were carving our pumpkins this year and Quinn and Lily kept sneaking up to steal the pumpkin guts from the pile on the floor. I proved the point to myself when I purposely bought them a can of pumpkin today and fed them some. Just a tablespoon each, to see if they liked it for real. Judging by the slurping, they loved it. Our dogs are apparently going organic, due to their perpetual stomach distress. Now they are being fed kibbles, rice and pumpkin. Did you know you can get a gigantic 25 pound bag of rice at BJs for around $10? That'll be enough to feed those mutts for two or three months!

3. Milo is growing up. He officially graduated from a car seat to a backless booster seat in the truck today. At least now he'll have lots more leg room! This is a sad moment for me, as all the car seats are now up in the attic, gathering dust. He used to be so small....Although the kid did freak me out this afternoon while we were picking out his booster seat, and told me that he wants a baby sister. I almost died right there in Walmart. I saved the day by telling him that if he has a baby sister, he'll have to share his room and his stuff. Milo then said "Oh. Never mind!"

Milo's Class Photo

This is Milo's first official class picture!!

Featured are:
Back row, from right to left: Ms. Phoebe, Nolan, Nicholas, Milo, Destin (Milo's best bud at school), Nathan, Ms. Brenda, Cody, Chadwick

Middle row: Joe'l (pronounced Joelle), Noelle, Kaitlyn, Madison, Angelina, Christine, Aaron (another of Milo's good friends)

Front row: Connor, Alex, Ayush, Joshua, Andrew, Jayden

PS: No the wall isn't really scribbled on like that, I took the name out of the picture (in a rather sloppy fashion) for privacy purposes.