Lights, paint, etc.

Since we had the roof done we decided to go ahead and replace some of our gross looking outdoor lighting. We ripped out the cheap looking Malibu lights and replaced them with these cute lantern lights (which came in about 14 pieces that had to be assembled) and also replaced our front and back door lights. Since we replaced the lights we decided that the outside door frames needed to be painted and then that some of the outside doors themselves needed to be painted as well. I am not sure why it is that even though we bought a newer, nicer, larger house we still seem to be doing a lot of work on it and wishing we had more space in it!

Rare feline footage!

Here is a rare picture of Jelly and Icy together. Usually they don't hang out together at all. If you see them together it's usually because Icy is stalking or pouncing on Jelly. So although they do wrestle and play sometimes we are not sure how fond Jelly is of her new sister. However she has never hurt Icy and does seem tolerant of these random attacks to I guess that's all we can hope for.

And here is Barney pretending to be a mighty jungle cat!

Horses

Here are some pictures of the horeses I took the other day. I tried to get them with a nice background of our pasture (which has a ton of nice green grass for this time of year!) but they were not always very helpful. I'm thinking I might actually ride today since it's not too hot, too cold or too wet and I'm not too tired or too busy!

The boys are ready....

For some football!!
Zodiac can't seem to pose for a photo without some kind of sports equipment in his mouth!

Here you can see that age is apparently not a factor in tugging!
Legend and Oreo have both decided that red frisbee is their favorite toy now.


And Legend is ready for football and agility and frisbee and
swimming and....and....and.....(you get the point!)

Another cute Icy picture

Here is another picture of Icy enjoying her hammock-which is her favorite hobby when she isn't causing trouble or snuggling.

On another positive note Oreo's bloodwork from this week has improved since being on the new food and special medicine. However he finds the new food rather unimpressive now and has to be convinced that is really is ok to eat it. He would prefer to just eat treats and snacks all day.

For those of you interested in dog training milestones Legend can now retrieve a dumbell on command! Zodiac is still plugging away learning the utility exercises-scent discrimination is his nemesis. Oreo picked up on it so fast it's kind of a bummer that we are still working on it with Zodiac. But he's a smart dog and I'm sure he will get it eventually. Also earlier this week Legend did 11 out of 12 weave poles without help-but since then has slipped only being able to do about 4 or 5 before needing to be reminded that she has to finish all of them-in order!

Roof

Here is a picture of our new roof. This may not be that exciting for most of you but for all the money we spent on it I thought I should share it.



It has been raining here for days. We actually lost power at work for an hour or two this morning. It brought back scary ice storm memories when we were out of power for 11 days.


And everyone remember to vaccinate your puppies-I have seen 2 cases of possible Distemper this year which is relatively unusual now that vaccines are so common. The first puppy died, we are hoping the second one survives, she has been through so much already.

We took our "boat" out again this weekend-this time on the James River. Despite being much larger than the Finley there was still no current so we had to do a lot of rowing. I am surprisingly not very sore. It was hot but we still had a good time.

We got the cats this cat tree last week-here are some pictures of Icy enjoying it. Jelly seems to prefer our couch but at least one of them is making use of it.

Tomorrow is my turn to bring something to eat for our staff meeting and I thought these S'more cupcakes I saw on Sarah's blog looked great. So although I don't usually try to cook things this fancy I gave it a shot. They seem to look pretty good although the frosting tastes more like butter than marshmallow. Still I think they will taste pretty good overall.

And finally additional testing has ruled out everything but chronic kidney disease in Oreo. Repeat bloodwork has now shown changes to back this up. So we have started him on special food and two medications to help him do the things his kidneys can't. He has normal blood pressure and no protein in his urine however which are good things given the final diagnosis. All of his anxiety has resolved and was likely related to the transient brain bleeding seen on the MRI.

Cute Kitty

Here are some pictures of my sweet Icy cat. She was trying to help with a recent wallpapering project as you can see by her perch at the top of the ladder. The other picture demonstrates how she has a tendency to sleep on the edges of various pieces of furniture. She has fallen off of several things already! But isn't she cute?


And lastly here is a picture from a recent Kenny Chesney concert in St. Louis-it was really hot but fun!

St. Louis Zoo and Cardinal Game

As the title suggest these were taken a few weeks ago at the zoo and then at the new Busch stadium. I know there is nothing exotic about the little rabbit but it looked so cute just hanging out in the rhino pen!

Rally pictures

These pictures are from the rally trial at the Border Collie Specialty last fall. A friend of mine took them but just gave them to me last week. I thought I would post them anyway. Zodiac by they way went on to take first place while Oreo had a very respectable 99/100 even though he did not place.