Grieving the loss of an old friend

Progress

Well, we are now slowly but surely making visible progress on the kitchen. It's quite a mess at the moment!


Who needs a pantry when you have a windowsill??


There's nothing like getting down on the floor to put things in the microwave.


Notice the big hole in the wall behind the stove after we pulled the backsplash down.


Don't you love the groovy carpet that was under the old cupboards?? I personally think we should have went with this style. ;-)
The black plastic and duct tape are covering up an old asbestos panel we found and need to get rid of carefully.


Stove in the middle of the room.



Temporary storage space.


So, that's what the current status of my kitchen is. Needless to say, I'm not doing a whole lot of cooking. (just fixing stuff from the freezer) We have basically no counter space except a little beside the sink, which is where the dirty dishes always are. :-p

First Spaghetti Dinner

Animal Mania

With some prompting from Nicole I've decided it's time to blog about all my pets. I've managed to get a picture of everyone, so here ya go!

*Tidbit is our calico cat who lives exclusively in the house. She's quite spoiled and rightfully the "queen" of her domain. :-) She tolerates Jeremy and I both, but Jeremy is definitely her favorite. If he is sitting down, she's likely to be found in his lap. Otherwise, you can most often find her curled up next to the electric heater in Levi's room. She's an incredibly friendly loving cat until strangers enter the house....then you would never even guess we had a cat. lol She's more often called "Kitty" than "Tidbit", and Levi's name for her is "Eee! Eee!" because he thinks that's the sound a cat makes. ;-)

Good ol' Dolly! My first baby. Hard to believe I've had her 7 years now. She's a lot less hyper than she used to be (which is a good thing!) and she spends most of her days asleep, but in sight of me. She is my shadow for sure. She loves to play fetch with her rope bone or play ball in the yard.


Enjoying a sunbeam:


Molly is our German Shepherd/Lab mix and she'll be 4 in March. She was from a "surprise" litter of puppies we ended up with. :-D She is a GREAT dog, especially now that she's past her puppy stage (which lasted 2 years!) She is friendly with strangers, but keeps away the coyotes and other critters at night. Her and our cats get along well, as do her and Cocoa. She's a really sweet, loyal, and smart dog.


Cocoa, the lucky one! The puppy Jeremy threatened to rename "Bumper" since she got hit by the truck's bumper. lol! Cocoa is a typical crazy hyper puppy but we can tell she is incredibly smart. She is growing so fast!!!! She's already bigger than Dolly and she weighs 22 lbs at not even 3 months old.

Silly dogs:



"Remnant" was a pretty wild kitten at first but she has tamed down and is pretty nice to visit, so we kept her from one of our last litters of kittens. She's very pretty.

Graphite is another beautiful kitty we just had to keep. She is sooooo silly and it took me 2 days to find her sitting still long enough to get her picture! She and Remnant are both outdoor cats.

Smudge is "Mama Kitty" and one of our oldest cats at almost-3. She's a sweet, smart kitty and a wonderful momma cat! Her kittens always turn out really nice too.



This is Percy, another very silly, very friendly cat. She's also from the last litter of kittens and we kept her since she is so friendly.


These are all the cats we have right now. My favorite Zeke, our beautiful neutered male, disappeared while we were on vacation. :-(


And that is all! My crazy, silly great pets. :-) Now you've "met" them all.

"Childhood" meme

Here's a fun and different questionnaire. Answer the following questions about your growing up years and enjoy the trip down memory lane.

As a "youngster" (under 12):

What were a few favorite toys? My Little Pony's are what I remember most. Hated dolls and barbies with a passion! lol
Favorite movie? haha....this one's easy. I must have watched "Old Yeller" a hundred times.
Favorite television shows? "Lassie", "Rin Tin Tin-K9 Cop", "Rescue 911", "I Love Lucy"...just remembered another, "Gilligan's Island". :-)
Did you like to read? hmmm....well, since I consistently won the award for "most books read" in school....I'd say yes. :-)
Have any favorite books? any books with animals in them. This includes Black Beauty and Call of the Wild...read several times each. :-) I loved the author Bill Wallace. I also loved "ghost" books and mystery books. (The Bobbsey Twins series, The Ghost Twins series, "Christina's Ghost", "The Dollhouse Murders", etc. Yes, I'm weird.)
If female, were you a girly girl or a tomboy? Oh, most definitely a tomboy.
If male, were you a rough and tumble or a nerd? -----
Did you get along with your siblings (if you had any)? For the most part! We had a lot of fun together.
Did you have a pet? several pets over the years. Favorites were Pudge the calico cat and Hobi, my sheltie dog.
Name your best friend. Sissy.
What things were you scared of? Night lights. Seriously! I was always afraid mine was going to start a fire.
Public, private, or home school? Private Christian school
Favorite school subject? anything but Math?
Did you play any sports? Tee-ball when I was itty bitty, and 1 or 2 years of softball.
Did you have any "fad" toys? (eg, Pokemon, etc) hmmm....I had a "go-go puppy", and I collected "pogs" for a while. I guess those were fads.
Favorite/most memorable Christmas gift: The thing that comes to mind is a black hills gold ring I got when I was probably 8 or 9.
How was your bedroom decorated? No specific theme, maybe clowns since I collected them.
Favorite family activities: Easy: Going to the lakehouse my aunt and uncle bought (but didn't live in) on weekends in the summer. Boating, tubing, fishing, and bonfires. :-)
Best family vacation? Tennesee maybe? (but that was when I was 14 or so)
Your favorite childhood memory: Christmases with our whole family.
Did you ever do anything naughty that your parents have never found out about? More than one thing I'm sure. One thing that comes to mind is bringing home a kitten from a friend's house and hiding it in my closet, then pretending I "found" it in our backyard. It didn't work, I didn't get to keep it. :-p

Feel free to participate!!

Update on Cocoa

Talked to vet this morning; she said Cocoa has got up and been walking around a bit, eating and drinking. She seems to just be bruised and a bit stiff, but will be just fine!!!! I get to bring her home this afternoon, and doctor's orders are "Spoil her in the house for a few days." ;-)
What a lucky puppy!!! Surviving an ordeal with a semi truck. Like the vet told her when I took her in: "When you take on those cars, the cars usually win!" :-)

Cabinet Preview

My kitchen cabinets are coming out just BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow!!!!!!
Jeremy has posted a couple pictures so you can see a preview of the color and what they're looking like. Check out his blog here: http://pitandpaintbrush.blogspot.com

Pray for Cocoa

It might sound silly, but I would like to ask for prayers for our puppy Cocoa.
She was outside this morning and for some strange unknown reason she wandered down the road a ways and I didn't know it. I looked out the window and saw a semi truck stop in front of our place, and the driver came to our door and said he just hit a puppy and wondered if it was ours. Well, Jeremy went to get her while I bawled, knowing for sure she was dead....how can a puppy survive being hit by a semi??? When Jeremy walked in the house carrying her and told me to get a towel, I was so shocked. She was alive! Her eyes were even open! We called the vet, loaded her up in the van and took her in. I was amazed to see her tail wagging while I rode in the back of the van with her, and when the vet walked in she started wagging again. After being checked over, the vet determined there are no fractures, and she has feeling all over her body, so no spinal cord injuries. Her eyes were bright and focused, so another good sign. Her breathing is real labored and she's not getting up, but it appears she may just be in shock, although they can't rule out internal injuries yet. Please pray that she will be fine. Also, pray that the vet bill isn't astronomical! :-s
The truck driver said when he honked, Cocoa moved over to the side of the road but not far enough since there was another truck coming from the other way. He thought he just clipped her with the bumper, so I guess that's why she's (hopefully) not too bad off.
I will keep you updated on what happens. I'm so thankful the trucker pulled over and let us know he hit her!!!! Not a lot of people would bother to do that. Thank you Mr. Truck Driver!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't understand...

-Why I'm supposed to care that John Travolta's son died. No, I'm not heartless.....but seriously, teenagers die every day. Of course it's sad, but just because this teenager was the son of someone famous, why do I have to hear 2o minutes of every hour of news coverage devoted to tracking his last moments alive, and trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with him, and trying to get his autopsy results, and wondering whether he was on medications, and interviewing the EMT on the scene, and blah blah blah.

-Am I supposed to be impressed when I see a commercial on January 6th advertising a movie claiming to be "The Best Movie of the Year!!!!!!" ? Come on people, it's January 6th.....this is probably the FIRST movie of the year! :-p

-Why do people get so obsessed with other people?? I have started reading a blog that I admit is pretty entertaining and fun.....but there are people who take this blog writer so seriously, and almost take what she writes as "gospel". And then there are those who are so "interested" in her life (read: obsessed) that they subscribe to something called "Twitter"....this is where she writes some silly little blurb every few hours (about things like relieving herself in a Subway cup, or her toddlers public poop disaster.....) and then whoever is subscribed via cell phone gets that blurb as a text message. Bo-ring. Get a life people. :-p

Maybe I'm just feeling really cynical today. Or maybe I just have too much common sense.