Heat Wave!!!

It may only be 76 degrees outside but there's a heat wave in the house.

One of my female dogs (I just can't throw around the "B" word) is in heat and my boys are out of their minds. In the picture above you can see the top of Max's head. He was jumping up and down outside the window, trying to see inside. That same day, Buddy jumped through an open window and pushed out the screen! From that moment on the dogs have been taking one hour turns in the crate. See the little timer on the side of the crate?
When Hallie is in the crate the boys sit next to it and just pine away! When it's time for the boys to do their time she goes on her merry way. Max already knows that Hallie is his mate. He's only 6 months old, but he will not let Buddy get near her. He'll bark and growl and nip at Buddy if he gets too close to the crate. In these pictures, Hallie is inside and Max is outside of the crate, trying to get inside.

This is Hallie's first heat cycle and being the responsible breeders that we are, we will wait until she is older and has all of her health testing done. We want to make sure that she is sound and healthy before any breeding occurs. We are doing this with our other dogs too.

A Lonely Sight

Here I sit broken hearted, came to sew, but never started.

Okay, so that's not a very creative poem, but that's how my sewing machine and I feel! I haven't been out to my "secret hiding place" (my version of a man-cave) for sometime now. Last week, when I took my freecycle chair out there, I walked through a spider web! That is not okay.

I long to visit my sewing machine, really I do. But I'm a working girl now. This working girl doesn't have time to sit around eating Bon-Bons, or do much crafting, or sewing, or gardening, or housework for that fact. I really like my new job, and I love the extra money, and so do the kids. Money does bring some extra freedoms, but I don't want to pay someone to do my "playing" for me.

It doesn't help that I read craft blogs, my favorite of which is Angry Chicken (and if you don't know about her you should check it out). I wish I could be like the angry chicken, she gets paid to write books about crafting and sewing and I bet she makes money from her blog too. She also has 3 small children and I'm glad I'm past all that. (I take joy in imagining that her house is a mess. I know, shame on me, but I've got to make myself feel better about my own mess don't I?)

Here is another great website. RecipeZaar, I found this recipe for spaghetti sauce that is easy, delicious and contains NO high fructose corn syrup (check your labels at home). I didn't do meatballs, just ground meat. You can register at the website and make up your own favorite recipe file and it's all organized and neat. But my favorite thing about this site is that you can change the number of serving with the click of a button, see mom, I don't need to know fractions! Cool beans, I give this website 9 beans out of 10.

Can't Have Just One...

Well, we now have 5 Havanese! When we started this whole Havanese thing, a breeder said to us, "Havanese are like potato chips, you can't have just one!" I didn't believe her at the time. Now I do. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get 5 dogs to sit still for a picture? I knew better than to try to get all of them to look at me at the same time. They are, from left to right, Resi, Buddy, Max, Hallie, and Belle. I took Resi to a dog show in Grass Valley on Saturday. She got a second place ribbon. Not too bad for our first time in the ring together!



Here is my first freecycle find. I'd been lurking the pages of freecycle for a long time, and trying to be very picky about postings so that I don't end up with a lot of stuff that just clutters up the house. But I am a sucker when it comes to chairs. To me they are art, they are useful, hopefully comfortable, can be used as a focal point, and I can put pretty fabric on them. I have no idea from where my love of chairs came. Maybe one day I will be hypnotized and find out for myself. For those of you that don't know what freecycle is here is a link
Basically you get free items from other people who don't want to have a garage sale, or deal with the grumpy workers at the local Goodwill. So hopefully one day soon, you will see this chair with a new suit.

Just take a deep breath!

My kitchen is clean. Life is full, and well worth living.

Well, it is Labor Day Weekend. In the last three weeks our family has had some real character growing time.

As I mentioned in my last post, I began a part time job. Which I really like. But I'm a little out of practice, because I haven't had a "5 days a week , away from the home", type job since the month before Jacob was born (December 1992). So it has been a time of figuring out chores and spreading them around, shopping and meal prep! I am tired. I don't know how all you professional women handle it.

A friend from some time back took his life and Maury did the funeral. Talk about heavy.

A dear elderly lady in the church passed away and he did that funeral.

Maury's mom went into the hospital and was there for 11 days she is now home and doing much better. The first 4 or 5 days were very scary as she slowly began to get better. I know many of our friends were praying and we are forever grateful.

Another dear friend, Bernie, has gone to the hospital. Bernie is Christina's "fairy grandmother". She is the one that has encouraged Christy to pursue her horsie dreams. Although Bernie is on a very tight budget she always has a little extra money to buy something for Christy and Shiloh. She is currently battling for her life. She has had numerous medical issues for some time. The biggest being that she has kidney failure and does her own dialysis at home. Well, she developed an infection and became septic and is now in ICU, she is unresponsive and has a breathing tube. In short, she is on life support and has no immediate family to speak of. Without a miracle, she is in dire straights. Again, many people from our church family have been praying and visiting her along with our dear horse friends.

Maury began his adjunct teaching job at Golden Gate Theological Seminary last week. He has two classes that he teaches on Mondays, and he will begin an online class on Tuesdays. He has much on his plate and works hard to keep us fat and happy.

An elderly man from church passed away on Thursday night. His funeral will be next Friday.

Well, this is turning into a real downer of a post. But through it all, our Lord carries us and takes our burdens as His own. We have truly felt the prayers of our friends through all of these trials. I now realize how answered prayer feels. It feels easy. Like everything is normal and life just goes on. Even when the answer is not the one I want, I can still feel safe knowing that God knows what He is doing.

At the end of a long day, he gives me strength to clean the kitchen.

A New Year

This is the beginning of a new year on many fronts.

Maury and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. (Have I mentioned yet that he shaved his head in July? I'll have to post a picture sometime)

Taryn just turned 11 years old!
She celebrated with her buddies, Timarie and Heather. We spent the day at a new, local water park, came home to barbecue hot dogs, eat cake and of course, open presents!

I bought yet another havanese. I wanted to name him Pete (as in, Amor's for the Love of Pete). But it looks like the name that is sticking is Max. So now I have to come up with a different AKC name for him. Perhaps, Amor's Mad Max? He's very curious, cute and lovable. If paper is left on the floor or anywhere that he can get to it, he shreds it! Maybe I could rent him out to a politician that has a lot of shredding to be done.
I have a permanent job now. I got hired by the local school. It's only 5.5 hours a day doing instructional aid stuff, but to this lady, that hasn't worked on a daily basis in nearly 16 years it feels full time! I'm doing all sorts of jobs, working in classrooms with kids, in the lunch room keeping the peace and I have a 7th grade corrective reading class too! The day goes fast and keeps me on my toes. So far, I really like it! But when will I find time to sew? Boy, now I have to plan my errands, get up earlier to exercise or shop and clean house on the weekends. I am sooo spoiled! Correction, WAS sooo spoiled. Although I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy getting a pay check.

Update on Jacob. He's had his permit for a month now. I know on a previous post I bragged that I wasn't nervous. I must have written that BEFORE I got in the car with him. Now I am nervous. Actually, he's not a bad driver, considering the circumstances, it's just that those of us in the car with him could die in a fiery crash! LOL

This Amazing World

A couple of week ago our friend, Philip showed up. I believe he is a green heron, and he comes by our pond several times a year to see if the fishing is any good. We have had an egret come by too, but we try to chase him away. He's much bigger and might eat the koi that we've had in there for at least 7 years.

The wild life that comes with a pond is just so cool! When we first created the pond it was overrun with tiny little frogs. Then the bull frogs moved in and ate most of the little guys. We had so many bull frogs in it that the neighbor would complain about their "singing" that went on all night long. I have to admit they were awfully loud. We tried all sorts of ways to get rid of those bull frogs. (Although we never ate one frog leg.) We wanted the cute little frogs back. We finally just gave up and let nature take charge of the whole chain of life thing. Now we have just five or six bulls frogs out there and it is much more manageable. The little frogs have moved to the back of the house into my little pond, and that's a good place for them. I can still hear them at night when we open the bedroom doors.

We've had numerous friends bring us gold fish that were no longer wanted. We've planted crawdads and a snake or two. Someone even brought us a turtle that tried to move into their swimming pool, it stayed with us several months and then moved on to greener ponds I guess.

It's so amazing to sit by the pond and just watch the life that happens in that little universe. It just goes on without any help from us. The good Lord just takes care of His creature, and I get to sit back and enjoy the show.

This is getting really old!

Okay, California has been on fire since June 11th. It's been smoky most of the time since then.

You see the lovely picture of the Sutter Buttes on the top of my blog? Well that was taken one evening when the clouds were so pretty.

This is my view today. Yuck!
Here's a creepy sunset picture...

Hey, we Californian's are breathing this stuff! I started coughing because of a cold the week before the fires started. Well, that cough just wouldn't go away, I was driving my husband nutty. He kept telling me, "go see the doctor!" I figured that the cough would go away when the smoke cleared. Well, the smoke wouldn't clear and my cough wouldn't go away. I finally went to the doctor this week and left with an inhaler thingy! That seems to be helping more or less.


Here is a picture I took of Half Dome in the Yosemite Valley a couple of weeks ago. The smoke seems to everywhere.
Okay, enough complaining from me. I just had to get that off of my chest. (I wish I could get it out of my chest too!)