4 posts tagged “family”

What I Did On My Summer Vacation (aka, last weekend).

Saw a fireworks display
Twice.
Played Croquet
Played Bocce
Flew kites
Got said kites stuck in trees
Had marshmallows over a bonfire
Enjoyed my dad's BBQ'd hamburgers & hot dogs
Fed goats/llamas/bunnies (not hamburgers & hot dogs though)

And probably other things I don't remember off the top of my head, but likely enjoyed at the time, except a couple weird dreams I had, but that's another story. 

The weekend gave my dog a hangover.  This morning he had bad diarrhea, threw up, wasn't eating, wasn't drinking, wasn't playing, and generally was pretty lethargic.  I was kinda freaking out, and called in to work so I could go a couple hours late to let me keep an eye on him until I saw some improvement.  Thankfully I did, and by the time I got home from work at night, he was his hungry, hyper self again.  I bought him some better quality food, and an over the counter diarrhea remedy (among other things... I did a little 'retail therapy' for the dog, and bought him a new toy and collar, which of course helped *ahem*).  I'm so glad he's better.  It was scary.  Seriously.  :\  I think Spencer just ate too many sticks and leaves and grass (and was given a few bbq-table scraps) which upset his stomach.  At least he had fun at the time.  He's a lightweight.  :P

Anyways, it was a great weekend otherwise, and I really don't have much else to talk about without blah blah blahing about everything and taking away from the 'fun'ness of this post.  I don't have all the photos from the weekend ready for upload, but a selection is below.   Mostly of kites and fireworks... heh

 

Well, not quite, but lots of wildlife in this post.  I forgot that I hadn't updated about Mother's Day.  Seems old news, but it was still fun.  My parents came into town and we all (them, myself, my b/f, my brother, my sister in law, my nephew, the dog) went to Springbank Park for a picnic.  It was fun.  We got a great picnic table, away from everyone else (thus quiet), yet in the shade and right next to parking!  Score!  After that, we went for a walk along the Thames River for about an hour.  It was a nice day.  Here are some highlights:

We fed the squirrels and chipmunks some peanuts (as clearly seen in the squirrel pic).  I'm sure it's one of those unspoken rules to not feed the wildlife, but everyone knows that everyone does.  Especially the wildlife.  They know the spots with the benches and hang out there waiting.  It's amusing.  One of the chipmunks ate out of my brother's hand even.  They're so cute.

Another highlight (or lowlight, depending on who's asking), was these random people who were... well... see for yourself:

Wtf?  I also got a pic of 'Darth' hugging a little girl.  I can not express how WRONG that is. So out of character!  :P  Anyway, the kids seemed quite amused.  When the 'group' started to walk over to the kids they got really excited and started screaming and stuff, and one kid actually ran up and bowed to them, which is that last picture there... hahaha  It was so funny.  Kids are so weird.  But it works great for them, because they have an excuse.  They're kids.  Adults?  They're just weird.

They were apparently promoting some event that was happening the following weekend (which was now this past weekend, and I missed it because I was out of town). It was to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Star Wars movie.  Wow.  Who's old here?  Admit it.

Speaking of out of town, this weekend was the long weekend up here in Canada (you weirdo Yankess have it next weekend).  :)  I had to work Saturday, which blew, but at least it was slow (aka, boring) that day.  So I didn't really get a 'long' weekend, but Chris and I, and the cat, and the dog went to my parents house for a visit.  We drove the scenic route on the way there, which was nice.  I like it at my parents place.  It's so quiet.  I definitely want a house out of the city, out in the country, once I get into 'house' mode.  Sunday was chiiiilly, and kinda windy (we had wanted to have a bonfire, but weather conditions disagreed) but today was beautiful and warm.  We let the dog outside most of yesterday, and almost all of today.  Kept him on a tie on so he wouldn't take off, but still, he enjoyed it.  Ever since we got home about 4 hrs ago he's been resting in his crate.  haha  Cute.

Here're more highlights of wildlife there including KITTIES (though kitty-mom is hiding them a bit... d'awww... mommies...): Which reminds me that we saw another mother cat (there are 3 barn cats at my parents house, all females, all of which had litters this month... wtf?) move her kittens to a new spot.  Cutest thing ever = little kitty dangling from mother cat's mouth as she trots them across the grass whilst kitty mews all "mom, wtf"ish.  No pic of that unfortunately, but just imagine the cuteness.  IMAGINE.

And, thus we reach the part where like any good animal parent, I give you various pics that are probably cuter to me than they are to you.  Here, the dog:
:)  I also took some videos of him running around playing 'fetch', or rather 'throw, get, and don't bring back', but they're kinda long and I'm not feeling up to waiting for them to upload.  haha  He kept running out of the shot anyways.  Though, one video does show a time when he ran a little too far and reached the end of his tie on length, and it jerked him right off his feet.  It was only hilarious because he didn't hurt himself (and because sometimes, falling down is just damn funny).  We let him run around off leash (no tie! FREEDOM) through the uncut foot-high grass too, which he really seemed to enjoy eating as much as jumping around in/over.  I think it was good for him to get in full on sprint mode for a while as he ran back and forth between Chris and I.  We were testing his ability to run towards us when we called him.  He did pretty well considering I judged us to be about 50-70 metres away from each other (don't ask me what that is in feet,  I'm Canadian damnit).

Anyways, I will seriously try to update more often, as I've had a lot of things pending in my mind to discuss, but I like to keep my posts generally one topic..... HAHAHA ok, anyone who's read my blogs for a while knows that's crap, but I'm GOING to try from now one to keep them one (ish) topic.  Or at least somewhat related (aka, the wildlife/pic/weekend adventures theme in this one).

I've got a lot to update about, and I'm not sure where I should start, though I suppose I could just go chronologically.  I'll split it into more than one update so as not to overwhelm everyone.. lol

First, last weekend, which I spent visiting my parents.

Their house is still my 'home away from home'.  The only place I can truly relax and forget about everything else in life for while.  I was really stressed out about having to go back to work this week (which I did today, more on that later), and the fact that I was still really stressed out about other things during my 'time off', which was frustrating. 

Anyways, my parents have turkeys on their farmland, which are quite amusing.  Being that it's 'spring' time, the males have decided to fight amongst themselves which is almost frightening to watch.  I did catch it on video, but it would take far too long to upload, and it'd probably be kind of disturbing.  hah  They've not killed each other yet, but they have drawn blood!  ew.

On the other end of the birdies in spring spectrum, they've also got some ducks on the farm, who've laid a bunch of eggs!  How cool is that?  There's about a dozen eggs there, and as you can see, they're being attended to quite nicely.  I hope they have little ducklings soon, because if they do I might have to go visit more often.  lol

And another springtime event is PILE O' KITTENS!!!!! OMGGGG  They're SO CUTE.  I also have a video of them, and you can hear the kittens 'mewing' too.  They were born while I was there (on Friday evening/night we think).  God, I love kittens.  There are 6 of them there.  So gorgeous.

The guy on the right is who we believe to be the father.  He's pretty handsome, don't you think?  He's from down the road (isn't how that always goes?).  You can't see in this pic, but he's got a bobbed tail.  Being that he's pretty fluffy, it's absolutely adorable!

So yeah, not much happened with me that weekend, but a lot happened with everyone else!  lol  I leave you with a couple pics of blooms coming up around my parents' place too.  I think I'm going to get them an apple tree for their anniversary next month.  We saw one at the store today which had blooms on it and it was gorgeous.  That may seem weird, but they already have cherry trees, a pear tree, walnut trees, a great lilac bush, etc.  I dunno... it just seems appropriate.  Anyways, I must say, I'm liking May 2007 so far!!  More on that later  ;)

~ ~ ~

It's spring fever.  That is what the name of it is.  And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
~ Mark Twain

My first 'embed' project.  lol  A video of Spencer playing.  He doesn't quite 'get' the whole fetch thing, but I'm not surprised.  We've been focusing on a few things at a time so as not to overwhelm him.  Namely leash habits, SIT, and outside habits of course.   So, it's nice that he kinda gets the 'idea' of fetch without us actually having taught him anything about it yet.  :)

Scott, Annak and Jasper (my brother, sister in law and nephew) met Spencer this evening.  It went well!  He was quiet and thankfully had just eaten and 'gone outside' before they arrived, so it was good timing.  Mostly he was just curious.  He sat for Scott to get a treat.  :)  He's getting good at that.  They seemed happy with him, which is good.  I hadn't officially told them we'd got a dog so it was a bit of a surprise.  haha  They gave me warning that they were coming over, which was nice because I had a chance to 'Oust' the room and vacuum and stuff so everything looked nice.  lol  Thankfully I had just washed one of the blankets we had in the living room so Jasper had something to roll around on.  haha.. man that kid is so funny.  He makes awesome facial expressions now.  :)  Scott joked to that Spencer was Jasper's cousin.  lol  In a way it feels that way, but isn't that how it's supposed to be?

Spencer had another car ride today.  He really doesn't like them.  lol  We bought a new harness which keeps him up on the seat a little better.  The other thing I had was just a little restraint, but didn't work well because he was able to get on the floor and try to hide.  No good.  Anyways, once we were actually AT the store, he had a grand time saying 'hello' to a bunch of other dogs there.  Dogs are so cute.  I wish I could get a little shih-poo (yeah, I said it) because I honestly think they can be ADORABLE, if not a bit 'old lady' ish, but I could never put up with the excess energy and yipping that small dogs tend to do in general.  I know they're not ALL like that, but come on now... :P  I like my big mellow fellow.  :)  Speaking of mellow, he's had like 3 naps today.  I wonder if we should wake him up more so that he's more likely to sleep through the night?  He went on a 1/2 hr walk today, plus the store adventure (which took 2 hrs in total), and two other 10 min walks, plus about 15 mins of play time (like in video), so I think he's tired.  heh.  Geez, I HOPE he's tired.  lol 

Anyways, we're taking the advice of Amanda, and he's outside right now for a bit of a run around, play and 'go' time.  From the sounds I hear now of Chris saying 'good boy' repeatedly, it sounds like he did his 'duty'.   :)  Score one for the humanoids.

Tomorrow is Monday, so Chris will be at work, and I'll be home w/ Spencer myself for the day.  I'm a bit nervous... heh.  We bought a couple books today, including Housetraining for Dummies and Puppy Raising & Training Diary for Dummies, because we're Dummies really.  I'm definitely going to start tracking when he eats, goes outside, does anything, etc. in the diary.  I kind of want to just keep him over night without waking up to see how he does tonight, but I'm nervous.  :\  I don't want a stinky set back that we could have avoided.

My cat has been doing ok.  She ventures downstairs for a minute or so at a time, but mostly spends it all upstairs now.  I hate that.  :(  I miss her.  We try to spend as much time as we can with her too, but it'll take some adjusting for all of us I think.  We don't 'forget' that she's there or anything, we're just also needed to keep track of how Spencer's doing.  It's rough tackling both 'kids'.

~ ~ ~

Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated. 
~ Lamartine