Sigh...

Let's see... I am behind in posts, again!  So here's a laundry list of the last week.

• Clearly in the last post I was rather miffed with the pets. They still are irritating me. Tucker has decided that as an old dog he clearly doesn't have to go out to potty past 8:00 at night.  Which means that as soon as he wakes up in the morning if we aren't up he'll stand right by the bed and bark and pee on the floor.  Great.  So now we have to be mean and get his creaky old bones outside late at night. CoCo is being retrained to go potty outside.  That's mostly a success as dogs will do anything for treats.  She doesn't like the wind, or wet ground, or pollen, or dry ground, or oh, let's face it, ANYTHING on her feet.  Fun times. again.  She really is getting a bit better, at least about doing what she needs to do outside.  She's not really keen on going to the door to be let out and I have to stand out there with her with a constant "Come on Coco, go potty..."  What the neighbors must think.  Actually, I don't care what they think.
• If the existing pets weren't enough, we added more.  Had an empty fish tank, there are now some neon tetras in there.  So far only limited success in their survival rate.  Oh well.  And we thought Sherman might be lonely so now he has a friend - Herman.  Herman and Sherman are really the only non-annoying animals at the moment. 
• Got a new grill on Saturday.  Mike is in heaven :-)  Dinner has been great this week.
• School stuff is winding down, no more Spanish after this week.  
• Both kids have field trips on Friday - I am going with Ben, Mike is taking the day off and going with Alex. 

There's a few other little things going on.  But I'm not much in the mood to write about them at the moment.  Alex got sick this evening, just some little stomach bug.  A sick child throws me so far out of balance and worries me more than anything imaginable, even when I know it is a minor quickly passing thing.  It's almost more than my heart can bear to see my littles hurting like that.  I know, I have got to get over that one. 

So that's where I'll leave it.  Hoping my little guy sleeps peacefully and wakes up hungry and full of energy.  Regardless he will be spending the day with me tomorrow and that makes me happy.

Meet the Gang

So you think you know our 4-legged family members.  Think again, and allow me to enlighten you.  In no particular order, I now present: Sandy, Tucker, CoCo, Arthur, Sherman, and the Fish

 I'm Sandy.  At 17 years old I really don't do too much.  My favorite thing to do is find a sunny spot to sleep in, preferably on mom & dad's bed.  I have inflammatory bowel disease so I get to eat rabbit every single day because it's the only thing that doesn't bother me too much.  Otherwise I'm healthy for an old guy.  I do have a bad habit - if my litter box isn't cleaned every single day I'll pee on the floor right beside it.  Oh yeah, and because of the IBD I tend to have more "hairballs" than most cats.  Hehehe, mom and dad have to keep their bed covered with plastic so that I won't puke all over it.

I'm Arthur - the baby of the bunch.  I'm not quite 1 1/2 yet.  I'm pretty stinkin' cute and everybody knows it.  My favorite thing to do is sit on mom, she's nice and snuggly.  It's great in the winter, we keep each other warm and she covers me with a blanket.  I'm still kind of a puppy but I'm learning.  I jump on people when they come to the house, I like to dig in the yard.  I love to chase a tennis ball and go for walks.  My bad habits?  I LOVE to eat lego tires, yummy yummy things.  I also like to jump up on the kitchen table when nobody is watching. CoCo is my best buddy and we like to play together.

Hi - I'm Tucker.  I am almost 15 years old.  Like my cat brother Sandy I spend most of my time sleeping, usually under the bed or in the office.  I'm definitely Daddy's dog, but I love everybody.  It's my job to bark at every single thing because I can hear things that nobody else can, but that's only when I'm awake.  I still like to take walks but I can't go very far, my knee starts to hurt.  I'm actually kind of obnoxious to walk because I like to pee on everything and bark at everything, but hey, I'm old so I should be allowed to do what I want.  Bad habits?  Yeah, everybody has at least one.  Mine is really gross, but I'm a dog, so who cares.  I like to eat dog poop.  Yep, that's it. Fortunately I don't try to lick people anymore, they probably wouldn't like that.

I'm CoCo, and I'm 6 years old.  I am a very special girl; super needy, and I really hate being separated from mom.  I have epilepsy so I have to get pills 5 times a day which I don't really like but I usually do pretty good taking.  Seizures always make me confused and I feel really bad that I have them even though it's not my fault. Mom and Dad are good about taking care of me through them and afterwards though.  I don't really like pollen or rain water on my feet so I don't really like going outside right now.  That means that I pee in my crate a lot (but nowhere else in the house), but I'm working on it and I am getting better.  I like to play ball and I'm really good on walks.  I get nervous when there's too much noise so sometimes I bark if I don't understand what's going on.  But I don't eat poop, or lego tires, so that's good, right?

I'm Sherman the hermit crab.  I don't have 4 legs but I still live here and insisted that I be included.   Right now I am very happy that it is spring, winter is too cold and I didn't like coming out of my shell.  But now that the weather is warm, I am out all the time.  I do like to be held and I have recently discovered that I like to climb.  It's a pretty good life, and the cage keeps me safe from the other crazy animals in the house.


And finally, "The Fish".  There are so many of us. It's really not quite fair that there is no picture.  We are loved though.  Some of us live in a big tank in the playroom, some in a small one on the mantle, and some in the two tanks in the kids room.  Lots and lots of fish.  We are peaceful and calm and restore the balance to this house full of crazy animals.

More Bluebonnets...

Took a drive out to Mule Shoe Bend State Park in Spicewood, TX yesterday.  The park is about an hour away, on Lake Travis.  We are right at the height of bluebonnet season.  Some of the flowers are already starting to go to seed.  There were reports of huge fields of bluebonnets out at this park.

My plan had been to take a little drive out there last week while the kids were at school and Mike was at work.  I figured I had more interest in the flowers than they did and I had already insisted on flower pictures with the boys last week.  Well, I never made it and Mike thought it would be fun to go too, so that became our plan for the weekend.

We left early - much to the dismay of the boys (oops, we didn't have breakfast, well we would get something on the way... oops, too much fussing and fighting and nonsense, so we'll just go and come back quickly and will just have a late breakfast...)  Anyway, it was really foggy yesterday morning, but I figured at the park the fog would hang out over the water and not the flowers and I really didn't care anyway.  I did want to go and be done early because the forecast called for heavy rains most of the day.   Long story even longer, it was even more beautiful than I imagined.  Bluebonnets as far as you could see.  Prettiest bluebonnets I have ever seen.  As I hoped there was no fog at the park.  We ended up staying for quite awhile, that late breakfast ended up being a quite on-time lunch several hours later.  The forecast was wrong, we got a few light showers, but no heavy rains.

Here are a couple of pictures. I'll load them all up to a site and link to it eventually.  But for now... enjoy these...

April 12, 2015

There is sad news that has been on my mind for the last week, particularly so today.  When Ben was in kindergarten last year his teacher was diagnosed with cancer midway through the school year.  By the time school let out she was doing very well and had finally gotten a clear scan and was finishing treatments in June.  When this school year started in September she was still all clear.  Sadly, by October the cancer had returned.  After an extended leave for treatment, the cancer proved to be very aggressive and Fran ultimately had to retire as the job of a kindergarten teacher was too demanding for her health.

I was supposed to spend some time last week making a video of Fran's former students, just letting her know she was missed and everyone was wishing her well.  We never got to do the project. Fran passed away April 2nd.

She was a lovely woman and will be dearly missed. Fran was not only a teacher to both of the boys, she had also become a friend.  Today is the memorial service.

http://www.beckchapels.com/memsol.cgi?user_id=1554259

Trail Running

It's no secret that I frequent the gym on a regular basis, as many days a week as I can swing it.  Usually I spend my time in the actual gym facility doing all sorts of silly things like lifting lots of very heavy things, or playing on some of the equipment that tests my balance skills (which, for the record, are horrible).  It has it's moments, and I work out with a trio of other lovely ladies so it can be quite fun, and a fairly good way to kill a morning. On occasion I get out and go for a run. Today was such a day.

There is a (mostly) paved path that starts at the Y and ends at a park way out in Round Rock 7 or 8 miles away.  I have biked the whole trail from end to end and back again, run and/or walked large sections of it.  It's very pretty, winding past big fields that are currently full of wildflowers, past several parks, by a little lake, very nice path.  But, it's mostly flat.  And flat running can be just ridiculously tedious and boring, too easy to watch the distance markers every quarter mile seem to get further and further apart.  The real beauty of this path is the miles and miles and miles of trails that break off and wind through the woods all along the path.  So every now and then my little workout group goes out and runs the trails.  Up and down hills, rocky paths, along creek beds, and on and on and on.

The thing about running along the trails is it is very easy to lose track of the distance.  That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it.  Thinking of running any distance on the flats is mentally draining before the run even starts.  The trails, it's fun.  Today we ended up running just over 6 miles in about an hour.  The bad part about the trails is you get on one and by the time you are really tired of it and ready for a break you realize you are just past the halfway point and have no choice but to keep plugging away until it breaks out of the woods and back to the paved path.  Turning back is generally longer and harder then plugging on.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from todays run.

 

Bluebonnets, Snakes, and Pollen

Must be spring time!  All the cars are the same greenish yellow color, you can hear it raining pollen.  Every central Texan is engaging in the requisite bluebonnet photo sessions (us too).

All the critters are again making their presence known.  We have a bunny frequenting our backyard, the boys have named him or her Clover. The dogs found a garter snake enjoying its dinner the other night.

Spring just sort of makes an explosive appearance in all manners here.  It's lovely and colorful and exciting.

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light and winter in the shade." - Charles Dickens