Walking the dogs

Steve and I walk every morning at 6:15.  Trissy always comes – it is her FAVORITE THING!  Max is downstairs asleep with Beckie and, even if he were upstairs, he is totally NOT interested.  Now Sadie is a curiosity – she acts REALLY interested as we load her into her little harness and as we go out the front door and as we head down the driveway.  But, as soon as we hit the asphalt, she plants her little bottom down and will not budge……an inch.  

 So, I end up carrying her in my jacket if it is chilly or in a doggie front-pack belonging to Beckie/Max if it is warm.  And, that is how she “walks” for 75% of the time.  The ONLY time she is willing to walk is if she is heading towards home.  When I let her out of her papoose pack at the top of Lance after our second time up that road, then you should see her walk.  She strikes out and leads the way, often glancing over to see where Trissy is and if she is about to overtake her.  

 

 

 Trissy, on the other hand, is completely oblivious to Sadie, and is just happy to be out “working the road”.   First she heads to the right side of the street 

 

and then she sweeps over to the left 

and then back to the right, peeing wherever she can. 

Oh, Sadie!

 

Oh, Trissy! -  who spent part of last night panting on our bed during an un-forcasted thunderstorm.  Thanks to her, Steve and I had a hard time staying awake during the Macon branch conference this morning.

Speaking of dogs, have you seen Steven and Tamara's new dog, Bacon?  He came over on Friday for a "play date" and had a grand old time out in the back yard - especially with Trissy's rawhide chew bone.  I guess we wore him out because all he wanted to do Friday night when he got back home was to sleep.  

Other news - this past week has been very CMU/music intensive.  I drove up there four times to either teach, rehearse, or perform (the concert was this afternoon).  I went to Jefferson City twice this week - on Wednesday for a rehearsal (for CMU concert) and on Thursday for a RS Presidency meeting.  I also had my own studio recital last night.  With much of the driving, I have been listening to a book on CD - Tom Sawyer.  I never read the book and I am enjoying it but also kind discovering that Tom is rather annoying.  And, did Mark Twain ever have kids?  I thought they lost front teeth when they were six or seven. How old is Tom supposed to be, anyway? Hmmmm

April fun

As promised, here are the finger puppets I made for Lucy’s birthday as modeled by Steven. 

 

 

 We celebrated Sarah’s 25^th birthday yesterday 

 

Beckie made an amazing Greek food feast for Sarah’s  birthday dinner.  Emily and Joe and Noah and Lucy were here because they (except Lucy) traveled to see the Kansas City temple.  Noah particularly liked the celestial room (“or the room with the couches” as he called it) because the light entering through the beautiful windows created rainbows. 

Here is a great photo of Steve keeping the dogs quiet outside on the deck so the grand kids could sleep.  

 

That's about it for this past week.  Lots of end-of-semester stuff for CMU last week and coming up this week.  We did attend Mariah Crouch's temple wedding Saturday morning.  We stayed over at Emily's house Friday night and they stayed at our house. Noah asked "where are grandma and grandpa?" and when he was told we were at his house in St. Louis, it wigged him out!

Well, it is catch-up time again. My last blog showed our big peach tree full of blossoms. Well, it is now full of little green peaches! We have a total of three peach trees – kind of like the three bears – and even the “mama peach” and the “baby peach” trees have fruit. One of our two young apple trees is already bearing and the plum and pie cherry trees are loaded. Don’t know what happened to the pear and the two sweet cherry trees, though. They had lots of blossoms but no fruit. Sigh. Steve and I planted six raspberry plants last week. I made a raised bed in the back yard by the garage for three blueberry plants and the blackberry plants in front and along the backyard fence are doing GREAT! See all those white spots?

They are blossoms.

Since I last blogged there has been General Conference weekend, a wedding where a famous person was present, Easter with the Cantata and a visit from Emily and family, Lucy’s birthday, a visit to the open house of the Kansas City Temple, and a few movies watched……

General Conference – was great. With our large computer monitor and really good speakers (borrowed from Sarah), watching at home was excellent. I had to miss the Saturday afternoon session because some good friends hired Prairie Strings to play for their daughter. I have taught their son cello for 7 years and they are the ones who created the Magic tree. They are also related to Kevin Tighe who is most recently known as Locke’s evil father in the LOST television series. He attended the event and even read a poem – which he did very nicely. He seems really old. We traveled to Montgomery City with Steven and Tamara to watch the Sunday morning session with Sheila and Carroll Wiles (they now live there where Carroll works for the county health department). Here they are in front of their new home.

Then it was the week before Easter and three nights connected with the Cantata – two rehearsals and the performance…..which went nicely……glad it is over. Emily and Joe and Noah and Lucy drove to Columbia for Easter afternoon/evening and dinner. It was so great of them to come. I made Lucy’s Easter dress but I only have a photo of Max modeling it.

You will have to check Emily’s blog for official photos.

Last Thursday Lucy turned one and I spent my sewing time making her some finger puppets. Doh! Forgot to take a photo of them! Emily, would you? Thanks. Better yet, leave them home and visible and I will take a picture of them. We went to St. Louis last Friday evening to attend the temple and then stayed overnight and helped celebrate Lucy’s birth Saturday morning. Emily threw a little party.

Beckie came and so did Julina who had a second reason to travel to Missouri – she wanted to go to the Kansas City temple open house so she and Steve and I left after the party and drove across the state to take a tour. What a beautiful building!

And, it was so great to have lots of visit time with Julina during the car ride there and back and at the BBQ restaurant where we ate before going back to Columbia. She left for Indiana Sunday morning after we all attended the Mexico (MO) Ward meetings.

I recently watched “Buck” – a documentary about the man that the “Horse Whisperer” was based upon. It was very interesting. Keeping with the horse theme, I also watched “War Horse” that I also enjoyed. Finally, I just watched “Contagion” and boy, it painted a pretty realistic scenario, I thought, of how a pandemic could happen. Get your food storage, people! And wash your hands!