about the dogs...

February, in addition to being one of the snowiest and coldest in my recent memory – how can the shortest month of the year seem so LONG??? – was also “sick dog month”.  First it was Sadie’s front paw.  Earlier in the month, one of her doggie “fingers” was red and swollen.  I tried soaking it in Epsom salts for a few days with not much success.  How do you keep a dog paw immersed in a cup of Epsom salts for longer than a minute?  Well, it is a good thing she is small or it would have been impossible.  I finally took her to All Creatures animal hospital where Sarah works and she came home with a week’s worth of antibiotics and now her paw is good as new.  Having Sarah work at a vet is a good/bad thing.  The good part is that I can drop the dog off in the morning and Sarah keeps her there and brings her home when she gets off work.  The bad part is that her vet charges more than our long-time, regular vet.  Sometimes a lot more.  But, since the dogs seemed to need a vet on A-days, it was all I could do.  Last week,  it was Trissy with diarrhea!  Ewww.  It started on Monday and by Tuesday night, when she started using the sports room as her toilet, it was time to get her to see a vet on Wednesday.  She came home with special dog food for three days and some probiotics to sprinkle on her food.  By the next morning, she seemed to be better.  I actually wonder if she was not already getting over it by Wednesday because one feeding of this “magic” food with probiotic seasoning seems too good to be true.  Whatever the case, we have had to play the dog-feeding shuffle for the rest of the week to keep food-yoinking Sadie from Trissy’s deliciously moist canned prescription food.  Add Sarah’s dog, Bones, into the fray this weekend and you would laugh to see how Steve and I have maneuvered all the canines at feeding time. 

Aside from the dog food shuffle, it was a pretty quiet week here.  I watched “Austinland” with Sarah (it was amusing) and “Bottle Shock” with Steve (it was better than either of us expected.  Steve’s co-worker loaned the DVD to us months ago and we figured it was time to watch it).  I finished reading The Hunger Games and I will start Catching Fire tonight.  Steve and I made a quick trip to the St. Louis temple Friday night.  Emily joined us.  I think that is it…..

another photo from the past

My sister and I went to La Habra High School whose mascot was the highlander.  These are fairly authentic kilts.  Those are horse hair sporens we are wearing in front.  And the kilts and capes in the Stuart tartan - 100% wool. 

Before our time, the school had a bagpipe band.  Sadly, interest had waned by the mid-70's and there was only one student who could play the pipes. 

This photo was taken in our back yard on our house on Ryan street in La Habra.

Lots of Frozen

It has been COLD and WINTERY and FROZEN.  My last post was on Tuesday of the week that school was cancelled every day all week! 

 

 Monday was icy, Tuesday and Wednesday was snowy, Thursday and Friday was bitterly cold on top of snow that still hadn’t been cleared from most residential and rural roads.  I LOVED it!  I am now caught up on Downton Abby, I have been working on lots of neglected sewing projects, and I practiced enough that I felt ready for last night’s CCO concert. 

While the outlying roads were snow packed, the main roads were cleared pretty quickly and we went to St. Louis last Saturday, the 8^th, to attend the temple and to take Noah to look for bald eagles along the Mississippi River. 

 

   There is a particular place on the river called Chain of Rocks that is literally a line of rocks (called a shoal) across the whole river 

 

 The shoal made navigating this portion of the river very tricky until the Corps of Engineers built a bypass canal about 30 years ago. And, it churns up the water so the fish-eating birds (bald eagles, gulls, etc.) love to feed there.  There is an old bridge that is now part of a pedestrian/bike trail that we walked out on to get a better look.  

 

 We saw lots of gulls and chunks of ice floating in the river and we got kind of FROZEN and we only saw three bald eagles flying in the air.  None perched and none up close.  Noah saw the first.

 

  Another interesting site in the middle of the river are these water intakes that were built in the late 19^th century to help boost the St. Louis water supply. They were used in conjunction with the tall towers - called standpipes - that still exist in St. Louis.  Below is the link to a brief explanation about them.

 http://www.builtstlouis.net/watertowers/watertowers1.html

 They are not used any longer but there they still sit in the middle of the river.  Access to them was only by water and then by climbing up some very tiny metal rings imbedded in the wall.  Scary.

Steve and I celebrated our 39^th wedding anniversary on the 31^st of January.  These are the flowers he gave me.  

 

I was all set to blog last Sunday afternoon and I came home to a darkened computer screen!  What the heck?  At first, I thought it might be the monitor or the cable but it was ultimately diagnosed as the computer couldn’t boot up.  Oh my goodness, were our computer issues never going to end???  Sigh.  But, when I took it to Personalized Computers on Monday, the computer was fine!  What happened is that Steve installed a new external hard drive a couple weeks back and when I pushed “restart” on the computer last Sunday morning, the computer tried to go to the external hard drive and got lost, or FROZEN, so to speak.  The folks at the computer shop clicked a button so it will not be confused again when we turn off/on the computer from now on.  Whew!  Crisis averted.  

Yesterday was a day for concerts.  As already mentioned, Civic Orchestra had their all-French composer concert last night.  And, in the afternoon, RTO performed at Parkside Manor Nursing Home.  Both went really well.  Poor Steve was the brass section as the trumpet had to work, the trombone was serving in the St. Louis temple, and the tuba was at a funeral.  He held his own very nicely.  It is so great to see him playing the euphonium again. 

 

Steve and I watched “Eight Men Out” Friday night – it is a 1988 film about  the White Sox where eight players threw the World Series (remember Shoeless Joe Jackson?).  Oh, and I finally saw FROZEN with Sarah a week and a half ago.  LOVED IT!  Can’t wait to get it on DVD.  

No school tomorrow - thank you Lincoln and Washington for having birthdays in February!  Freezing rain is possible over night.  Sigh - more FROZEN days, I'm afraid but February is half over and then it will be March and spring is here. 

long ago photo to share

Kirsti asked me to find this photo taken from when Emily graduated from BYU in August, 2001.  Beckie had to work but everyone else is represented.  Check out the Steves!  And, Kirsti was not having a good day, as you can see.  Still pretty cute, though, isn't she in her pouting.

mid-winter news

It is snowing like crazy right now.  Columbia Public Schools did the right thing by cancelling school today even before the first flake fell.  University of Missouri is also closed.  Poor dogs just don't know what to think of having both of us home ALL DAY!
I had a snow day yesterday, too.  Mid-Missouri was still feeling the affects of the freezing rain/drizzle that happened Friday evening.  It was an A-day and I had to stay later than usual for a club meeting so I ventured out not only in the freezing drizzle but in going-home traffic, Those two factors stretched a twenty-minute drive from Rock Bridge high school into an hour-long commute!  I came home to a beautiful bouquet of roses from Steve.  We celebrated 39 years of marriage that night with a home-cooked steak dinner and strawberry pie and by watching "Groundhog Day".  That winter storm cancelled an RTO performance Saturday afternoon and Sarah's moving plans and a date with Sarah to finally see "Frozen".  It also cancelled almost all Sunday church meetings from Columbia northward.  While the main roads were fine, the neighborhood streets and rural roads were still treacherous.  The YSA branch DID meet so Steve and I took the truck and picked up Sarah.  We braved the long, curvy, ice and snow-covered driveway, we avoided hitting her car that was stranded in the yard, and we attended church with the young single adults.    By Sunday evening, most of the residential streets were salted and drivable but the rural roads were still bad enough to call off classes Monday. 
And, we have a snow day tomorrow.  Wow, all this free time!  What an amazing gift. I finished disc 2 of season 3 of Downton Abby yesterday.  The final disc is supposed to arrive tomorrow.  Eeeee, can't wait. Last Wednesday, Steve and I went to see the "Saratov Approach"  - can't believe a Utah movie made it all the way out to Missouri.  We were the only two people in the theater which was too bad. It is a very well made film. 
I have a new calling.  I was released as a counselor in the stake Relief Society presidency and sustained as the stake single adult adviser.  I will work in a committee comprised of Cindy, the stake RS president, Mark Burris, the high counselor over single adults, and Steve, the stake presidency member responsible for that group.  I means I will still travel around the stake - with Steve usually.  I am also a substitute seminary teacher and I taught three days last week. 
Time to close and practice the cello - we have a CCO concert coming up soon and the Berloiz is hard!