Day of the Beagles

So, I get a phone call from my dad around 8:00 am on Sunday morning and he says "I'm not quite sure what to do but we've got problems over here". This usually means that something in their house, like a hot water heater, has broken and they need some help, so I was immediately alarmed until he got to the next sentence, which was "We have two beagle puppies over here". What? Where did they get beagle puppies? Apparently, when my mom let their dog, Jake, outside in the morning, there were two little dogs looking into their fenced yard. She brought them in so that they wouldn't get hit by a car or anything since they live on a corner, but neither one of them had tags on (they had collars though, so she knew they had to be someone's pets). I decided to wake Mark up and I can't remember the last time he got out of bed so fast! He absolutely LOVES beagles and would love to get another dog. They were really cute, but smelly! We ended up spending about 1/2 the day driving the dogs to a vet to see if they were microchipped, posting signs up all over town that we had found dogs, and calling various animal shelters, etc. Mom had already called the police to let them know that she found them. We finally got a phone call around 3:30 pm from the owners of the dogs, so they were able to be returned to their rightful owners! Thank goodness! Mark already had it all planned out that we would take one home and that my mom & dad would keep the other one, so I'm sure he was somewhat disappointed that they really lived just a few houses down the street from my mom & dad. It sure was fun playing with the puppies though -- they were so sweet! :)

My winning photo

This is my photo that won the Lexington Heights Photo Contest. I had taken the picture last July around 5:45 am -- it was on a Monday morning and we were coming home early that day rather than on Sunday night like we usually do.

Anyway, Lexington Heights had a contest this year and I won first place!

I'm just sharing it now because I found the photo on my computer again and I think it's really pretty :)

IKEA

So, since it was a cold & rainy day yesterday, what better time than to trek over to the IKEA store in Canton? The store had opened about 2 years ago, and my mom had never been to an IKEA before, so we decided to head over there to see what they had. All I really needed was a pastry blender - you know, the thing that you use to cut butter and flour or other dry ingredients together?

I was making apple pies last weekend and realized that I don't have one and now I've convinced myself that I need one. Oh yeah, I've also convinced myself that I need an apple peeler/corer/slicer since my friend Jen from work let me borrow hers for the pies and I've realized that even though I'm 42 and just last weekend made apple pies for the first time in my life, I'm sure I would get tons of use out of it.

Anyway, after FIVE hours in IKEA (because mom likes to look at a LOT of stuff), I discovered that they don't carry pastry blenders or apple peeler/corer/slicers.

They do carry lots of other neat stuff, however :). I found a planter to repot my rosemary in, a dog toy for Bella, oven mitts (for only .99 cents each!), and a rug for the basement. And cinnamon rolls for breakfast today. Yum-o!

Election Day

Well, after almost 2 years of hearing all the good and bad things about both candidates, the day is finally here. I have really been on the fence this year about who to vote for and just decided last week how I was going to cast my ballot. Mark and I voted together today, and we knew the lines were going to be long, but I couldn't believe it when we got there at 7:05 and the line was already out the door and down one side of the building. Although I wasn't really thrilled with the choices for president this year, I couldn't help but be excited that we live in a country where we are allowed the freedom to decide our future president. The wait was about 1 hour and 10 minutes, but well worth it! :)

Halloween Dogs

These are photos of our dog, BellaBear, and my mom's dog, Jake, in their Halloween costumes. They are pretty close in age, so they've kind of grown up together. Bella will be 2 on December 23rd, and Jake just turned 2 at the end of September. These are photos that were taken at one of the Halloween dog parties we went to last weekend. Mom & Jake (dressed as a Pumpkin Patch) won third place. Bella just looked beautiful but didn't win anything, probably because she is such a big girl (75 lbs according to the scale at Petsmart!) that she actually had to wear a ladies size 8/10 costume because they don't make dog costumes that large. Mark was a Charlie Brown Ghost and made the costume on his own. I not quite sure what I was, but since bats are my favorite Halloween creatures, I wore a bat cape and bat "antlers". It was a very fun day!

The Gift of Time

Happy Extra Hour Day! I always have a hard time when we have to set the clocks back or forward and it usually takes me a couple of days to get used to the time change, but I have so been looking forward to this weekend because we get one whole extra hour! It seems like the days go by so fast, that one extra hour is a gift. Since I didn't want to waste that gift by sleeping it away, I decided to do something productive with it, so I already used it up (at least part of it anyway) by finally getting my blog set up! My friend, Lynn, is an awesome blogger and has been trying to get me into this for some time, and my sister, Sandi, also has a beautiful blog that I checked out this morning and I was feeling a little inspired.

So, I still have at least 10 other things that I want to squeeze into my free hour. Mark (my husband) knows well enough that I seem to have problems with the concept of time and always thinking that I can accomplish a whole lot more in a given time frame than is realistically possible, but I can still try anyway! :)