A walk in the park

This could almost be a wordless post- I think the pictures pretty much speak for themselves :)

A Beautiful day, with Gorgeous Dogs:

Sky
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Hero
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Mia
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Sirius
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Abby
(but who let Abby watch "New Moon"?)
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The next few pictures are so sweet they make my teeth hurt :)

Will and 10 week old puppy Jack
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Hero greets Jack

Being Artsy

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
One of the things I gave the children to do to keep them busy while I was cooking dinner, was to decorate cupcakes as turkeys.
I think they are almost recognizable as turkeys....
but as time went on, and fingers got messy- well.....

yum, huh?, I think they may be worthy of www.cakewrecks.com .

I would like to share my newest "painting" project with you, but being that it is planned as a Christmas gift, I guess it must stay under wraps for a while longer....

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

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A day of Good-byes

Saturday was a pretty emotional day at our household.
First we drove Rumor down to Glen Allen to meet her prospective new family.
She seemed quite taken with her potential new "parents" and sibling Marley (a very sweet retriever mix). Unfortunately, she and the feline member of the family seemed less sure of one another. Thus Rumor is attending the Ridlon's feline boot-camp this week (you can follow her progress at their blog- Life's little Moments- ) We are confident that they (and their kitty) will convince her that house cats are friends and not food :)
While we are glad that our sweet girl is that much closer to her forever couch (a couch that she will be welcome to lie on, we were told- good thing, because evidently we didn't totally break her of that habit :)
It is always hard to say good-bye...
The other good bye has a less positive end.
Titan, the green American tree frog that Alaina raised from a tadpole for her science class, died Saturday.
I have to admit that when Alaina started the project I did not actually expect him to survive long enough to finish his metamorphosis.
But he did. We got to watch him sprout legs, lose his tail, etc.
Thanks for sharing your short life with us Titan...

What a pair!

Between the rainy weather, and all the viruses going around, it has been over a month since we have met up with any of our friends for a hike.
(We have been working up to it with our park outings, however)
Sunday all the planets aligned, everyone was healthy, and we were able to enjoy Amazing fall weather for a 3 mile hike.
Hero showed Rumor the ropes...

they almost look like conjoined twins - joined at the shoulder :)
They may walk alike and bark alike, but they do NOT think alike !
Rumor gets very excited seeing rabbits, squirrels, cats, (and falling leaves ;)
Hero finds those things; boring, mundane, totally beneath him- literally, (considering how large our Hero is). But he certainly got very excited when we saw horses and deer (which Rumor completely ignored-)
(Sorry, I tried to get a picture of the large herd of deer (8? maybe) we saw crossing the field, but by the time I got my camera out and turned on, they were gone)

After our hike, I decided that between sharing the trail with horses (use your imagination) and the fact that the dogs have had drier/ flakier skin lately ( I blame it on the crazy weather ) a bath/spa was in order (complete with oatmeal shampoo and conditioner).
I did not take a picture in the tub (I had my hands full between shampooing, rinsing and keeping the greyhounds from getting wobbly :)

Here is bathing beauty Rumor after her bath- note the front legs...

Halloween (in review)

Halloween did not go quite as expected this year.

I came down with the flu, so my dear husband, Doug, had to pitch-hit when it came to some of the regular activities:

Such as pumpkin picking...
and carving:

That is how we ended up with this very scary jack-o-lantern , sporting the Redskins' record :)

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I recovered enough to bring the kids (those with fur and those without) to the ASPCA's Halloween celebration. But the cloudy/ drizzly weather caused their turn out to be pretty disappointing.

Rumor being Alaina's shadow.

Rumor did get to meet a few new friends.

We were a little concerned about the amount of interest she showed in the "pocket" sized pups.

But in the end she did very well.

Hero being dignified (as always).

Homemade Lady Finger cookies - lol.

No not an angel and a devil- Genna is Galadriel from Lord of the Rings and Will is a dragon.

- check out the ears.