A New Addition

This weekend we were so lucky to have another member added to our family. Some of you may know that we have been waiting for a while now for the right Bernese Mountain Dog to come our way and we finally got our wish.

He came from a great family in Tacoma who are really busy and just didn't have enough time to spend with him. He is two years old and very well behaved. We have taken about a hundred pictures of him so this will only be a small sample. His name is Honey Bear which we are thinking of changing but haven't come up with anything that seems to fit yet.

He is headed to our vet for a check up tonight and then back on Wednesday morning to be fixed. You can bet there will be conehead pictures on Thursday!

He and Aaron have totally bonded and are virtually inseparable.

One of his coolest features...giant feet!!

Aaron rigged up this bed of egg crate foam, an old comforter and and old sleeping bag for him in the garage to sleep on while we are at work. I was just helping test it. He slept in the bedroom last night and barely moved. I think he was completely tuckered out from two days with an excited Aaron.

New Baby

Sunday afternoon we headed up to the Wellseses to visit with them and their new baby boy Elliot. We brought pizza to distract them while we stole snugglies from the little one.

He is a TOTAL cutie pie. He slept the whole two hours we were there all wrapped up in his tortilla being passed around the room.

Aaron said on the way home..."If you were to get pregnant now it would be a January baby" all I said was Yep, and ignored all the baby related sentences that flooded my brain.

Plants

Although this weekend wasn't ideal planting weather and I had to run inside several times to escape the intermittent torrential downpours, I sucked it up and got some stuff done.

Went to McLendon's Hardware and raided the garden section. I found all kinds of great stuff.

I picked up a bunch of flowers, 6 tomato plants, two bell pepper plants, 6 strawberry plants and a whole bunch of seed packets.

I will plant most of the stuff in window boxes and buckets and old whiskey barrels this summer as we have a lot of work to do before we can set aside a patch of yard for a garden. I am hard at work but super happy to be able to do something with the deck out back to distract from the lawn.

The prettiest part of my afternoon of work. Pansies and Geraniums. I also tore out a few of the plants from the front yard that Aaron and I agreed we didn't like and I have plans for the front flower bed for Wednesday!!

What Climate Change????

For anyone who has thought that all this "global climate change" stuff is just a bunch of BS, we here in the Seattle area have experienced it first hand this last week. We were headed for our lovely spring weather, warm and wet, when the tempurature dropped (think Day After Tommorrow killer deepfreeze or so it felt) and it snowed for four days then we got the crap beat out of us with hail for a couple hours.

The previous three are hard to see but this is what things looked ike int he valley when we got home late Sat night. Up on the hill there was about 4 inches of snow on the ground. Please remember it is the end of MARCH!!! All our poor trees that are in bloom are freezing their flowers off!

The Monday evening hail storm begins.

The pace picks up a little.

Some of the hail stones were really big!!

Hail in the street.

When it was all over it looked like we had just had a snow storm. For all of you in Canda that may be seeing this and thinking "phhtt, this is nothing" please keep in mind we only get 2-3 days of now all year and that in December or January. It is the END OF MARCH!!!!

The Cat Again

Since the rain has decided to stay mainly on our plain these last couple weeks, instead of new yard/spring pictures you get to see the cat. Hope you enjoy, he cracks us up daily!!

An example of Moe getting "scritches". "oooh yeah, that's the spot, right there"

He loves to be petted really vigourously and Aaron's large man hands are the best at it. He will roll around for as long as Aaron will scritch him, purrring and shedding like crazy. He has even gotten to the point where he will jump up in the chair with Aaron for a session in the evenings.

Unlike any other cat I have ever known, he loves to have his belly rubbed. As you can see he'll fling his leg up or roll completely over on his back so you have the best access to it.

He'll even let Aaron hold him up by the leg as long as he is getting the attention he feels he deserves. That is a cat in a "scritch coma".

Signs of Spring

Since it didn't rain this weekend we spent a few hours out in the yard cleaning up the dead stuff from last summer in hopes of figuring out what is there, what is still alive and to get ready for a lovely summer. In the process we found....

This plant flowering with deliciously scented blooms, any ideas what it is??

Some purple flowers under the large evergreen in the front yard, are they irises, and why would you plant them where no one can see them???

And these little shoots that I am hoping will be tulips. Aren't they so cute and tiny. There are several groupls of these scatteres through the flower beds and a couple randomly planted in a corner by the fence. I want to move them all to one spot in the fall.

kitty Cat Highjinks

On a quick trip to kitchen rather late Saturday night I discovered Moe on top of the fridge. He has never been up there before that we know of so I was intrigued what led him up there.

He seemed quite pleased with himself and came over for a cheek rub.

There you are, you little !&*#.

This ledge is pretty narrow so turning around was a little sketchy.

"Now I have to get back down."

"I've still got my eye on you!!"

Turns out there was a stink bug on the side of the fridge that he was determined to get a hold of. Once he got it in his mouth it sprayed him and he took off. I stepped in and killed the ugly thing.