A Soft Place To Lay

On the favorite pillow cuddling with our daughter.

They laid there for about 45 minutes.
Chillin in her crate.


Peaceful Sleep.

Our Cami girl is 10 years and 9 months old. We have known she's had some issues with her joints the last few years, but she will have a spell then bounce back. However this winter has been really hard and cold around here with lots of snow to manuver. She is again having greater issues worse than ever before. She doesn't put much weight on her right rear leg anymore, and if you lift her left leg up she falls over unable to support herself with only her right leg. Not only do both hips have arthritis, but now she has thickening in her right knee also. She is now residing in the nice warm house with her favorite body pillow to cushion her joints. We have her on some pain meds, but don't see alot of difference. She stumbles and slips from time to time, but still can get up to a slow trot if motivated properly (this means for food). Anyway we have her crate set up since last time she was in the house alone she ate my dress boots. Her pillow is in there and she happily spends most of her day in there sleeping with her door open so she can come and go freely. We are hoping to keep her comfortable, and hoping we have alot more time with her, only time will tell however. Until then she can rest on her favorite pillow.

This is why I don't tune in

'The Biggest Loser' Has Big Problems, Health Experts Say - Yahoo! News

Bunny Babies

Our newest New Zealand White babies.

They will be ready for easter time.

Our New Does

Our new blue harlequin

Her name is Paloma, the kids will change it She is tha dam of the two previous harlequins we purchased
Her markings aren't great, but her depth of color is wonderful

She has been rebred to Ruffo the sire of our other two harlequins
She will be due around the 20th of March


Our new chocolate doe
She was just born the end of december
We are very excited about her markings
Her father is Leo one of our new bucks
Gotta find her a cute name

Very nice two part frontal

Again we could have better banding

She has wonderful alternating feet

Our new black japanese harlequin

Her name is Aleksa, again sure the kids will change it

We are very excited about her

Her markings are nice

Her bands could be better
She has nice alternating feet

She's a nice 3 part frontal, just wish her alternating ear and face didn't have quite so much brindling

Our New Bucks

Our new chocolate harlequin

His name is Leo for now, but I'm sure the kids will change it.
Face split could be better


Lovely alternating chocolate front leg

Our new black magpie harlequin

Gotta think of a cute name for this one

He has a nice chest split

Bands are ok. He has a nice checker board belly

His feet do not alternate

Basketball 2010 season starts today

Today was the first instructional league basketball game for 2010. Our son played last year and loved it. He knew no one last year since he wasn't in school yet. This year he knows some kids from his class and some that he played baseball with last year. Here he is listening to the coach.
Everyone has to sit out at some point

Each kid gets a colored armband that corresponds with a child on the other team. This is the person they are supposed to guard. However they forget and it turns into sheer chaos, but that's the fun of it at this age.

The thick of the game. I like how most of them are really just standing around.

Our son gets the rebound!

And they do some drills passing and shooting.

His shining moment!

Winter Driving Conditions City Versus Country

This is the road we live on.
On the way to the highway

This is highway 32 out our direction. It is a 4 lane road, but you can't tell it.

This is highway 32 down towards the city.

Amazing what more snow trucks and traffic can do for a road.

Our city living friends didn't understand why we were late for work or why our kids were out of school.

How Much Snow?

Last week we got a storm that set some new snow records for our area. I know could have been worse like out in DC, Boston etc., but bad enough for us. We already had about 3 to 4 inches left on the ground from our last snow storm. This storm dumped about another 8 inches on top. With blowing and drifting spots got ugly. Just how deep was all that snow?

Chest deep for Labradors Opening up the access door to the garage

No dinning on the picnic table tonight

Sorry this is sideways and I can't get it to turn but it's the view out my back door.

There should be three steps here.

Over my boots deep.

When I reached the kennel the snow was so packed I hit my 5 foot 7 inch head on the 6 foot doorway.

Drifts near the rabbit barn were so deeply packed that I could stand on top of them and clean the snow off the top of the 12 foot barn!

Birdies

While at grandma's house for a sleepover this weekend the kids made bird feeders with grandma. They took pinecones, coated them with peanut butter and the bird seed. We hung them with twine on our blackberry bush just outside the back door so the kids could get a good view of the birds enjoying their treats. It didn't take long for the birds to start feasting. The kids got a kick out of watching them. Kudos to grandma!

Valentine's Day

Hubby has been out of town for the last 5 days and I must admit I'm lonely. Today is valentine's day and he won't be back until well after midnight. So I spent the day with the next best thing my kidos. They spent Friday night with their Grandma in georgetown cause I had to work early the next morning. I missed them terribly, but My mom took me out for a nice early valentine's dinner that helped pass the time. I had a good time watching the kids open all their goodies from the family members. Here's some of the action.... M&M's from grandma mixed with valentine's card from school all over the table
Frisch's coupons from Mimi

Grandma gets flowers

Ready to open

Littlest Pet Shop

The loot from grandma and uncle.

Out with the old and in with the new

I talked a few days ago about purging our animal supply so I could travel and focus on the dogs more. I also mentioned wanting to get down to having just dogs and rabbits. well we've done a good job of finding homes for some of our critters, still a couple left to go, but all in all it's much more manageable. Anyway we have big big plans for our rabbitry this spring. We plan on moving to a partial colony type set up instead of all hutches. I think it will be better and more natural for the rabbits. They will have loads of space to romp and it will be easier to feed them hay which is the best food for them. We plan on putting up an enclosure in our current rabbit barn not sure yet if we are going to put in a mesh floor to prevent digging or if we are going to go with dirt. If we go with bare ground the rabbits can dig like in nature, but it will make them harder to catch. We will also have to bury the fencing about 2 feet to prevent digouts. Two feet sounds deep to me when I have to dig it out. We plan on only putting the does in the colony enclosure so we can control the breeding a bit more. Since our daughter may start doing 4H this is important. Our bucks will be housed still in hutches. I'd like to do a buck enclosure, but I fear they will fight and hurt each other, so for now anyway it will be hutches for the boys. So with this expansion into colony raising it allows us to have space for more rabbits. I think the feeding will be easier since most of the rabbits will be in one area. Just some quick hay a few pellets and a bottle of water and they'll be good to go. Now I'm filling each hopper with food and each cage needs a water bottle, much more time consuming. So we are waiting for the weather to break to get a start on the pen, but we have started the colony introductions and all seems to be going well. After the pups left we decided to use the whelping box to house a few rabbits together.

These are our new zealand white does in the whelping box, everyone is playing nicely!

For valentine's day Hubby and I invested in some colored New Zealands to add to our herd. This is our new black doe. I just picked her up today.

Our new red New Zealand doe, again just picked up today.

A couple weeks age we got the kids a couple Japanese harlequins for getting good grades. This is a black harlequin.

This is a chocolate harlequin. We are going to have some more harlequins coming our way next weekend. I just love their colors.