Monday, January 20, 2014

Pergola Time!

I guess we got burned out on working on the house, so we've enjoyed an extended vacation from working on it. And we really haven't been doing anything interesting to blog about, so my blog was sadly neglected. But our friend Eric, who built the side fence with Jeff's help, needs some work this winter and so we're going to turn our attention to the backyard pergola.

Here is the plan we shared in July 2012:

We're going to go buy the wood as soon as we figure out what we need, and Eric and Jeff will start putting it in. We'll post pictures once they do.

And, on another topic related to the backyard, Jeff and I found new homes for our backyard babies. We had actually planned to kill the last two chickens because they had stopped laying, but we found a friend who was happy to have non-laying chickens in her yard to eat insects. We also "returned" Quiana (the rabbit we got in April 2012) to the same friend who raises rabbits. Quiana is going to be used as a breeder. She actually turned out to be the most unfriendly rabbit I've ever met and neither Jeff or I could pick her up without being scratched.

So now that we're not tied to taking care of all these pets, we've been free to do stuff like visit family in California. This will be the year we do some traveling, and then hopefully we'll get a chicken coop built later in the year and we'll get chickens again in 2015. We really like having chickens and I actually miss seeing them wandering around our backyard, but this is for the best for now.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

My Winter Vacation

By Shasta
On my winter vacation I went to go visit my family in California. I had a lot of fun because we stayed with Grandpa who lived only a block from a great big grassy field where my alphas could take me to play. I got to see my cousins and they are much bigger now. They were puppies the last time I visited, but this time they were almost alphas.

I had a lot of fun going to the grassy field to play chuck-it everyday. One day we even went twice. The weather was very hot and I could not run for so long as I do at home in Oregon. But it was nice when we got to go.

My Grandma gave me lots of turkey scraps and my food was real yummy. I wish my alphas would give me more turkey scraps at home.

Uncle James liked it when I came over and chased stray cats out of his backyard. It was my best visit ever to see Uncle James! And Grandpa had a bunch of squirrels who got into his backyard and it was fun to chase them too.

I wish my alphas would spend less time on their funny grey boxes. They got new grey boxes for xmas and now they like them even more. They look at them for hours and hours and I don’t understand why they would rather look at them than play with me. Alphas are silly.

My Daddy went off a bunch of times to play D&D (whatever that is) with his friends. I am sure there must have been some other dogs involved.

One time I met a dog named Molly. She was sort of old and wasn’t too sure about having me around. I also met a cat and I liked her; she did not like me.

The drive was very long. I decided to take a nap because I was bored. I only got to get out of the car a couple of times, but then we got home again. I like it at home too (but I miss my turkey scraps).