More on the Replacement Hunting Dog

I guess you know it's time to get a new hunting dog when the old one can no longer defend his food bowl from the chickens. Pathetic!

Mia is now over 4 months old and has really grown. Here are some pictures of her.

Here she is learning tricks from the old man.

Mia got a little too carried away at the campfire we had at the cabin.

Here she is pointing a pigeon in the hay field. She seems to be picking up the hunting thing pretty well.

Here, Elena and Ne'Rye (the neighbor girl) took her for a ride. She also rides on the atv when we trap gophers.

Marcus Graduates to a Big Boy Bed...

And then refuses to sleep in it!

Birthday Boy

Marcus turned three today. He is obsessed currently obsessed with construction equipment. He's the only person I know who loves to drive through road construction. Therefore, we threw him a construction-themed party. The kids donned their necessary PPE...

...and headed for the dirt hill.

Here's a nice photo of the foreperson.

The crew took a short break from their work to pose for a group photo.

We had great weather and found ourselves looking for shade. Here are moms Jill, Stacy, and Karen.

Here is a picture of the girl who has never been dirty (Callie). She loved playing in the dirt with the rest of the kids.

Here is a picture of the kid who always wants to go outside. After about an hour he ditched everyone else to play by himself inside.

Our Family is Growing

No, Karen is not pregnant. We are getting a puppy. She is now 4 weeks old, so we will be picking her up  in a few weeks. The breeders are friends of mine, so we've been visiting her occasionally. She is a German Shorthair. Guinness is approaching senior status, so it was time to bring in fresh legs to chase chukars with. Here are a couple pictures of Elena playing with her. She is solid liver with a white chest patch and a few white toes. She looks a lot like a chocolate lab with a short tail and a white patch.

 

Mancation

I spent Memorial Day weekend by myself at the cabin. I was really hoping it would look something like this:

The weather did not cooperate. Here is the weather forecast for Friday, the day I arrived. I don't think I've ever seen 99% chance of rain before.

With the crappy weather, I decided to install the flooring we salvaged from our house prior to the kitchen remodel. Here is the before picture.

 And after...

It turned out to be a productive weekend. I did make time to poke around in the woods and attempted (unsuccessfully) to catch a fish on the lake.

Catching Up On Random Stuff

We have a bunch of random photos worthy of posting which lack a theme, or maybe I'm just behind on blogging, so here we go.

First, Karen spent a few days vacationing in western Oregon. She says she was working, but she went on scenic hikes/runs every day and I found these pictures on her phone. You be the judge.

While Karen was gone, I was busy earning my Father of the Year Award. One day while I was doing chores, the two kids split up on me. It was quite windy that day, so I had a hard time hearing both of them. I went to check on Marcus at the dirt hill where he spends most of his time outdoors. No Marcus. I checked the spot where we feed the cat and the shop. Still no Marcus. He wasn't riding his bike on the patio either. I returned to the dirt hill and started calling for him. Marcus isn't the kind of kid who will respond when you call for him, so this was a last-ditch effort on my part. I finally heard some moaning/whining and followed the sound.

I finally found him stuck in the (hay) baler.

 

Luckily the child-killing spike was simply stuck in his shoe.

One of our hens has decided to lay eggs in the baler, so he took it upon himself to collect the eggs. I don't think he'll be climbing into the baler anytime soon.

Marcus is absolutely fascinated with construction equipment (and monster trucks). He asks us to read the book Digger Dozer Dumper at least twice a day. I don't know why he asks us to read it since he has the entire thing memorized. Anyway, he had the opportunity to ride in the dump truck with Karen's dad last week. Needless to say, he was one excited kid!

We stayed at the cabin over Mother's Day weekend. I barely stepped out of the truck and found this:

Yes, that is a morel mushroom, and yes, that is the foundation of our cabin in the background. We found five in that spot. Elena and I spent some time hunting them together. She found several of them on her own and really got into the hunt. She did surprisingly well hiking around in the woods with her cast. I had to lift her over some of the taller logs but for the most part she managed to get around on her own. Here she is showing off one of her finds.

Our kids are finally old enough that they can play in the surrounding woods with minimal supervision. Karen took a nice picture of Marcus doing just that.

We've had a tree that blocks our view and driveway that has really been driving us nuts. We decided to cut it down on Saturday morning. Saturday was the last day the county allows large fires until November due to forest fire danger. Bruce and Nancy were instrumental in the process. Many thanks to them. Here is a picture of Bruce falling the tree.

Here is the view afterward. For those of you wondering, yes, Marcus was standing right there the entire time. Okay, maybe not. Anyway, we were able to get all of the limbs burned and the rest of the tree cut up for firewood fairly quickly. (Yes, Dad, this is your cue to come get firewood.)

Here are a couple more random pictures. Elena was taking dance class until she had surgery. She really wanted to attend the spring recital to see her friends dance, so Miss Laura gave us some tickets as well as some nice gifts for Elena. Les happened to stop by as we were getting ready to leave, so I took a picture of them together (Les and Jeanie gave her the dress she was wearing). 

Elena loved the recital and even had a chance to chat with Miss Laura afterward. Elena (surprisingly) had a very positive attitude and never seemed saddened that she missed out.

I took this picture yesterday. The "crippled" girl in a body cast towed her brother around in the wagon seeking treasure for nearly an hour.

You may have noticed the cast has changed colors, and had some blue tape in a previous picture. I had to reinforce it with tape because she has basically destroyed it. There is a big hole in the knee area where she wore through the cast. I wanted to use some Gorilla tape prior to our 3 week Dr. visit but Karen wouldn't let me. When I asked the Dr. about he said we could do anything we wanted to it and he then recommended Gorilla tape.  Good news: the cast comes off on Thursday!!!

Yesterday Karen and I did the Cycling for Independence metric century (61.5) ride. We faced a 15 mph headwind for the first half of the ride. It was brutal. We ended up riding separately due to some confusion at the beginning, but we both got a great workout. This is my second organized ride, and it still amazes me how many people twice my age go flying by me. There are some seriously fit senior cyclists!

Patient Update

Tomorrow marks three weeks since Elena's surgery. We had a checkup with the doctor today and everything looked good. The doctor said she could stand up and bear weight at this point. Elena wasted no time.

She spent about an hour coloring while standing up. Just because she could. She will lose the cast in 17 days, but who is counting?

Tonight I told her it was about time to brush her hair and teeth. I walked in a few minutes later to see this:

 

After visiting the doctor, I was on kid duty as Karen boarded a plane to go do her teaching thing. I took the kids to the zoo. They had a great time, but it left me pretty frazzled. I put Elena in the portable stroller and Marcus had is monkey-leash backpack. I felt like I was pushing my grandmother in a wheelchair while walking Marley. One thing I discovered is that that Boise zoo is not very ADA compliant. All of the indoor animal facilities have 2 sets of doors for climate control. They are really hard to get through with a stroller and Marley. The experience made me realize how much some folks have to struggle to get through normal everyday tasks.

Today I asked the doctor what we should expect in the future. He mentioned two things I didn't want to hear. The first was "The repaired hip now looks much better than the other one. We need to keep an eye on the other one". He followed it up with "We'll keep monitoring this and hope that she and I are still friends when she's a teenager."   We'll keep you posted.

Bonus material:

Since I'm too lazy to make posts for everything we do, here is a bonus picture. Last week I cut out of work early one day to pick a few shrooms. This is what three of us picked in a few hours.