Indoor Stuff 'Cause It's Cold Outdoors

We had a great time with our grandsons, Trevor, and Tyson, while in Chicago recently. The weather was very cold so we had fun doing some things indoors. Here's a picture of the boys in their Halloween costumers. SpongeBob meets Darth Vadar.

Mamie reads books. This was a really cool pop-up book.


Trevor's taking piano lessons and we enjoyed listening to him play his songs. He plays with two hands and seems to really understand the music very well.


We are very proud grandparents.

Screens

Julie and I had a great trip to Chicago. Lots of snow and ice and freezing temperatures gave us the opportunity to dig our winter woolies out of the closet.

Tyson and Trevor are very well-behaved kids. We went to a nice restaurant on Sunday night. After the boys had finished eating, they started getting the way kids do while the adults finish. Well, Jill brings out the Gameboys and they're completely satisfied.

Michael doesn't like people with their faces in screens when they should be interacting. But I agree with Jill who said, "Sometimes screens are good."

Road Runner

Our neighbors told us when we first moved in that there was a family of Roadrunners who made their home on our land. Adam saw one come to our back door on their first visit to our new place shortly after the house was finished. But Julie and I had never seen them ...until a few days ago.

As we were pulling out of the garage and heading down the hill, we saw the Roadrunner in our front flower bed. I stopped the car to just watch this beautiful and somewhat odd bird.  The Roadrunner stopped and looked at us just with just as much curiosity. I didn't have time to take it's picture. After some time, he scurried away and we continued on our way.

It's always good to meet the neighbors.

January Scenes

The grass has died and it's cold in the morning. I caught this cardinal hanging out at the bird feeder on the coldest morning of the year. We've seen some house finches flutter in for food, too.


Our friends from Cedar Hill, Jill (church Jill) and her husband Steve along with Marc and Rebecca, spent the long weekend with me (Dave) here on the hill. Julie had travelled to Ohio to visit her Dad. So I had company which made the holiday almost bearable.
One of the things we built into the house was a set of external speakers on the back porch and balcony. They're really good ones, too. I've never spent much time sitting on the porch listening to music, but the sunset that night was particularly beautiful (as you can see reflected in the window). But when Jill and Steve started to dance, you-know-who just had to put an end to it.


Some of the evenings lately have had spectacular sunsets. I don't know if a volcano has exploded somewhere or forest fires have thrown a lot of soot into the atmosphere, but it sure makes for picturesque sunsets. All this and some gorgeous music from the speakers, too.

The First New Thing I Learned in 2009

New Year's Eve and July 4th are pretty much torture for Katie the Corgi and for anyone else in the same house with her.  Out here people shoot off fireworks and sometimes a gun  or two during the night.  The sounds freak out Katie.

I did some research on the web about this behavior and found that a lot of dogs develop a noise phobia.  Thunder storms, fireworks, motorcycles -- anything loud can set it off.  In fact the number one cause of run-away pets is noise phobia.  They become so frightened by storms they try to escape anywhere they are closed in.  Some dogs will gnaw through screen doors or jump out of windows.

The typical human response is to try to calm them.  Turns out that just makes it worse.  With severe cases like Katie's there's not much you can do except try to get them to the quietest place in the house without windows and medicate them.  So, it looks like Katie will be spending more time in the safe room. With 6 inch solid concrete walls and ceiling it's pretty soundproof.  This problem is not just a nuisance for us, it's actually not healthy for the dog.  Noise phobia is not bad behavior; it's pure unadulterated panic. 

So that was the first new thing I learned in 2009.