Much Excitement!

Okay, so in my long absence (even if it has only been a couple of days, it feels like I've been gone for ages!) there has been Much Excitement going on. Especially if you consider booming and banging and the moving of ladders around the house "much excitement". Which it is. Kind of. In an annoying sort of way.

There has been much painting and yard work, and organizing of the inside of the house. So much work, in fact, that we got our own dumpster. You're jealous. Admit it!

There has been much pruning and digging and whacking away at things...


In addition to general pruning, and digging out (our back hillside is a landslide waiting to happen!) there was some Major Tree Removal. See these trees at the back of the house? Note: yes, there is snow on the ground, and Abby is a midget. Which means that Mom and Dad weren't really thinking ahead, and failed to get a 'before' photo...

Here's another picture of the top part of the trees:

The point is, there were aspens on the back side of the house. They look all pretty and everything, but they were growing soclose to the house that they were banging against the side of the house and beating up the wood, they were also growing funny because they were close to the house. So... Mom and Dad decided that they had to go.

And Uncle Larry The Crazy Intrepid made them go away.


And mostly managed to not have them land on him or take out the little satellite dish in the process!

Here's the After Picture (despite not having a before picture...)

Mom assures me that the stumps will be removed, too. Which is a good thing, because it seems to me that if the trees are supposed to be gone, they should be ALL gone...

In addition to all of the yard work, Uncle Larry has also been painting. Our house was painted during the last Ice Age, and not since then, so he's had his work cut out for him. Mom and Dad decided that this would be a great time to change the color scheme from a weathered, flaking, urban decay theme muted color scheme to something with a little more "pop".

Here's the final result:


The house is a light tan, the fascia is darker brown and the 'accents' are red. It looks WAY better than it did before.
You might have to biggify this picture to see the red accents. And no, there wasn't an earthquake - the photographer was just a bit off-kilter!

Apparently we are to be getting a new roof (the house has the original roof, and apparently the wood shingles are past their sell-by date, or something..). But since Abby and I were a little miffed when Uncle Larry was crawling around on the roof working on our chimney and painting, Mom and Dad have elected to move into the House With Wheels when the roof is being done. Mom says that this is supposed to happen tomorrow. Wow. In a week or two, it'll be like we have a whole new house!

In other excitement (I told you there was a lot of stuff going on!), Mom and Dad had a car race yesterday, so Abby and I stayed home and played with Jessi (the woman who is teaching Mom to feed us turkey hotdogs) while Mom and Dad got up super early, drove around a parking lot, and came home after a very long day. They were racing together (co-driving), so they didn't get any pictures of each other. Again. But they managed to drive together and are still talking to each other, so it must have gone well! Heehee.

Here are a couple of random pictures Mom managed to get:

But, enough of all of that. This is MY bloggie, and there has been a serious lack of pictures of me in this post. So... Here's one more house picture and then some pictures of me and Abby playing fetch today...


Lookit me! I can fly!!!!


Heehee!

So there you have it; Much Excitement!

*kissey face*
-Fiona and Abby the Hippobottomus

PeeEss: Mom wanted to state that while Abby is most certainly a Hippobottomus, she's not fat. She's just big boned. Heehee! Okay, to be fair; she's all muscle. Like me. I'm just a bit more gazelle-like, while she's a bit more, ah, Hippobottomy! Oh, and while she gets a bunch of treats, so do I. We are equally spoiled!

OMD, OMD, OMD!!!!

OMD!!! I have to say, we are Totally Overwhelmed with the enthusiastic reception we have received at MangoMinster. Honestly, I thought that as a relative newbie, we’d show up, party at the Mango Estate (after the pre-show partying with Moose), make some new friends, pay homage to HRH RH (heehee – I couldn’t resist!), chase a few balls and go home with good memories and lots of new bloggies to follow.

I NEVER expected the huge outpouring of support we received after the loss of Mr. Bufus. Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful pee-mails and comments we received. He is truly missed, and his Reader’s Choice award will be a lasting testament to the fantastic Man-Bear-Dog-Cat-Pig that he was.

(And a Daddy's Boy!)

And TaiChi and I figured that we were both in such tough classes that we’d be lucky to make a decent showing. There are So Many good athletic sporty dogs (not to mention the good sports!), that I didn’t think I’d be able to compete with like of the body-surfing Teal'c and the flying, swimming Samantha. So when Mom read me the results last night (I was too nervous to read them myself!), I was beyond stunned. I was so excited, in fact, that I went zooming around the backyard!


Me? First Place in Sporty Athletic Dogs?!? No. Way!!!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

And I was a little nervous when it came to TaiChi. Because while I know what a Bad Sport she is, she looks so innocent and unpresuming that I was worried that Mom might not have enough pictures to capture her in all of her Bad Sported-ness, and thus not be able to communicate the true depth of TaiChi’s cunning ways. But I guess I should have had more faith; apparently truly Bad Sports like Ike can recognize kindred spirits from miles away! (Although I can't believe that Mom forgot to mention TaiChi's stint in the 'clink' for biting a missionary when Mom made the list of TaiChi's Dirty Deed - but in fairness to Mom, that was before she had met TaiChi...) Rather than racing around the yard (TaiChi’s zoomie days are behind her, I’m afraid) she decided to celebrate by noshing on Dad’s dinner. What else would you expect from a Venerable Bad Sport?


Me? I’m just, uh, observing. Yeah. That’s it. Observing. Because I want to have TaiChi’s Magical Powers that cause Dad’s fork to gravitate right to her mouth when I get old and venerable!

A big thank you to everyone who voted, and to the judges for honoring us with their decisions, and, of course, thanks to the Relentlessly Huge for hosting this entire event! And now I’ve got to help TaiChi decide what to wear for the Best In Show competition, and then she’ll help me figure out what to do with my hair! And pictures! We’ve got to help Mom pick out pictures, and type our statements! We have So Much To Do!!!!

*kissey face*
-Fiona and TaiChi