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!

It's Official

Yep. Abby is now officially The Hippobottomus. See?!?

When it says so on a name tag, you know that it's true! All I can say is that I hope that Abby, the Mutant Alien Pod Puppy (henceforth to be known simply as the Hippobottomus), will stop growing. I mean, she's got to stop growing at some point.

Doesn't she?!? Please tell me that she will stop growing at some point. Please!

At least I'm still The Boss.

Neener, neener.

Although, if the truth be told (and why not, since it is the truth, after all), she's getting a little tougher to take down.

I especially like this picture! I am SO the Queen!

Heehee!

Don't worry. No puppies, or Hippobottomuses (Hippobottomi?) were hurt in the making of this post.

BTW, apparently Hippobottomi can run quickly when need be...

Heehee. (Again)

But lest you think that the Hippobottomus is a poor, defenseless creature who only gets beat on by her older and wiser sister, let me assure you that she can sucker Mom with innocent looks with the best of them. Hey. We both learned from The Master!


That look has earned that girl more treats than I can count!

*kissey face*
-Fiona and Abby the Hippobottomus

Another day...

So today was yet another 5 mile hike, a swim in the pond (for those of the hippobottomus persuasion, a wade for the rest of us), a little misbehaving (it was Abby's fault, I swear!) and some tennis ball chasing. Oh, and some doggies (who weren't us).

We started off on our usual trail...

Curiously, the parking lot for the trail access has this sign:

What are we supposed to do? Levitate from the car to the trail? Have Mom and Dad carry us? Needless to say, Abby piddles as close to the sign as she can....

Moving on...

While it has been nippy at night lately (in the high 30s!), it has been just perfect during the day. So, off we go into the wild blue yonder...

Being the good, well-trained dog that I am, I obey all traffic signs...

We made it to The Park With The Pond, and were happy to discover that there were no evil trolls nice Animal Control officers there, and the pond was all ours!

We usually have two tennis balls in play; one for the Hippobottomus, so she can go do her long-range swims, while I play in the shallows.

But for some reason probably because she suffers from acute Puppy Brainitis that is unknown to me, she didn't go after one of the balls that Dad "threw deep" for her.

If you biggify that picture, you can see how she's totally ignoring the ball that Dad threw her. And so Dad threw a second ball for her. A second ball?!?

So, feeling totally neglected, I thought that if I took the initiative and went down to the grassy field, I'd have my own tennis ball time. Abby decided to come with me. Because I'm her hero. Apparently, Dad was Not So Keen on me deciding that it was time to change venues...

So, we got marched back up to the pond, and I was made to lie down while Abby got in a little more swimming time. Why is it that the older sibling always gets blamed? This was SO Abby's fault. If she hadn't left her tennis ball in the pond, leaving us with just one tennis ball, I wouldn't have been bored and taken off...

So I had to sit while Abby went chasing after the one remaining tennis ball.

Oh, wait. Wrong picture. Here we go. Hey, it's a mistake ANYONE could make... Heehee!

After the "appropriate" amount of time with the hippobottomus doing her thing, we finally went down to the field so I could do my thing.

Although Dad still thought that I needed to "behave". What about Pod Puppy?

I'm telling ya' - the youth of today can get away with anything...

But unlike Abby, I actually share and let her get the ball sometimes...

But at the end of the day, I am Queen of The Land!

Especially since I'm nowhere near as goofy-looking!

Then it was time to head back. On the way back, we met a bunch of other doggies, some of whom Mom actually got pictures of...

This girl actually waited for us...

So, of course, we had to say hi...

Her sister came up and said hi, too.

Abby is a bit, erm, shameless when she meets new doggies, but I'll give you the PG photo...

I'll leave the rest to your imagination... Sheesh. I don't know where the girl learns these things!

So. Yeah. Um. We saw some other doggies, too, but Mom wasn't as quick on the draw with the camera, so no photos. Until we passed this hound, who has a front-row seat for all the traffic on the trail. He barked. We barked. All was good.

And then we went home, where there may or may not have been some bitey-face action...

So, just another day at the office! ;-)

*kissey face*
-Fiona and Abby the Hippobottomus