Big, Tough Puppy

You can tell, he has legendary strength and general over-all toughness.

I'm sure anyone who tried to rob this house would flee in terror, wouldn't you agree?

Gavana

Today we said goodbye to Gavana, our (well, my - Kathryn's) sweet kitty that we have enjoyed for 9 years. We'll miss her!

Chivery

Some more photos of the furball...

Tara trained him right off to sit on her lap while she practices

His first bath, which he did not like

Training... he's a really good listener when he wants to be.

Complete exhaustion.

Meet the newest member of the family...

Apparently this was pet-birthday-gift year at our house, because Tara got this little guy for hers (but he only just arrived this past week):

Tara's new puppy, Chivery

(named after John Chivery in Charles Dickens' "Little Dorrit")

See more pictures on Tara's blog - and stay tuned because I'm sure there will be more on here before long. ;-)

Playing Catch-Up... Again!

February already... time just flies a little too quickly these days, or so it seems. I'll try to do a relatively short recap of life from Tara's birthday till now. :-)

We posted a happy birthday post for Tara as always, but we never posted about the fun visit from Grace that accompanied that birthday. :-) We had a great time, ate lots of good food, and generally laughed a little too much.

Out for dinner at the Melting Pot... yummmm!

I think this was the Flaming Turtle Chocolate Fondue.

Even the name makes you drool, doesn't it?

The silliness abounds...

We had a wonderful night at the Do-It-Yourself Messiah again, our yearly tradition. Great music and soloists, and best of all, the best lyrics ever. :-)

Me, Jessica & Laura trying to keep our eyes open on the train ride home. :-)

Mid-January found us trekking out to Indiana for a spontaneous trip to attend an English Country Dance hosted by our Reformation Day acquaintances, the Franks. We had a lovely evening of dancing; learning some new dances, meeting new friends, and socializing with "old" friends. :-) I heard we even made it into the local paper!

With Gretel, Rebecca, Lily and Emily Rose

More recently, we've been staying busy... We went sledding with our friends Christie, Lori & Luke, even though there really wasn't very much snow!

Christie was the first one to get the hang of our new little sled thing. If you have one of these things, and keep falling off - don't tuck your legs up on to it. Stick them out straight! :-)

Rehearsing for Liberty Day... it's coming together pretty well!

Visits from friends...

And the biggest thing going on right now is our bathroom is getting remodeled. It was REALLY in need of it. It will have a whole new layout and new color scheme (which is good considering it doesn't exactly have any color scheme right now :-).

Before pictures...

Gutted!

There hasn't been that much visual progress since that, but I'll post some more photos when there's more to see. I'm sure Mr. Riggenbach will be anxiously awaiting my updates... ;-)

That's about it for now, folks... see you in a couple months! (joke... or maybe not...)

Happy Birthday Tara!

The baby of the family is 18 today!

Look what Mom got for her birthday...

This little sweetie joined us yesterday and is already making herself at home. She has tons of energy and is super friendly, and purrs pretty much 95% of the time. :-)

EDIT: The Nameless One is no longer nameless... she is officially named Katije (it's Dutch for Little Cat). It's pronounced kaht-ya... I know, we have this thing for weird unpronounceable cat names... :-)

Picnics, Cute Kids, Softball, and Other Assorted Topics

I love this picture... two little cuties in our backyard with peaches in their hands
(and totally oblivious to sagging pants)

All right, so I have to bring you all back up to date once again. I guess I should shoot for at least a monthly post... ah, well. I only missed September by a couple days. :-)

Let's see, what went on in September? Well, we went down to Morton for the annual Multi-Church Picnic, which goes by another name now, not currently lodged in my memory. As is usual for these types of events, I took essentially no pictures. I feel ashamed every time. But talking with friends takes precedence, wouldn't you agree?

Here we are with the lovely Riggenbach girls, trying to stay cool and failing utterly.

(Thanks for taking the picture, Mrs. Hirst!)

So some escaped into the church and amused themselves with music!

Next on the calendar was a "camp-out" at Wendy's house, though not very many people camped out. :-) Friday night was dinner and games and a campfire, and on Saturday we all went to the world's largest corn maze and made it through... with our fair share of going around in circles, thanks to certain members of the group who decreed that we should traverse the maze without using our maps (brilliant, I know). I don't have any pictures of that as I didn't want to lug my camera around on a 10+ mile maze in the blazing sun.

Friends!

Oh, look, a cute kid!

Everyone knows that it is a crime to get together and not play volleyball.

The beautiful and photogenic Raeanne, whom I plan on recruiting for a photo shoot in the foreseeable future.

Anna was using Wendy's camera during the games, and I told her to "look professional." :-)

And most recently, the great Annual Softball Game! It was a grand event involving several churches this year, and instead of just one game (how boring is that?!) it was a tournament. We were gracious hosts and let the other 3 churches claim the 1st, 2nd and 3rd places. ;-)

Lots of effort going into that swing!

Notice the spider web?

Little Miss Cami started out the day being very shy but Megan cracked her shell!

I like this father/son moment... I was a split second too late to catch Mr. Geaschel patting Armin on the back before they separated to their positions. Grrr. I still like this though.

My partner in crime! ;-)

The kids had fun on the playground

Jessica keeping score for the other team (they only brought players so they had no score keeper and no fans to cheer them on. Don't feel too sorry for them - they still beat us).

The Wintons gave us a nice concert

I got to hold this cutie the whole evening *happy sigh*

Ok, now in between taking pictures of the game, I got distracted by a certain adorable young gentleman. I think my camera has a magnet installed in it and the other end of the magnet is somewhere inside his head. Anyway, I couldn't decide which pictures to omit because they are all so stinkin' cute. So I compromised on a collage so you get small versions of almost all of them. :-)

Well... that's it for now. So until next time...