Thanksgiving family fun, part 1

Yesterday afternoon we arrived at mom and dad's house...yeah the holiday has officially begun! Actually for Josiah and I it started in the morning as we leisurely hung out at Panera Bread (one of my very favorite restaurants) and ate bagels, drank coffee (for me and hot chocolate for Josiah) and played on the internet while J&J, Michael and Jeffrey were at basketball practice. Straight after we hit the road (even Jackson made the travelling squad) and headed for B/CS. Julie and her family were already here and not long after we arrived, my grandfather and his wife (my grandmother-his wife of over 50 years passed away almost 10 years ago), Bernice, arrived in town. They'd driven over 10 hours to be here. My grandfather celebrated his 89th birthday last week, so the fact that he drove them down is truly remarkable, and such a blessing. It's been over a year since we've seen them, so they were truly a sight for sore eyes. He kept commenting on how big J&J have gotten! It's true!!! We've since watched both football videos that the boys brought and Papa (that's what we call my grandfather) bragged on the boys over and over...and he oughta know! He's a retired high school and college football coach. They even named the college football stadium after him last year. So to see his great-grandsons playing football was a real treat for him.

Because sleeping space is at a premium with 13 people already at mom and dads-and because it's fun!-Michael and the three big boys (and even Jackson) set up and slept in a tent last night. Too bad, there wasn't room for mom and Josiah. SOMEBODY had to sleep in a BED where the them wasn't in the 40s. Everyone made it all night and had fun. My dad got hotel rooms for the next two nights, so sleeping with be a little more comfy for everyone tonight!

Today, my mom, sister and cousin, Stephanie (who's living with my parents right now) all started Thanksgiving dinner preparations. Mom, Julie and Steph made dressing, broccoli and rice, Sunshine salad (a jello salad), green bean casserole and a frozen cranberry salad we call "Nonnie's pink salad", because my grandmother, Nonnie, used to make it every Thanksgiving, and it's pink. I made 2 pumpkin pies, a chocolate pie, a coconut pie, a pecan pie and for the first time ever, a cherry pie. Later tonight, my Uncle Steve, his wife and 3 children and Uncle Mike and his wife and other daughter (Stephanie is one of his kiddos) are all coming in. The grand total for lunch tomorrow is slated to be 28. What fun!!!! There's nothing like having a houseful of people at a holiday!

Me and Julie busy at work, but it's really not work...it's totally a pleasure!!!

Jackson and Jeffrey in the tent last night.

Michael and Jeremy (making the hideous face that I didn't see until later) and Jonathan bundled up getting ready for bed.

Jonathan playing play-do with his cousin David AKA "Please take David out of the middle of the kitchen so we don't accidentally step on him"

My dad, Bernice, my brother in law Mike, Papa and Stephanie visiting while mom finishes getting supper ready.

A natural (and cheap) solution to a big mess

Yesterday while we were having fun at Sea World, dinner was a-cookin' in the Crock Pot. I was cooking up one of the free pork tenderloins that we got at Totally Tejas for BBQ sandwiches. In the middle of the morning, I'd put some water and BBQ sauce in the crock pot with the pork, set it on high and forgot about it. After all, isn't that what you're SUPPOSED to do with a crockpot "Fix it and Forget It" . On our way to Sea World, Michael asked (while we were on our way-after it was too late to do anything about it!) if I turned the crock pot down to low since we would probably be gone for 5-6 hours. Nope, I left it on high. He casually asked me if I thought there was enough water in the crock pot so the pork wouldn't burn. I confidently responded, "I don't know; I guess". Well, guess what (you can see this one coming can't you!), there wasn't enough water. When we got home, we smelled a very strong smell of roasted meat. Thankfully, the meat was salvagable, and the boys were hungry! However, after dinner I was left with this....
In fact, this picture was taken AFTER the crock pot had been cleaned as much as I could with an SOS pad and with my Pampered Chef plastic scraper and then soaked overnight with soap. I was one step away from checking sales ads for a new crockpot, but these kind of challenges spur me on. Kinda like untangling a slinky or six different necklace chains that are all twisted. I was ready to face this challenge undaunted.

I went to get my oven cleaner (figuring it would be the only way this baked on catastrophe would be solved) and then remembered we didn't have any. We couldn't take it with us when we moved. So, I googled natural oven cleaners and here's what I came up with. The recipe was enough to cover an entire oven, but I didn't half it. I figured the more the merrier.

Mix 1/4 cup borax, 1/2 cup salt and 1 box (16 oz) of baking soda. Ok, I had all of those. So far so good. You preheat the oven to 250. I put the crock pot in and preheated the oven. While that was happening, I mixed the ingredients and added enough water to make a paste. The website said 1 cup, but I think that was a little too much. Any way, after the crockpot was preheated, I rubbed the paste all over.

The I put it back in the oven (turned off) for 30 minutes. Then I added about 1/2 of vinegar. The website said to add essential oils of thyme and lemon. THAT would have been great; my hands wouldn't be smelling like vinegar now. However, I don't think it made a difference at all in the cleaning ability. A few minutes of scrubbing and voila....

I honestly can't believe it worked this well. Good as new. And next time, I'm greasing the crock pot and adding more water! Now, I'm feeling empowered and I'm off to untangle some necklaces!

Holiday Sea World fun

One of the things we love about living where we are is that we are only about 15 mintues away from Sea World in S.A. Man, what a fun place! We bought season passes this year and have been several times. Starting this weekend, Sea World said they were beginning their holiday season with all their Christmas decorations, holiday shows, Christmas music, etc. The weather was just right (in my opinion-about 50, overcast, no wind) for an afternoon outside enjoying holiday things. This is just my favorite time of the year! Sing with me now...."It's the most wonDERful time of the year..." I do love it! Sea World did not disappoint-well, the 4D Polar Express show was pretty lame, but otherwise it was great. There were almost no lines on the roller coasters. Jeffrey rode the "Steel Eel" 7 times, his personal record. Many of the rides, they let you just stay on and ride again without getting off and back into line. Now THAT'S the way to do an amusement park. Jonathan, Jeremy and Jeffrey got to venture off on their own and met up with Michael, Josiah and I for some different shows. They totally loved that. They're getting so grown up! They took their phone (the subject for another post!) with them and called and checked in every now and then. They were really only alone for about an hour at a time before we would meet up for another show (or once 'cuz I wanted to ride "The Great White" and didn't want to do it alone. They were happy to oblige their mom on this one!) They loved it.
This was at the entrance. They even had "snow" blowing at the entrance. Jeffrey said, "Mom, maybe it's real! I think it's cold enough!" Can you tell where we're from??!! Not anywhere cold if we think 50 feels like it's cold enough to snow!

Josiah, Jeremy and Jonathan watching the sea lion show.

Another one of Josiah's favorites. He's riding this one solo 'cuz neither Michael nor I get into these spinny kind of rides. We're old!

Here's Josiah and Michael at the sea lion exhibit. These are some of the sea lions that they use in the show.

Amazingly, most of the water rollercoasters were opened, though I think there must have been less water in them because people weren't getting as wet.

Michael, Josiah and I rode this one 2 times and the big boys rode it about 6 times. The line for this one in summer is about 45 min to a hour long, so we hardly ever do it. My pant legs got a little wet and I got a lot of water sprayed in my face, but nothing bad. Josiah loved it, this is one of his favorites.

Don't they look like they're having fun! They really were, this pic just didn't capture it.

Here's Jeffrey and me sporting the latest fashion in 3D glasses.

Josiah, Jonathan and Jeremy in 3D glasses waiting for the show to start.

We saw Shamu, which we've not done before. It was really cool. Jeffrey was a little upset because, though we were in the splash zone, Michael led us to the seats that were DRY! Imagine that...Michael didn't want to sit in wet pants in a splash zone when it's 50 degrees outside! I guess you can tell who is 10 and who is...well, not 10!

By this time in the day, my camera battery had died. This picture is with Michael's phone.

We had so much fun! I'm sure this won't be the last time we're there before the end of the year.

It's officially over

Well, after four days of nursing Cheetah, we had to make the hard choice to end her suffering this morning. She seemed to be getting a little stronger, but still couldn't hold her head up and her breathing sounded very raspy and labored and wasn't improving.

The boys all did well caring for her. I'm not sure what God's plan is for this whole situation, but I trust He will produce all He wants out of it.

Honestly, I'm sorta relieved it's all over. I wish it would have ended differently, but am glad to put it behind us.

We loved you, Cheetah!

The weekend of parties

This past weekend we had three end of the season parties. Josiah and Jeffrey each finished their soccer seasons. I guess the way people do soccer parties in Medina County is to just walk over to the picnic tables at the park where soccer is played, bring some pizza and drinks, pass out trophies and leave. 30 minutes tops-DONE! Not a bad deal. Especially following a less than fabulous season of soccer. We've not been terribly impressed with Medina Valley Youth soccer. Not just 'cuz Jeffrey's and Josiah's teams didn't win much. In fact, Josiah says his team was "undefeated in losing", which means they lost every game. In fact, the team didn't score even one goal all year. That's not great, but what's really bad was that Josiah's team hasn't even practiced for the last six weeks. No wonder there was not much luck on the field! Jeffrey's team won 3 games this season. Unfortuately,he only games they won were games where we were out of town. I'm pretending there's not a coincidence there! Jeffrey scored at least one goal in every game that he played. But anyway, it's all over. Josiah thought his trophy was really cool. And let's face it, when you're 7, it's all about the trophy! Jeffrey's team got cool looking medallions with their names on them instead of trophies. I'll give it up to MVYS for not adding more of the same stuff to our trophy collection!

Jonathan and Jeremy's end of the season party for football was on Sunday afternoon. They each received a gorgeous plaque that has their picture, the team picture, individual stats, team record and a personal message from each coach written on the back. It's very special. In addition to that Coach Harris presented each plaque personally and spent several minutes telling each player great things about them. So encouraging! And then it was fun to see J&J goofing off and playing with all the players. It's certainly been a great group of boys they've played football with. We continue to be very impressed with FEAST athletics.

Jeremy being praised by Coach Harris. Doesn't he look proud!

Jonathan (with the shadow stripe) was given many encouraging words by Coach Harris.

Josiah's soccer team.

Josiah showing off his trophy.

Josiah waiting for the ball.

Josiah, Jonathan and Jeremy bundled up watching Jeffrey's game. It was windy and quite cool the morning of the game. Thankfully this week, Jeffrey and Josiah didn't play at the same time. Most weeks they did.

Jeffrey "heads up" and ready to play.

Um, Jeffrey, pay attention to the game! :-)

We're very proud of all our boys and for their hard work and effort to give their best at every game!

And then there were three...

It's very hard to believe, but we lost ANOTHER member of our "farmily"-like my new word!-yesterday. We aren't sure what happened but we came home from running some errands in the morning and the boys noticed that Rhoda wasn't around. We went looking for her, with a sick dread in the pit of our stomachs. All we found was about 6 or 7 different patches of her feathers. We never found her body and she didn't come into the coop last night when the sun went down. We can only assume at this point that she's no longer alive and something has taken her off. The crazy thing is that this all happened in the middle of the day, late morning actually. Jackson had gotten out and was still out when we needed to leave to go get J&J at basketball. Our first thought was that maybe he had gotten her. However, Jackson's M.O. in times past when he's caught something he's been chasing is that he brings it around to the house and leaves it. We figured that if Jackson was the "perp" then we'd find the body somewhere near the house, but we didn't. Honestly, I'd rather it have been Jackson than some UCP (unidentified chicken predator) that feels comfy coming during the day when goats and a barking brown dog are around! Again, where were the goats when all this happened? Honestly, the chickens and goats spend 99% of their day together. I can only assume that whatever it was chased the goats away to go after Rhoda. I can't imagine how stressful this must be to the other chickens. Do they even notice that their cronies are being picked off one by one? It was sad this morning because it was quiet...no Rhoda crowing at 5:30. Dorcas, Sacagawea and Rowen all were still in the nest at 6:45 this morning. They're ususally all milling around by 6 or so. Things are a changin' around here!


Rhoda is on the left (with Rowen on the right). This is an old picture. She was probably close to twice this size. She was bossy, but we still miss her!
Meanwhile, in the garage, Cheetah still hangs on to life. The responsibility of care has been transferred to Jonathan and Jeffrey. They're doing a very good job feeding her and changing the bedding in her box. Her neck seems a little stronger today, but we'll see what the day holds.

Photo tag....I'm it

My friend Kelly tagged me and I thought this was an easy one to do. Certainly easier and faster than when Sonya tagged me!

Here are the rules:
1. choose the 4th picture folder on "my computer".
2. choose the 4th picture.
3. explain the picture.
4. tag 4 people to do the same.


Wow, that's a thrilling picture! You asked for it, Kelly!! These are the pumpkin plants we planted earlier this fall. Unfortunately, this was them at their best! They've since become goat food.

Now, I tag
1. Julie
2. Mom
3. Cheryl
4. Diane

Could we have a little MORE drama, please?

We're still nursing a sick chicken. This may in fact be her last day of life. Jeffrey (and all of us) are still holding up hope for an 11th hour miracle. Cheetah's still holding on, but her neck muscles seem to not be able to hold up her head. We don't think her neck is broken because she's doing too many things that require info. from the brain, down the neck/spinal cord to different parts of the body. She can stretch her neck out, just not lift it up. We've made a splint out of tongue depressors and wrapped her neck in an ace bandage to try and give it support. However, this morning when we went to check on her, she was completely turned around in the box and the bandage and splint were no longer on her neck. How did that happen??? Who knows!

And in the middle of all this chicken centered drama, Jeremy was in the drawer in the laundry room looking for some super glue (we were going to try and super glue her bottom beak back together) and he ran into the garage (where we were feeding Cheetah) and breathlessly exclaimed that there was a MOUSE in the drawer! Yikes! A MOUSE??!! Wait a minute, catching things like that were the sole reason for bringing Trixie and Snowflake into our world. How did that thing get in? And (even grosser) where is it now?? When Michael-and by now ALL the other boys- went to capture it out of the drawer, they didn't find it. What's nastier than finding a mouse in your drawer, NOT finding a mouse in your drawer! Hopefully, Squeaky will travel outside and meet her demise. (I say "her" but I sincerely, very sincerely, hope "she" is NOT a mama!!) Better get busy, girls!
They look like kitties on a mission, don't they! Snowflake is on the left (licking her chops!), Trixie on the right.

You'll never believe this!!

In the most bizzarro turn of events, we found out last evening that Cheetah is not dead...yet! Michael on his way to work yesterday morning took her body to a place in the forest away from our property so we wouldn't attract more predators to our beloved animals. She didn't appear to be alive. On his way home last night he felt compelled to stop by and check on her. Unbelivably, when we checked on her, she was still breathing. In the words of Miracle Max on "The Princess Bride"...."She's only mostly dead. Mostly dead is still a little bit alive. I've seen worse." He came home and got a bottle of water to see if she would try and drink. She DID!! Her beak is split on the bottom, but she can still drink. We gave her more water by dropper when he brought her home. I then pumped her up with some homeopathic remedies, fresh veggie juice and echinacea. We've cleaned up what wounds we could see with homeopathy and neosporin. We've all prayed for her because the Bible says that "They will lay hands on the sick and they will recover"(Mark 16:18)-and it doesn't just say it's sick people, right! We weren't sure if she would survive the night. But this morning, she's still breathing and drinking with the dropper. She's having a hard time holding up her head, so we're not sure if her neck is broken or not. She tries to stand up and will flap her wings and "fluff", but she can't hold up her head. Right now, it's very touch and go...actually more "go" than "touch" and if things don't improve over the next day or so, we may have to change our course. But right now, she's sleeping in a box in the garage, and we're thankful for the chance to help her.
I'm not posting any pics of her right now, it's not pretty! :-)

A loss at "the farm"

It had to happen. But just because it's inevitable doesn't make it easy. I've actually be living in the soothing lull of sameness of days and evenings with all our animals around. That all ended this morning at 4:30 when Michael and I heard a wierd shriek in the direction of the chicken coop. We hopped up and looked outside the window, but couldn't see anything right off. We hunted for flashlights and I went outside and Michael shone his light from inside. Then we saw it... a beady-eyed racoon with a chicken in its mouth! Our lights scared it enough to get out of the coop. It moved with alarming ease up and over the fence of the pen around the coop-with a chicken in its mouth. Michael went out to see who it was, it was Cheetah, our beauty queen who laid pale blue eggs! Her neck was broken, no way to save her. GRRRRRRRRR!! I was so mad at that racoon. I know it's ridiculous, but I was mad! How dare that stinking racoon for stealing one of our precious girls! Where are those big brother goats when you need them??!! Where's Old Yeller when you need him!

Michael and I went back to bed (after closing the inside door of the coop so Mr. Bandit couldn't come back for round two) but it wasn't easy to go back to sleep. Michael got up a few minutes later to go and get the carcass so nothing else around would get the taste for fresh chicken. He's taking it off the property to dispose of it.

This morning after all the boys got up, we had to relay the sad news. It's funny b/c early into the conversation, Jeffrey kept saying "Tell me it isn't Cheetah. Is Cheetah ok?" So Michael just cut to the chase-"No Cheetah is not ok" The boys took it surprisingly well. No requests for taxidermy (that I was sure would come from Jeffrey). They've just spent the last 20 mintues brainstorming ways to trap and kill a racoon, including machine guns, a ring of fire, and my personal favorite, a robotic dog with torpedo eyes and chainsaw paws to patrol the area around the coop. I guess that's the way they deal with it...problem solve death solutions! :-) I think we should just lead the goats into the pen every night. What racoon in its right mind (of course maybe these racoons have "the hydrophobie"-remember that from Old Yeller?!) would try and get into the coop with eight horns shining in the moonlight?

Goodbye Cheetah, we loved you!

Cheetah 2008-2008

MY knights in shining armor

Right on the heels of the great doe resuce, my men got a chance to rescue their dear ole mom this morning when we walked out and realized that we had one super flat tire. I'd noticed that the tire was getting low and even had Michael fill it with air on Thursday night. I can't tell you how totally thankful I am that Mr. Flatso showed up while we were at home AND not in a hurry to get anywhere. We did need to go to J&J's football end of the season party later in the afternoon, but we weren't in a hurry to get there. J&J were thrilled to hop to the job,and in fact were quite disappointed that lunch was ready at the time we found the flat. It sure doesn't happen often that they're bummed to HAVE to eat!

They knew just what to do and set to work. They had to battle through frustration (and a little pride!) to get to the end, but they did it and with very little help from Michael.

Of course, I HAD to take some pictures! :-)

I'm so proud of them! We drove to the party on the "donut" and then I dropped the boys and Michael off and went to the Firestone shop (which was conveniently located right across the street from a CVS...brilliant-and not premeditated!) and got two new tires. Now our trusty van, which just rolled over 90K miles, has shiney new tires! Thanks to my knights for another awesome rescue!

Early morning rescue

Some mornings you wake up not ever expecting what the day holds. This was one of those mornings. Thankfully it was a good unexpected thing, not a bad one. It started out when Josiah tried to put Jackson outside on the lead and Jackson ran off (sound familiar??? Thankfully no skunk at the end of this story). The 3 eldest Js went on a hunt for him. I think they really just wanted an excuse to go out and about in the chilly morning, b/c Jackson never comes when we call him and is never easy to find when he darts off into the woods. Anyway, about 10 minutes later Jeremy comes back into the house breathlessly. He explains that a deer has its foot stuck in a fence and they're wondering if they should try and get it unstuck. I have no idea what this looks like, and therefore am pretty sketchy in my response. Jeremy was concerned that it would try and kick him while he was trying to help it. I told him just to try and calm it down and see if they could get it free. Josiah was begging to go out with them at this point, so I gave them the go ahead. My blogger brain quickly kicked in and a couple of minutes later I grabbed the camera, threw on my shoes and headed out the door. I called out to the boys for someone to come lead me, b/c I didn't have any idea where they were. I'm telling you, my desire for an interesting blog overcame my fear of seeing an intruder of the reptilian variey-well that and the fact that I figured since it's 50 degrees and windy they wouldn't be out and about.

So as Jeffrey came to lead the way, I called out to Jeremy "Is it still stuck?" Jeremy said it was, and at this point I could hear the poor deer making wierd noises. Then I made a very inhumane request: "Let me get a picture of it before you set it free!" I mean, what's one more minute, right. Here's what the poor thing looked like.



This is its leg stuck in the wire.


Jeremy quickly took some pliers and cut the piece of the fence and the deer popped out and ran away. Cheers rang out through the woods. Here are my knights in shining armor!

They told Michael later that they'd had a chance to resuce a "damsel in distress". Gotta start practicing somewhere!

Now what else I found out?... the woods by our house are really pretty. I'm ashamed to say that in the six months we've lived here, I've never been to this part of our property. They were really pretty this morning as the air is cool and the ground is a little bit damp. Lots of trees mixed with some green bushy stuff.

This picture doesn't really do justice to the charming woodsy-ness of it all. I'm not sure why the boys don't come out here more often. I'm not sure why I haven't come out here before. Well, yes I do know why. It's cuz you have to cross over this

to get there. Can you say "Rattlesnake"???!!! I honestly assumed that the land was all like this. There's a life lesson there. Never assume things that look ugly and uninviting on the outside are also that way on the inside!

What a morning! And one sweet doe is really thankful her knights were out in full force!

And away we go!!!

After just two weeks of practices, basketball has started for J&J. And it started just beautifully! Last night the Patriots beat St. Mary's Hall Christian school 48-29. Jeremy scored 8 points, Jonathan scored 4 and had lots of rebounds. The boys felt really good about the game. Jeffrey and I were at soccer practice so we didn't get to see the game. Michael said that he was very proud of the boys. They played very confidently without being intimidated, even in a very new environment and situation. Michael took some video, so tonight will be family movie night to watch the video. I'm sure Thanksgiving will also have a replay of the video (as well as a couple of football videos), so Moore/Turner clan, be prepared!

J&J waiting for the game to start. We were at the Taylor's RV park swimming and playing around right before the game.

They're goofing around.

Coach Alan Day talking to the players before the game.

Jeremy's #15 and Jonathan's (#52) across the table with his hand near his mouth.

Gotta love having friends around!!

It has been so wonderful having the Taylors be able to stay for so long. During the last 8 months of their rv trip (that you can read about here) there haven't been many places that they've stayed at for a whole week. It's been great getting to see such special friends for so many days in a row. Every night when they go back to the RV camp to go to bed, everyone just says "Good night, see you tomorrow!" Awesome! Well, to add to the great fun, Mason had a birthday on Wednesday, and to surprise him, the Hagens (minus Wade-we missed you Wade!) made a last minute decision to hop on a plane on Tuesday and come into town for 24 hours. It was so sweet and special for them to make the effort to do that for such a short time! We crammed a lot of fun into that 24 hours. We had a birthday party for Mason at the RV park, complete with swimming in the heated pool, balloons, birthday cake, Nerf gun wars, capture the flag, and lots of giggling and laughing. Cheryl and Jennifer and I even had a nice time letting Dan watch the kids while we hung out and visited in the RV, like grown ups! :-) It really is like having family around.

Well, after the party at the RV park, we all headed to Incredible Pizza for hours of fun and food. Mason had never been to IP, but I think now he's hooked!


Jonathan, Griffin, Mason, Katie and Madison at Incredible Pizza. Everyone else was still in the gameroom or back to the buffet for more.

After IP, we all headed back to our house to watch The Biggest Loser. Turns out the Taylors enjoy the show as much as we do. What a blast we had with even more people yelling at the TV than normal! :-) The Hagens had never watched it before. The jury is still out to see if they'll ever watch it again, but Jennifer and I are already planning Dagerath/Taylor conference calls on Tuesday nights to simultaneously watch the show!

Then Wednesday morning, Katie went with J&J to BBall at the crack of dawn. We picked the three of them up at 10 and headed over to Hemisfair park downtown. It's just around the corner from Michael's office. The Taylor crew met us there and we played for about 1/2 an hour before having to rush the Hagens off to the airport.

Griffin, Josiah, Mason, Madison, Jeffrey, Ellie, Katie, Jonathan and Jeremy at Hemisfair park in downtown SA.

Cheryl, me, Dan and Jennifer at the park. It's incredibly great to have people you know and love just hanging around to talk to!!

All of us posing for a timed picture at the park. I'm surprised we got everyone looking in the same direction by the time the picture clicked.

After the sad deposit of the Hagens at the airport, I met back up with everyone and we met Michael for lunch, walked down the riverwalk, went to the Alamo and shamelessly lobbied to have the Taylors move to SA! :-) But the evening wasn't done yet....

Dan and Jennifer kept the boys while Michael and I went on a date. Jennifer made salt dough Christmas ornaments with the kids (impressive!) and there was a Wii Lego Batman tournament. Word was it was crazy and FULL of laughing.

Today promises a day of more "hanging out" with friends. We do have some school to do, after all, we've done precious little (or actually NONE) this week. But after that we're going to go hang at the RV park for a while and swim and play. Then J&J have their first BBall game tonight.

Tomorrow, we're going to catch the early (cheap) showing of Madagascar 2 before the Taylors roll out of town I-10 to Houston. :-( We may just follow them! It's going to be sad to say goodbye. We've had such a wonderful time. It's been such a blessing that will certainly be one we mention at Thanksgiving this year!

Our little stinker

PLUS

EQUALS...you can only imagine!!

Last night after getting in from eating with the Taylors who are visiting, Josiah went to put Jackson out on the lead and Jackson got away. I figured he'd be gone for a few minutes and come back. After all, it's dark, it's getting late (about 8 o'clock...not late by everyone's standards I realize!), and we've been gone for a few hours...he SHOULD be glad to see us and be ready to get back. Well, we ended up putting everyone to bed with no Jackson. We could hear him barking at things every now and then, but he'd never come back when we called. Finally about 9:15 Michael and I were getting things ready to shut the house down for the evening and we heard the jingle of Jackson's collar. I went to the back door by our bedroom to let him in. I looked out on the porch and saw him kinda slinking to the door. I thought he was remorseful and sorry that he'd run off and not come when he was called. You know, that guilty dog look. I was opening the door and Jackson was just stepping in and Michael called "Is he clean? Make sure he's clean!" and then it hit me. The stinch to end all stinches...skunk stink. He'd been sprayed somewhere out on his escapade. I'm figuring it was right before he came home. His fur was still wet on the top of his back, from what I assume was skunk musk. I asked Michael if I should get tomato juice (like the old wives' tale suggests) to bathe him. Michael had no clue about that one. I went and got the dog soap and checked the pantry. I only had Muir Glen organic tomato sauce. I sincerely did NOT want to use the world's best tasting tomatoes to bathe my crazy dog after a skunk bath. Would Rotel work? I wasn't sure. We bathed him once in dog soap with a little vingear. It made little difference. So, off to Google we went. I found out that tomato juice doesn't work, it just makes you smell the tomatoes more. It's called "olfactory fatigue". Well, at this point, my olfactory sure was fatigued!! I was so sick of skunk smell! And let me tell you, the smell of a dead skunk on the side of the road is perfume compared to a straight shot on a dog!! I also found out the skunk musk is an oil, so I guess when we added the vinegar, we made sort of a skunk vinegrette! Well, we found a recipe using hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish soap. I was so glad we'd stocked up on h.p., but had no idea we had 7 partially opened bottle of it! How does that happen???!! Jackson got another bath of the mixture and then got sprayed with a natural febreeze-type thing, and got to spend the night outside!! This morning, he still smelled skunk-ish so Jeffrey and Josiah and I went to the store and got 5 more bottle of h.p. and bathed Jackson 2 more times with the mixture. I then brushed him with essential oils to try and help combat the stink. I think it's mostly gone, but I think I still smell a faint mixture of hyssop (essential oil) and skunk, so he'll probably get to spend the day outside today. We're breaking out the febreeze and yankee candles in the house as well.

Here's hoping Jackson learned his lesson...stick to the goats and the kittens!