Here comes the Scout

On Friday May 14, I went with my neighbor and picked up the new pup!! After much discussion, we decided that his name will be Scout! He's a sweet little puppy. He's pretty mellow in that he isn't scared of the world but yet cautious.
It's been a week now and it's definitely been tough, but very fun too! Oakley & Scout get along super well. Oakley is a bit of a spoiled little girl, but Scout doesn't seem not to mind too much. The other night, the two of them were playing underneath the bed. Oakley would crawl under the bed and peak her head out. Then Scout would come over and nip at her feet. She would try to nip at him and he would jump away. It was super cute to watch!! They did that for a good half hour. Scout isn't too big on retreiving yet, but loves to run after Oakley. So, I'll throw a toy in the yard, Oakley will go to retreive it, and Scout will run after her. Then Oakley will try and get Scout to play tug with her. Most of the time, he complies!

There have been some trying moments here too. Now with Scout in the house, I've realized that I let Oakley get away with a lot. She is starting to teach Scout some of her bad habits and when they both start jumping on me and going nuts, it can be a bit overwhelming. I signed them both up for obedience classes. Hopefully, we can make some progress. I realize that they are both puppies still and will be nuts, but when they both don't listen... not so good!!

This will be a fun long adventure... learning how to deal with two crazy pups and taking them on cool adventures!!

Attack of the mosquitos

On Thursday May 13, we had the worst kind of mis-adventure since the inception of this fun... Nate actually got hurt! We went mountain biking at one of Nate's favorite places to ride: Mt Agamaticus. On the south side of the mountain, there are some fun trails to ride along. Part of it is extremely technical while the other half is pretty easy and not very technical at all. The picture to the right is a lovely little map from the adventure. We went riding after work so we were very conscientious of the light and made sure that we kept booking so that we didn't have to ride in the dark. We cruised along the easy part and at the end of the easy part is a dam that you can cross over to get to the other side of the pond and the more challenging trails. There was an section of the dam that was much taller than the other section so we worked together to get the people, bikes and dog to the lower part. Nate handed the bikes down to me, and then he made his way to the lower part of the dam. Then he grabbed Oakley and was going to help her to the lower part. All of a sudden, he yelps, hands Oakley to me, and then grabs the support. I was like, 'what happened?' and he says, 'my back'... Just a few swear words came to mind as he said that!! So, I very systematically got each bike to the other side of the dam. I then went back to get Nate and helped him walk to the other side. Then we had a little over 2 miles to walk back to the car with the bikes and the dog. Nate tried to ride his bike on the downhills but for the most part it was a slow and gentle (as gentle as a trail can be) walk back to the car.

oh, and to top it off, we biked around a pond... and since it's been pretty dry around here lately, the mosquitoes are out in full force... So, we walked back to the car, with the bikes, squatting mosquitoes and trying to beat the dark! We didn't get back to the car until 9pm. We just got to the ice cream store before they closed... that was dinner for the night!! And poor Oakley had blotches ALL over her belly from the mosquitoes!!! But we are all in one piece. Nate is doing better each day. On to the next one...

The Garden Experiment May 11, 2010

Because this garden has become a new mis-adventure already... I figured, I would share. About a month ago, I bought wood to make two raised beds for a veggie garden. I built the beds and they sat in the garage for a few weeks... Finally moved the boxes to the yard, then they sat there for a few more days before I put dirt in them. I finally have one box filled with dirt and the other box is half full of dirt. The super nice spring weather tricked me into buying 4 grape tomato plants, 4 roma tomato plants and 4 pepper plants. I was doing a great job paying attention to the weather to make sure that there were no frost scares. So far, so good... I left the plants in their pots in order to make sure that I could bring them inside, just in case... I knew that it was going to be cold this past Sunday and Monday... I saw that Sunday night was going to be cold so I decided to move the plants inside. No frost Sunday night... Monday comes along... Oakley gets sick all over the basement floor during the day so I came home to an awesome smell and a fantastic mess! Then I cleaned it up as much as I could without carpet cleaner, put the plants outside in order for them to get some sun and made my way to Oakley's PT session. I pulled up to an ATM machine to get money out to pay for Oak's session, and wa la, no ATM card. Fan-freaking-tastic! So, in my car, I'm thinking things happen in threes, what's going to happen next... Oakley has her PT session, I buy carpet cleaner on the way, I get home, and the plants had fallen off the ledge next to the drive way so I set them back up on the ledge. I didn't even think about the weather... I ate dinner, cleaned the carpet, took Oakley for a walk and went to bed. Woke up this morning, took Oakley to go to the bathroom, I looked around and was like, 'oh no, is that frost?' Looked over at my plants hanging out on the ledge and was like, 'oh no!!!!'
Tomato Plant @ 9:30am...










Tomato & Pepper plants at 12:30pm...

12 plants at $4.25 each... a night at 31 degrees... Frost... Priceless...


The garden will continue and I've learned my lesson! Full moon in May happens on May 27... The night Sex in the City 2 opens up... I'll be planting my tomatoes & peppers on May 28... :D









Let the adventure continue!