Perfect day = Adventure at the beginning and the end of the day!

An adventure a day keeps one not wanting to go back to work... ever...

Today we had some business to take care of so I knew the puppies were going to be homebound, so I took them to play in the woods in the wee dawn hours. I went for a little snow shoe at Vaughn woods. It was beautiful!!

The little hiking trail all winter wonderland like.

Had to show off my snow shoes. I'm from Illinois... I've never seen a pair of snow shoes until I moved out here... and it was still about 2 years after I lived here before I figured out what they were for. No more falling into massive snow piles for me!!

The puppies sniffing around for goodies in the snow. (sorry for the shaky pictures. It was COLD out!!!)

One of my favorite parts about Vaughn Woods in the winter is coming up on the river. The sides are usually ice packed and the park is always quiet in the morning so you can hear the ice pack groaning or smashing into itself. It's pretty cool. Again, being from the midwest, it's new and exciting! :-)

After business was taken care of, Nate took Tyler and our neighbor, Paul Henry, to his work so that they can build something electronic. It was just me and the dogs again and the house was under construction, so I took the pups to Fort Foster. It's an old fort on the coast of Maine that was used to protect Portsmouth. There are some buildings still standing, but now it mostly has trails, beaches, and good places to play hide and seek or just run around. It's dog friendly in the winter so I take the pups there when I can. They get a chance to run around like crazy animals and I get to walk along the beach. It's a win-win for our house! It just happened to be about the same time the sun was setting so I soaked in that gorgeousness. 

I think the puppies enjoyed the setting of the sun as well. I do like how both of the dogs' ears are flapping in the wind. I literally sat down for like 5 minutes waiting for them to stop moving so that I could get a picture.

Our First Winter Wonderland Adventure (this year)

This morning, I woke Nater up super early and made him go play in the snow with me. We went cross-country skiing in the fields across the street from our house. It was super fun. Oakley's ear started bleeding again so she quickly became my little red pup and Scout, in his Scouter way, was always the disappearing act. It was fun to get out and play in the snow again. Maybe we'll go again before it all melts again!!

I wanted to see how much snow we got... Not as much as they predicted, but still enough!!

Nater and the dogs.

I made Nate turn around to smile for the camera.

We found a fun a little path in the middle of the fields that provided a little shield from the winds.

My little best friend pups running down the street.

I'm such an awesome skiier!!!

My Poor Baby Puppy Girl

Last night, a blizzard hit southern NH. I decided to celebrate with the dogs and we hit the field behind our house. It was just starting to snow and it was really nice out. The dogs ran all over the field and were having a ball. I rounded them up and headed back towards the house. Both of the dogs are frequent rollers in yuck so when I saw Oakley and the side of her head was dark colored (I didn't have my headlamp on so I didn't know what color it was), I figured she found some muck and rolled in it. I grabbed some snow and tried to wipe the muck off. She ran off and no big deal.

We got back to the house, and the puppies took off towards the neighbors house. They were playing on the neighbors porch, and my neighbor went outside to say 'hi' or grab them or shoe them off the porch and all of a sudden, she was like, 'Jenny.... GET OVER HERE'. I ran up to their house and she was like, 'what happened to Oakley?' Oakley was covered in blood. I could see that it was coming from her ear and I know that dog's ears BLEED!! But oh dear!!! She was nasty bloody!!

I got the pups home and I went into the garage. I called Nate and asked him to come down to the garage with some medical supplies. He thought that I hurt myself but I told him it was Oakley and she was bleeding all over the floor. He brought some gauze pads and a towel. I ended up just wrapping up Oakley with the towel and putting her in the bathtub. I cleaned her off and got her ear to stop bleeding. I took her out of the tub, she shook her head and there was little splatters of blood ALL OVER THE BATHROOM!!!! Then her ear started gushing again.

I put her back in the tub and grabbed Nate and was like, 'what do I do?' He decided that we should just cordon Oak in the bathtub. Poor thing hates the bath tub and now she was stuck in there with no where to go.

I left her in there for about a half hour. I then packed her up with a towel again, and moved her to her kennel. I figured she could nasty up her bedding and it would be ok b/c I could wash it.

This morning, everything looked great. She ran outside to play in the snow, shook her head once and little blood splatters everywhere again. I was lucky no one saw us on our adventure b/c I'm pretty sure I would've been reported for animal cruelty.

She's resting comfortably now. She might be adventure-less for the next 24 hours until we can get this little ear healed!!

Here's a pic of my poor bloody pup:

Our One Tradition!

Nate & I don't usually follow rules or have many traditions, but there is one tradition that we do have and we make sure it happens rain, snow or shine. Our tradition is to surf Christmas morning! So far we have yet to get skunked (knock on wood) and we have had awesome waves every year. We had nice, clean, thigh to waist sets that we shared with our friend Sean. The air temperature was a chilly 18 degrees, but the 6 ml of neoprene and plenty of urine kept us nice and toasty. I lasted an hour and was pretty proud of that!! My big toes told me that the time was up and I headed in. The boys stayed out a little bit longer.

Here are pics of this year's Christmas tradition:

Winter surfing requires getting ready in the car. Nate has his wetsuit on up to his waist.

The boards lined up ready to go.

Self portrait -- Aren't we cute!! Maybe I shouldn't make Nate look into the sun? :-)

The boys walking up the beach after their last wave.

Sean, Nate & I after our session.

I hope that everyone enjoyed their own special traditions!!

Snow! Snow! Hazardous Snow!

Finally... Snow!!!

However, with me, there's always a story!! I think that since the first snowfall came so late this year that southern New Hampshire completely forgot what you should do when it snows.

Sunday night, we had soccer and they asked Nate to play goalie. They looked at me and said, 'are you cool with this?' and I said, 'well, it's not like our winter can get more ruined. It's never going to snow so what do I care.' <-- always the optimist, I am! My friend Lauren looked at me and said, 'it's going to snow tomorrow!'. I looked at her all funny like, and said, 'It is?'

On the way home from soccer, I looked at the weather report and sure enough, snow in the forecast from Monday to Wednesday.

Monday came along, no snow... until about 5:00pm. And then, it snowed!! It snowed good!!

At about this time, I headed to spin class. I was driving from Dover to Portsmouth. It didn't look bad out, but it didn't look great either. However, as I was getting into Portsmouth, my friend Maria called and said, "New Hampshire drivers suck. There is someone already smashed into the guardrail. Be careful.'. So I hung up, went to slow down, and went to press on the brake a little and low and behold, my car starts the lovely spin. AWESOME!! I was able to keep it somewhat under control, except that at the end, I was heading north when I should have been heading south. But, no one got hurt. So, all's good.

Basically, we have been getting a Noreaster from what I can gather. There is a storm that is sitting a little off shore and it's just spinning and snowing. It's not an awesome one where it's dumping feet of snow, but a nice one in that we have snow on the ground now when we didn't on Sunday.

But there is really no clean-up happening. Last winter, I would love to wake up to the snow plow turning itself around so it could go back down the hill. I would sit there and be like, 'YES! It snowed last night!' Last night, it snowed. I was up at 5:45am and the snow plow still hadn't been by my house on the major road. AND, it had been snowing since before 8:00pm last night. I heard a news report yesterday that said something along the lines that NH was surprised by the storm on Monday that they didn't get a chance to get the trucks out until the storm was already hitting. Then it was too late because the trucks were stuck in traffic because there were so many accidents already. All I can say to that is, DUDE! I knew there was a storm coming... why didn't you?!?!? NH DOT get on the ball and start paying attention to the Doppler or something... maybe even the surf reports. They usually are right on the mark!!

Taking a trip to Irrationalville?

The background story: Monday's are my hardest days. It starts at 5:00am. I walk or run with the dogs from 5:00 - 6:00am. I then get ready for work and am at work by 7:00am. I work from 7:00am to 3:00pm and then head to the pool to coach. I coach from 3:30 to 5:00pm. Then I head to spin class and I spin from 6:00 to 7:00pm. Then I head home always exhausted and always hungry. I try to bring snacks so that I am not the most irritable person on the planet, but I'm not always the best at that.

Last night, after spin class, I headed to Tyler's band concert and we had our first snow storm. The 10 mile drive took 45 minutes and I got to see one song. Then I got home, I was starving, exhausted, stressed from driving in the snow and PMS'ing. Nate got the mail and brought it inside. He grabbed the outside magazine and immediately started reading it.

Jenny: "Nate, what should we do for dinner?"
Nate: "I don't know"... head didn't even come out of the magazine to look up.
3 minutes go by.
Jenny: "Do we have a pizza in the freezer downstairs?"
Nate: "I don't know"... head still doesn't come out of the magazine.
I walk down stairs, no pizza in the freezer.
Jenny: "Nate, is there anything you want for dinner? I'm really hungry".
Nate: "No."... head still in the magazine

I was about to give up. I went and put my PJ's on and seriously considered just going to bed.

Jenny: "Nate, listen... I'm hungry, I'm tired and I'm PMS'ing. Please, help me with dinner."
Nate: "Guess who is the winner tonight?"

I walk away again to get my head back on straight. I walk back in the kitchen and open up the fridgerator.

I pull out some sausages and stuff to make a salad. Nate makes the sausages and I make the salad. And then the funniest comment to date comes out from the Nater...

Jenny: "I seriously was about to just go to bed hungry."
Nate: "Yup, and if you did that, I would've just made dinner for myself and sat next to you in bed eating it."
Jenny: "Thanks bud, that wasn't the answer I was looking for."
Nate: "Well, not everyone wants to take a trip to irrationalville"
Jenny: "Irrationalville?"
Nate: "Yup, and you can quote me on that."

I'm glad that we can laugh about all this stuff.

It's Winter Time

It's winter & southern NH has 0 inches of snow right now. The ground is frozen, my house is cold (still), but we are missing the white stuff.

We did go to the pond yesterday and played around on the ice. This is Scout's first winter and he seems to be loving it! He's always up for an adventure and yesterday, he definitely got one. We got to the pond, Nate & Tyler walked out onto the ice, and Scout followed right behind. He took one step and slid about 2 feet. Oakley stood there, watching to see what Scout was going to do. I threw the tennis ball for Scout and the two were off. We played for a little over an hour and the pups were pooped.

Nate & I are taking next week off of work and I'm a little worried that we are going to be sitting there staring at each other trying to figure out what we can do outside with the ground frozen, but without any snow. There may be some interesting adventures ahead of us! I'll try to actually remember my camera!!