Sunday, December 15, 2019

Sunday Stills


Jake and Cinnamon

Cuffie and Missy

Alfie and Taylor

Cinnamon and Penny

Diamond and Maddie

Remmy, Bruno and Merlin

Duesy and Bruno

Art, Renny, Baner, Remmy and Havana

Sport and Dooley

Art and Cody being wild

Cody saying, "I still want to be wild Art, play with me"

Diamond, Lily, Charlotte and Maisie

Dawn, Maggie and Cinnamon

Gracie and Missy

Traveller

Dolly

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Snow Frenzy

The big news in middle Tennessee yesterday was that it snowed. It didn't last long and melted it even more quickly, but white stuff fell from the sky. Jason and I happened to be at Carter's school when the snow started. We spent a couple of hours, along with another parent, helping his teacher out by prepping gingerbread houses for the  kids in her class to decorate. Well, technically they are graham cracker houses.  We glued graham crackers onto milk cartons and the kids will decorate them tomorrow. Jason outpaced me making graham cracker houses at a 2 to 1 ratio. My work area was very neat and tidy and Jason had glue all over the countertop, the wall and himself, but wow did he crank out the houses.

As Jason and I were finishing up our houses the announcements began rolling out on the intercom. First it was that school was going to be dismissed an hour early. Then it was two hours early. Then it became immediate. The school was in complete chaos over the snowflakes happening outside and all learning ceased immediately as the kids were too wound up. I took an adorable picture of all of the kids in Carter's class crowded around the window watching the snow, but of course I cannot post it on the blog.

Carter is in second grade and is still waiting for his chance to build a snowman. In the years to date we've either not gotten measurable snow or we've barely gotten enough for him to scrape together a snowball before it all melted. He remains optimistic, although less so than he was a couple of years ago, that he will one day build a snowman. Yesterday's snow did not provide that opportunity.  It did, however, get him out of school several hours early and get him a day off of school today. There was not a snowflake to be found anywhere on the ground or the roads today, not even in the shaded areas (it was almost 70 degrees the day before), but it is a proud southern tradition to lose your mind if a single snowflake is spotted in the sky.

Our first snow frenzy of the 2019-2020 season is in the record books.

Jason posing with one of his masterpieces

Cisco

Chance and Rey

Cisco and Faisal

Revy

Thomas posing during our "peak" snow period yesterday

Hemi, Apollo and Levendi

Homer

Baby, Convey and Ricardo

Gus

Walon

Roho and Rocky

Squirrel and Sushi

Moe, King and Trigger

Ripley

Toledo, Wilson and Rubrico

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Sunday Stills


B-Rad and Indy

Happy and Johnny

Lighty and Mick

Quigly

Blu and Taco

George and Silver

Ascot, Sam, Mick and Bear

Lighty and Paramount playing


Fendi and Ralph

Gibson

Ralph and Donneur

Romeo, Gus and Silver

Cocomo and Moses

Flyer

Sebastian, Indy and Bear

Digby

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Blinking Lights and a Code Red

I feel like Jason and I should have some kind of infamy at this point due to all of the trouble we have with Christmas decorations. I recently posted about the continuing saga of the deer family. For any who are wondering I am still strongly considering getting Cousin Eddie his RV. I just don't know that we need any more problems from decor. This is us, and it won't be as simple as take the RV out of the box, plug it in, and watch it light up.

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving we decided it was time to put the lights on the outside of the house and put our tree up. We only put up a couple of strands of icicle lights on the porch roof. We can barely get those up and get them to work properly every year so my dreams of decking all of our rooflines in lights are dead and not to be revived.  I'm sure everyone remembers the god damn cheap ass lights that gave us the finger a few years ago. As always, we tested our strands of lights before putting them up and one of them had a long dark section. Thankfully, because we occasionally learn from past experiences, we had an emergency strand of lights on hand. We must have had bonus christmas decor karma points banked because the emergency strand even worked.

Jason then had a melt down when he couldn't find the Home Depot bag with the clips for the lights. He looked in the car, the truck, the garage, our house, and finally listened to me as I pointed at the Home Depot bag he had strategically placed on the porch. Next, Jason decided it would be smart to spread the lights across the steps of the porch as we finalized light hanging preparations. I did not realize this and turned to go down the steps, and had to make a mid-air emergency maneuver to avoid the lights. I still managed to step on one tiny bulb. Amazingly, we even had some spare bulbs for the lights! Jason put in a replacement bulb, I lifted him up in the tractor bucket, and we put the lights on the porch.

It didn't take long to put the lights up since we only hang a couple of strands. It seemed that victor was finally ours as I lowered the tractor bucket and Jason plugged in the lights. For the first moment it seemed like all was well. Then a small section of the lights, which coincided with the location of the replaced bulb, started blinking. We now have about a foot long section of the lights that blink. I feel this section is complemented nicely by the fact that parts of the head and neck on my deer and Jason's deer do not light up.  At least Carter and Cousin Eddie still shine brightly.

our outdoor Christmas decorations in all of their dysfunctional glory

this picture is for anyone who needs a primer on our dysfunctional Christmas decor

With the outside lights done, it was time to move inside and put up the Christmas tree. Just as with the lights, we've had our share of issues with our tree as well. The most notable issue would be the year one of the cats managed to take down our Christmas tree and break the tree and the stand in half, not to mention the ornaments.  However, the last couple of years have been problem free with the tree so I wasn't expecting issues. I put on some Christmas music to make sure we were appreciated the festive occasion and then we got to work. As Jason and I were making trips up and down the stairs with the tree and boxes of ornaments, Carter started yelling, "Mom, code red! MOOOOOM, we have a code red!!" Since I have never heard Carter use this term before I had no idea what this was about. I rushed down the steps and looked where Carter was pointing and saw that the dog had puked up what appeared to be intact deer entrails on the rug. This led to a derailment as we cleaned up the intact deer entrails off the rug. Once the living room was free of deer parts we carried on with putting up and decorating our tree.

We now have a semi-functioning deer family joined by Cousin Eddie, lights on the porch roof with a blinking section, and a decorated tree in a room clean of puked up deer entrails.  Tis the season.

Missy and Dolly

Sport and Duesy

Alfie and Taylor

Remmy and Renny

Merlin found a stick to play with

life is hard; Maisie, Dawn and Gracie

Charlotte, Maddie, Diamond and Maggie

Dawn, Jake and Gracie

Penny and Cinnamon

Traveller, Missy and Lily; note the mare stares from Miss and Lily

Dawn and Cuffie

Art

Bruno and Remmy

Havana and Sport

Cody

Baner and Remmy

Dooley and Remmy