Spreading the Love

This was Livie's first day back in school after her spring break last week. She was SOOOO anxious to have her classmates meet Tater! So, I brought him over about 20 min before the end of school, when I knew they'd be on the playground and spread the Tater love around a little. The kids tried picking crabapples off the tree for him. He loved that! He explored and found lots of fun things like sticks and mud and leaves and dirt. The kids loved showing him new areas to search.

They all seemed to fall in love with him on sight, even including him in their final, end-of-the-day, goodbye song. And, to make it even better - they barked it! Boy, did he feel special after that!! He is becoming Mr. Popular everywhere he goes. And Livie was so proud to show him off. :-)

Madie's Party!

FINALLY, it felt like Madie's birthday! After going all week without a single decoration, it was fun to finally have something up to remind us to celebrate! Madie got a new apron and was ready to greet her guests when they arrived. It was all about the cupcakes yesterday! Even Livie joined in on the fun! She got her apron on, ready to work on her mad baking skills. :-) We only had 4 friends show up, but that was the perfect amount. We took the computer table out of our room and used it as a work station. Each girl had their own space to work. We made pink lemonade cupcake batter, then I made up (before they got there) some yellow, white, and chocolate cake mix. We had a menu of 6 different kinds of cupcakes - two were chocolate based, two were yellow, one white, and then the one pink lemonade. Then each got their own tin of 6 cupcakes and picked out whatever kind of wrapper they wanted. We had a few different options of those too. Then they scooped up the batter and filled their trays and we popped them in the oven.

While they were baking, the girls sat down for chocolate milk and mini-cupcake balls that were covered in cinnamon and sugar. They were delicious!

After the snacking was done and the cupcakes continued to cook, then cool, Madie opened her presents. She got lots of fun things! She got lots of great stuff to play with outside. Tater joined the kids outside after the party was over and played with all of it!

She opened her present from Nana and Papa T and my besties Michelle and Ricardo. Even more cute things were in there!

After a bit of playing, we all got together again and started decorating. Every girl made the same kind, but this was Madie's finished tray. Starting at the top and moving right, we have Key Lime, Celebration Cut-out, S'mores (which was amazing!), bottom row is birthday, pink lemonade, and princess. Loved the little straw in the pink lemonade one. :-) They were all so cute!

The kids all went outside and played with some of her new toys and Tater. They all LOVED the puppy and he loved them back!

What a great group of girlfriends!

While they played outside with Pete supervising, I came inside and boxed up their cupcakes. Instead of doing a take-home bag of candy, we just let them take home their cupcakes. We tied them up with ribbon, added a little butterfly to the top, and added their recipe book. Turned out so great!

Madie's friend Gracie and her parents stayed after the party and we all hung out together. We ordered pizza and had a really great night together! The kids didn't want the night to end and neither did we. It was such a fun day!

This morning, Madie wore one of the outfits that Nana and Papa T got her to church. How cute does she look?! If only it was flip-flop weather! She looks ready to go to the beach. :-)

My friends Michelle and Teresa and their families have given each of my kids on their birthdays one of these shirts that Michelle and Ricardo got in Venezuela. Ricardo and Michelle also gave them to Teresa's kids, so next time we get together, we'll have ourselves a little soccer team - especially once you add in their little guy, Alexander! The kids love looking like "triplets". :-) Even Tater wore his blue collar to join in on the fun! Thanks everyone for making Madie's birthday celebration so fantastic!! Happy 10th birthday, Madie Moo!

Only Two More to Go!

http://mywebtimes.com/archives/ottawa/display.php?id=427297&query=write

I took my blog post about Pancreai the other day and made it my article for this week. :-)

Livie the Be-to-grapher

In the past few days, Livie has been on a picture-taking kick! She says she's a "Betographer" pronounced bee-taw-graf-er. Not sure how that's different than a PHO-tographer, but the differences are there. The things she's chosen to take pictures of are quite interesting. Maybe it's her artistic side that seems to find beauty in the weirdest places or it's just the fact that she herself is weird. Either way, she's having a ball with the camera and wants to take pictures all day long, despite where we might be.



This is the one that started it all. I think having Tater in the house has inspired her to be the betographer. Guess it means you take pictures of everything you find enjoyable. I find she took pictures as a group or series, as you will. The first series is called "Tater's Butt".

"Tater's Butt No. 1"

"Tater's Butt No. 2"

This one was a singular piece entitled "Rolled-up Blanket on Arm Rest".

She went through a series of self-portraits. I only selected a couple of the 12 she took. First she went with this darkened version.

Then tried her hand at a blurry version.

Next was a series on Tater's dog toys. At first, I had no idea what this was. Looked like a butt to me, but that's because I'm obviously not as elevated of an artist as she is. It is the open mouth of the fish toy entitled "Open Mouth of a Fish".

This is called "Smiling Green Dog", close-up.

This is "Puppy Kong", again, close-up.

This is.... well... I have no idea what this is. We'll call it "A".

Lastly, in this series, she did a collage of sorts, using chewed up Eggo boxes and a squeak toy. She called this "Things on the Floor".

She gets tired of sticking with just one series or forum. Opting instead to expose us as a culture to the many facets of life. She did a quick series on cleaning products. She's using her influence as a betographer to show the world the darker side of the cleaning product industry. This one she simply called "No. 409". Breathtaking!

Yet another blurry interpretation. This time of "Oxy".

She ended that series with a total departure from the norm. This is called "My Open Mouth". Makes you really think, doesn't it?

After spending the day at the house, working on her art, she took a break, slept, and woke up the next morning revived to do more. This time, she took her skills with us when we went to the physical therapy office.

This one was called "Rolled-up Paper in my Hand"

"Rolled-up Paper on my Knee"

She went a bit more avaunt-garde with this piece. It's called "Sideways Front Desk".

Another self-portrait.

Ending with a picture of me and my ankle. Obviously her budding career as a betographer is picking up speed. I'm sure once news leaks out about her prowess as a betographer, she'll be getting calls left and right. I know there is a high demand for blurry pictures of open mouths and Tater butts.

Madie's Birthday

Today is Madie Moo's birthday! I can hardly believe she's 10. In fact, it doesn't even feel like her birthday. She's having a big birthday bash on Saturday, so nothing's been decorated. There's no cake. So, it seems kind of dull, but at least she got to open some presents and go out to eat! The decorations and cake will come in a few days. :-)



We got her four things and she got to open one of them with breakfast, which ended up being the bigger of all the gifts. It's the Wii game Glee Karaoke. She absolutely LOVES it!! She loves singing, so this was right up her alley. :-)

Right before we left for the restaurant, she got to open the other ones.

We got her a Cinderella book that comes with scripts for 5 different parts and masks for the different actors to wear. It's so cute and as much as she loves acting too, this again was right up her alley. Though the beautiful story of Cinderella took a turn on the car ride home from the restaurant when Noah, the narrator, started referring to Cinderella as "Pooperella". It was all downhill from there.

Madie chose to go to Jardines, a local mexican restaurant. I was as excited as she was, because this is my very favorite place to eat! You can see the kids were pretty happy with the choice. :-)

Noah announced to the waiter that it was Madie's birthday and he brought her out a fried ice cream sundae. How sweet was that?! Not to mention absolutely DELICIOUS! For a quiet birthday celebration, it turned out to be a pretty fun one. Can't wait for Sat though! We're having a baking party, complete with aprons and cupcake-making. Should be super-fun!

Two Days In..

Well, we are two days in and so far, so good! He's doing a pretty good job on the potty training end of things. Our biggest concern right now is his nipping. He's a chewer, as are all labs. But, this boy likes to chew on PEOPLE! That's not good, so we're working to get him to redirect himself to his toys. Sometimes it's working, sometimes, not so much. But, hey, we're only on day two here. Hopefully he'll continue to learn what's best and what the word "no!" means. :-)



We've already started training him to kill skunks. He likes to carry this one around like it's fresh kill. Take that, skunks!!

This is just a shot of cuteness. Finally got him to sit still for a second, so I could take a picture of him. :-) And, yes, he's really that cute in person too!

We wanted to find a way to keep him mostly in the kitchen on the lino until he's potty trained. Pete came up with this idea, which worked out quite nicely. Just wasn't easy for the me or the kids to get over. You'll see he came up with a MUCH better idea last night.

We bought this gate, so we could corral him during dinner or if we had to get a shower or something. He doesn't like it very much though. He'll sit there and whine until you come pay attention to him. Thankfully Livie likes to hang out in there and play.

Here is Tater's toy bin. He usually just likes to dump it or attack it. We actually caught him laying in it and had to take a picture. Couldn't you just eat him up?!

I think being around his 10 other brothers and sisters caused him to be a little on the stinky side, so we gave him a bath yesterday. As much as he seems to like water (he ALWAYS dumps his water when he's drinking), he did NOT like having a bath. We'll see if that changes as he gets older.

Livie wanted a picture with him as they were both getting ready for bed. Tater was off to dreamland shortly after this picture was taken. :-)

... that is, until Pete got him out again and the playtime began!

Today was a busy day. We went to his first vet check and, after that, headed over to the pet store to get a bell to hang on the door for when he needs to go outside. All that running around tuckered him clean out! He came home and promptly fell asleep mid-bite into his new doggie pillow. :-)

Since Tater wasn't liking the boxed in thing very much, we used it as a divider wall. It's worked out GREAT that way! And much better than the wall of bins we had before. Gives him more room to run around too. You see part of his plethora of toys laying there on the floor.

Here are the rest of them. He's not spoiled at all, is he? So, here we are on day 2 of puppiness and so far things are going well. He's a very sweet boy and, other than the nipping, is wonderful. He loves meeting people and loves to pounce around outside and play with you. Everyone has fallen in love with him already - that is, except the cat. He keeps trying to convince her to play with him, but she's having no part of that. I don't see their relationship improving any time soon. ;-)