Holidays in the air...

Whew, Mom seems to have a contest to see how fast she can put the Christmas decorations up after Thanksgiving every year. Because of the "extra" weekend this year I was figuring it was going to be MUCH quieter and calmer around here this weekend. After all, she STILL has the first weekend in December, right?
Well, Thanksgiving day she got organized. She did put our photos on our pages, but she claimed that was cuz she had a good signal on the Wi-Fi that she boosts over from work...it's not always very good, BOL!
Friday she got a call from our friend Skye. Seems she wanted to come down and spend the night AND work for Mom on Saturday. Mom was thrilled cuz the boarding kennel was FULL, well, overfull actually.
So, while Skye cooked dinner for her and Mom on Friday night, Mom found all the Christmas decorations and got the room ready for the tree. This year it is in OUR bedroom cuz Quincy is a bit young to trust around a Christmas tree AND Mom has a little pen for Jethro to walk around in when he gets a bit older and it is right where the tree used to be. Besides, there is already an ex pen around the kitty box in that corner of the room so putting the tree behind that ex pen seemed like a good idea.
Soo, We helped and Mom and Skye got the tree up AND partially decorated. At least the lights work!!! After work Saturday Momsie put up the outside lights and tree. Then, she got the stuff for the wreaths.
Sunday Julia was here to help in the kennel so after work she and Mom and ALL US DOGS headed down to gather the boughs for the wreaths. Mom and Julia made EIGHT wreaths and put them up.
Next, WE went to the store and bought some lights for some of the wreaths AND Julia and Ali went to her house.
Mom cleaned the Chickie house and did laundry and got the stockings ready to hang. We EACH have a stocking with our name on it! Every year Mom replaces one or two of the generic ones with nicer ones that are more personal for us. I already have MY personal one, BOL!
Soo, we are MOSTLY decorated and should be done by next weekend! Merry Christmas!!

Christmas already???

Usually Mom and someone helping her devotes a whole afternoon to doing our Christmas photos. It is AWFUL!!! We get tired, they get tired and everyone ends up yelling at everyone else.
Well, this year Mom decided to do us a few at a time. Two or three of us at a time get to go to work and spend the day there. First of all, we DO get groomed, but hey, that happens anyway! Then, Mom and Tonya or whoever is helping decide what props they will use for each one of us.
After we are all dressed and prepped, we sit on that table and deal with the bad part...actually getting the photo! Some of us (ME) are smart and realize that it will be over ever so much faster IF we just sit there and look cute. Of course, since I AM cute I don't have too much problem with that part, BOL!
This year, for some reason, I was selected to be in the first group along with Toto and Zena. I must admit, there was MUCH less stress with the new plan, and both Mom and Tonya were much relaxed. The only problem was that Zena was out of focus. (Hey, she usually IS, so what's new?) Well, that meant that she had to go thru the whole thing again.
Mom will not put the new photos on our page until AFTER Thanksgiving, which is early this year! But, I will say, poor Barney had quite an electrifying experience today, hehehe, according to him, anyway. I can't wait to see his, BOL!

I'm being ignored again...

This is a BAD place to live. No one loves me, no one pays ANY attention to me and I am sad! Now Lola has even taken over MY bed under Mom's desk and I have to sleep way over in the corner by Ali. Just cuz Lola is sick she thinks she gets MY spot!!
Mom is all busy with the baby... she is always feeding him or holding him or checking him. Would you believe, he even sleeps in his bucket right up at Mom's head. Me, I am relegated to the foot of the bed!
Because Mom was worried about the cats thinking the baby was something to eat she took them to the kennel. Well, now I am hearing all kinds of noises in the night and, since I KNOW it isn't the cats, I need to alert Mom to the danger. What does she do??? Yup, she YELLS at me!!
Even Toto is being a snot. It seems he had some sort of testing on his urine and something is wrong with it, so he thinks he is sick, too, and needs Mom's attention. HE is sleeping in MY little snuggly dog bed on Mom's bed, good thing I was already banished to the foot of the bed or I would be MAD about that!
But, the worst was this afternoon. Mom went out to feed the chickies. Because she had already let us dogs out, she shooed everyone into the house side and shut the gate. Being a super smart, super alert dog, I hid BEHIND Mom so she couldn't see me, hehehe! When she went into the hen house, I followed along to check out the chickies.
Would you believe she didn't even yell at me???? I was so hoping she would cuz I needed the attention!!!

The OCEAN and a Diary Daily pick, YAHOO!!

Wow, as we were driving over to the ocean this morning Mom checked her email and noticed I was a Diary Daily pick! Hmmm, that's nice, especially since I was on my way to the OCEAN!!
We finally got there...it was sunny and warm, unlike home where it was cool and rainy, go figure! Right at the top of the beach was a dead porpoise which was pretty gross, but the scientist lady was there and studying it so Mom had a chat with her. It was sad!
Anyway, the tide was way, way out so we raced around, exploring EVERYTHING!!! Sadly, Crystal didn't do so hot off leash, and Toto thought it was his job to guard the porpoise, so they had to go back on their leashes. Not ME, I was perfect!!!
After we checked everything out we went off to the neck to visit Jenny and Piper. We went with them down to another beach behind Jenny's Mom's store and we had a GREAT TIME playing with them. Crystal stayed in the car, but me and Toto could be off leash down there and it was super!!!!
Then, Mom and Julia and Jenny's Mom had lunch (Mom had a LOBSTER ROLL!!!) They sat around in the HOT SUN, gabbing, then we finally headed home.
BUT, we got to stop at a PETSMART!!! They had a bunch of shirts on sale so Mom got us a few. I got a great Polo shirt that says "Guard Dog" on it. Funny!!!
Anyway, now me and Toto and Cryssie are sleeping under Mom's desk! Thanks for all your visits, everyone!

My favorite spot...THE OCEAN!!!

Hey, Mom just said that she and Julia are taking ME and Toto and Cryssie to the ocean on Sunday!!!! I am so excited that my feet are hardly touching the ground!!
It is supposed to be nice and warm and sunny AND Jenny and Piper's Mom is going to meet us there IF she can. If she can't, we will go to her store and have lunch on the bench outside the store.
AND, the tide is supposed to be lowest at 10:30 and we are supposed to get there at 10:34 so I am doubly excited cuz I do so love LOW TIDE!!!
Whoooopppppeeeeeeeee!!!!

CROWDED house...

My house is getting VERY crowded and I, for one, don't like it!!! During the Summer all was well... we all went outside after dinner and Mom even sat outside with us and we played and had fun. When it got dark we all went to bed.
Suddenly, it is dark at suppertime. Or, it is POURING RAIN, like tonight. Mom gets home from work, feeds us, and lets us out for like ten minutes. Then, we are all wet or cold or afraid of the dark (NOT ME!), so she lets us inside.
Instead of just me and Toto and Ali going off to sleep in the bedroom with Mom, suddenly we have EVERYONE racing around the house, vieing for Mom's attention and making a mess of my eh, the toybox. I think Barney and Harvey and Cryssie and Riley and Zena were fine, but, next thing I knew, Annie was here, too. At least these guys were fairly mature and would normally just pick a dog bed and a toy and settle down for the evening. Annie would sit in the watch chair, she DOES bark a bit but she does listen to Momsie when she says, "Enough!"
Then, along came Quincy...now, HE is a major problem!!! He is BIG...he outweighs even Toto!!! And, he is a baby which means his mouth MUST TOUCH everything and anything. Soo, poor Momsie is constantly jumping up and playing trade off with whatever he has in his mouth.
And, as I mentioned, he is a baby. It must be catchy cuz suddenly, Cryssie is a baby, too, and is racing thru the house doing zoomies with him. Also, he barks while he is racing around, and it disturbs my rest!
Toto and I have claimed the dog beds under Mom's desk. Works okay until I need to see if this time, Annie is right and there really is someone here. The second I stick my head out from under the desk, Quincy body slams me and he weighs 23 and I weigh 7. See my problem???
Now Mother has really fallen off the deep end. When I came in to relax a bit before bed I discovered LOLA parked under my desk, in MY bed! LOLA, I thought we had sent her packing back in June. Well, it seems she is staying her until AFTER her babies are born and weaned and gone. That is like THREE MONTHS!!!!
Lola is a pita because she thinks she is the ONLY one here who should have Mom's attention. If I just sidle up to Mom for a bit of a pat, Lola rushes over and knocks me out of the way and hogs ALL Mom's attention.
OMD... what if SHE is sleeping in the bedroom???? OMD, HELP ME!!!!

Finally home!!!

This morning when we left the motel Mom and Julie decided to take a leisurely trip home. Mom told her GPS to go home, BUT she said to avoid all interstates and toll roads!! Instead of 5 hours it said it was going to take SEVEN hours!!!
It turned out to be a pretty nice trip! We went thru the Catskills, especially pretty with all the colored Fall foliage. We drove around a HUGE reservoir. The sign said the water was for New York City!!! I can't imagine that!!!
Finally, after about four hours of back roads and Fall colors, Mom was beginning to get some serious eye strain and both she and Julia were dying for either a McDonalds or a Dunkin Donuts or something like that so Mom changed the GPS back to normal. It was a good thing cuz we were almost to Albany and that is a bad part of the trip, even ON the highway!!!
Once we got back into Vermont and the Green Mountains, Mom and Julie were joking about driving all the way to Pennsylvania to see foliage that is right in our back yard!!! They decided it was all relative!
I don't think it's any relative of MINE!!!
Finally, we got home and Mom went over to the kennel and brought Quincy and Crystal home. Me and Barney had been enjoying the peace and quiet!!
All in all we had a GREAT TRIP. Mom said it was very relaxing which is the point of a vacation, I guess.
The motel was really quiet and they went to bed early and slept late and relaxed lots. Except for the fleas, it was perfect, and with the Advantix, there ain't no fleas on me!!!
And, when Mom told the motel people about the fleas they gave her back the extra pet charge, which was very nice of them! Mom said they didn't act too surprised, and said we should have told them right away. Mom said we were all settled in and fleas don't bite either her or Julie!!! Mom thinks they were in the hallway anyway, NOT in our room.

Sunday vacation adventures...

This morning we headed down to the HUGE shopping outlet stores. Along the way, Mom noticed some flea dirt near my tail so she flipped thru my hair. I was COVERED with HUGE, NASTY fleas!!!! So, Julie checked Barney and he had a million of them on his head!
Mom was having a HUGE fit!!!! She HATES fleas, and they decided that we must have gotten them from the motel cuz we both had baths on Thursday and we didn't have a single flea on us, nor has Mom seen ANY this Summer on any one of us, except one on Ali in August and she put Advantix on ALL of us.
Sooo, they checked out the iPad and found a PetsMart along the way to the Mall. Mom got Advantix for both me and Barney and they put it on us immediately!!! Mom also got us a small bed for the console and a couple of new toys and a bully stick for each of us.
Next, we hit a few other stores on the way to the Mall. The mall was CROWDED and there was NO parking at all. Mom dropped Julie off at the place she wanted to go and then she found parking in the very, very back of the buildings, after circling the lots FIVE times. She went to the Uniform store and bought some smocks for work, found Julie and they decided to get out of dodge, so to speak.
We decided to take a picnic back up to the top of the mountain since the weather was okay. It was fun, we saw some people going down a zip line, we met TWO bloodhound puppies with their little girl and we saw lots of foliage and pretty sights.
On the way back to the motel we did some stops in the woods for a few photo shots... it was fun! One was an old cemetery and another was an old house with lots of pretty vines and stuff growing on it. Meanwhile, ALL our fleas died and fell off, so Mom was happier!
It is cold and now it's raining again so we are hunkered down in the motel with the cruddy internet now. Pretty soon it will be time for TV and bed!!!!
Tomorrow we are heading home and we're gonna take the scenic route home. Maybe more photo shoots????

Day Two of MY vacation...train ride and RAIN!!!

Well, Mom discovered the internet works okay IF she uses AOL instead of IE. Strange, but we can deal with that, I guess. Anyway, she did manage to get our photos on and working.
This morning we headed off to take the train on a scenic tour in Jim Thorp. Mom says he was her hero when she was a kid so she was thrilled to go to HIS town and see his memorial!!!
Anyway, it was still warm today but getting really cloudy really fast!
We got to the train station just before noon so we had to hang around for the next train. It was pretty humid and there were TONS of people all around. EVERY ONE of them needed to pat me and Barney and have their photos taken with us! For someone who used to not like meeting strangers, I was getting REALLY friendly and now I want to run up and visit EVERYONE I see, BOL!!
Anyway, their mascot is a BEAR named Lehigh George and he had Mom take his photo HOLDING ME!!! Later, he got one with Julie and Barney, too.
The train was pretty neat. It was kinda loud and bumpy at first so I just sat in my seat. But, I finally realized it was like kayaking somewhat so I stuck my head out the window to check the scenery. Then, I was tired so I rested my head on the window like I do on the kayak. FUN!!!
After our train ride we did some shopping at the places near the train station, then we headed back to the motel. Suddenly, it was POURING RAIN, and getting MUCH COLDER!!!!
We are now resting and me and Barney are napping with Julie while Mom does our photos. Later they are going out to dinner and me and Barney have to stay in the car!
Tomorrow it is supposed to rain all day so Mom and Julie are going to a HUGE shopping mall. I suspect me and Barn will be resting in the car, BOL! They better buy us something very, very good!!!!

No Internet!!!

Mom is very unhappy. She went to load our new photos and the motel Internet died . Now she is writing this on the iPad.
Hopefully it will work tomorrow!!!!
We came, and we are seeing!!!