A few weekends ago, we had our first boarders in our new house. Sunday and Finley have stayed with us on several occasions. They are very well behaved, sweet dogs and get along nicely with my pack. We kept them while their mommy and daddy helped their grandma move from VA Beach to the Richmond area. They were with us for two weekends.

Six seems to be just the right number. We could probably squeeze a couple more hounds in the living room if we counted the space on the furniture.

Although, we did have seven for a short period of time until the adopters could come pick him up.  Hilo is doing well in his forever home.  He attended his first greyhound meet and greet yesterday and did great being a greyhound ambassador.

Sunday and Finley, like most hounds we know, are very use to being allowed on the furniture. Our greys were also, but when we got new furniture when we moved into our new home, we made a decision to not let them on the furniture. For the first time in my adult life, I actually have “nice” furniture and I would like to keep it as nice as possible for as long as possible. Furniture is not cheap! We decided on a bonded leather set. I have heard pros and cons. Some people told us the nails from our dogs will tear up the furniture and not to get leather. Others said they never had a problem with dog nails scratching or tearing up the leather. The first weekend Sunday and Finley were with us, they were unsure of their new surroundings and mainly choose to lay on the dog beds. By the second weekend, they were quite comfortable in their surroundings and made their selves at home.

My greys, mainly Pippi, kept coming to me and staring at me and Sunday and Finley as we all were sitting on the couch. I swear if PIppi could speak she would be questioning why they are allowed on the furniture. I think she was speaking to me with her eyes.

We didn’t mind really. If I wanted them to get down, I could have asked them to at any point. 🙂

Recently I have relinquished my chair to Maggie to comfort her during a storm. She and Pippi now know they are allowed to lay up there and most nights one of them is.

We had a lot of fun watching Sunday and Finley. They are always a joy to keep. Unfortunately, we have had a brutally hot summer so there was no opportunity for playtime outside…..just too hot.

We have had quite a rough past month with illness/injury. The good news is Booyah continues to do well. He had his f/u visit with my primary vet and is now off all of the medications and doing well. He is back to his happy, normal self. We will probably never know what caused all of his issues but we are just happy to have a happy, healthy boy back!

We learned a hard lesson last Wednesday. I came home from work at lunch to find one of our unopened bags of Buffalo Blue dog food in our laundry room ripped open and 1lb total of food missing. Both Pippi and Booyah’s bellies were distended from eating so much. I rushed them to our local emergency vet and called them on the way there to let them know I had two hounds I suspected had bloated. I was quite terrified. 😦

After an exam and x-rays, we got the good news that it was only moderate food bloat. The stomach had not twisted and they did not need to stay overnight. We brought them home, did not feed them over 32 hours and let their tummies digest all that food. It was our fault for leaving an unopened bag of dog food where they could access it. They had never tried to tear into a bag of dog food before. I know they won’t learn their lesson, so we have to. All bags of food, opened or unopened are now in closets with doors shut. 🙂 Cueball and Maggie were both fine. We don’t believe they “indulged” themselves like our other two did.

Cueball celebrated his 9th birthday on the 16th!!! He got lots of scritches, treats and loving to clebrate his big day. Once they weather cools again, I plan to let him get a good romp in. He is a boy who still loves to run and he has the hammies to prove it!

Maggie recently went in to the vet to have her teeth cleaned, for what I hopped would be her last dental. She has one tooth, it is her pre molar on the right that has pretty significant tarter and will likely need to be extracted. She will be 12 in September and this will be her first extraction. She must have good tooth genes. 🙂

She has only had two previous dentals in her life. I always opt for the blood work and ECG prior to any anesthesia. All of her blood work came back normal, but her ECG did not. Therefore, they could not proceed with the dental. She has always been a shy, nervous dog. I think she has done exceptionally well considering this personality. She has traveled with us to many, many events and has been a good greyhound ambassador, especially for the shy dogs. Because of her, I will probably have many more shy dogs join my pack over my lifetime. There is something quiet special about these dogs. The older she gets the less she likes to be out of her element. She was a nervous wreck when we went to the vet. Her heart rate was high, she was tachycardiac and was found to have an irregular heart beat (about every 7th beat is abnormal) on her ECG. My primary vet would like her to see a cardiologist. I am not sure I want to stress her out even more. I know the cardiologist is going to want to do an echo. I have been researching this on line to try to get some advice and have also spoken to some folks I work with. I work for a cardiac surgery practice in Richmond. Understandably, dogs are quiet different from people, but for this type of issue in humans, a beta blocker med is often prescribed to regulate the heart beat. It is a lot to consider. Their suggestion was, since her symptoms sound stress related, to see if my primary vet can prescribe a beta blocker to try for two weeks and then repeat the ECG to see if the heart beat is regulated. It is not a bad idea, barring Greyhounds can take beta blockers, what are the side effects, can my primary vet prescribe or will she prescribe without me seeing a specialist first, etc. It is a lot to consider. What I have against doing the echo is simply this…. I don’t see the need. What is the echo going to tell me? We have already established there is an issue with her heartbeat. Well, if it is anything like human echos, it will tell me if the heart valves are diseased, what her ejection fraction is, if there are murmurs present, her systolic and diastolic functions, etc. If she does have heart disease, they are going to treat her with meds anyway. There is no option for doggie heart valve repair or replacement. This much I know. I guess I am a little jaded by specialty vets because of my recent experience with Booyah. It left a bad taste in my mouth. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure there are great specialists out there that are able to help pets and I want Maggie to get the care she needs and for her to be well, but at the same time I don’t want to stress her out and do un-necessary vet visits or tests if there is a more conservative approach we can try first. Has anyone had any heart related issues with their hounds?  If so, what did you do to treat?  Any advice would be much appreciated.

Hopefully we have ended our “bad luck” streak with illness/injuries.  🙂

Around the house we are still busy with renovation of the kitchen.  All of the upper cabinets have now been taken down.  Demo is done.  Patching, painting is next and then installation in middle August of the new cabinets.  I will post before and after once it is all done.  We have the lower cabinets, counter tops and floors to complete too.  The entire project will likely not be complete until next spring.  We will need a tropical vacation somewhere once we are all down.  I think we will deserve one!

We hope you are all having a good summer and staying cool!

We have gotten back in the swing of doing some volunteer work, attending a couple of meet and greets and hosting two adoptions for VAGA.  First one to a young couple.

Then a few months later to her parents.

The hounds, now known as Millie and Molly, are littermates.  🙂

But most of our time has been spent with home upgrades and renovations.

We installed some much-needed cabinets in the utility room.  Two shelves over the washer/dryer was just not sufficient for us.

Cabinets below are on one wall in the laundry room. We also installed these same set of cabinets x 2 over the washer/dryer.

One cabinet below beside our dog food containers.  A counter top will be added at a later date.

Then we did some much-needed landscaping in the front yard.  I put some red mulch around all six trees and the two flower beds.

Next, we removed 7 of the 8 Azaleas and planted some lilies and hostas.  We still have more to plant in the bed on the left.  Have not made up my mind what I want just yet.

I also planted some Astibule and Hostas in the back yard flower bed, which is an all shade bed.

Before:

After:

There are lots of projects left to do in the backyard.  Primarily removing the remaining leaves and getting some grass to grow.  We are making progress though!

Our latest project is renovating the kitchen. We are doing this in four phases:

phase 1: move refrigerator to other wall, install pantry cabinets around fridge

phase 2: demo upper cabinets, install new cabinets

phase 3: demo lower cabinets, install new cabinets, add peninsula and install stone countertops

phase 4: remove vinyl floor, replace with tile floor and tile backsplash area.  create pass through to livingroom???  not sure if we will do the pass through or not.  Not sure how that will look.

Phase 1 complete:

All hardware has been installed since taking these photos.  We do have crown molding to install but we are going to do all the crown molding at one time when the other cabinets have been installed.

We have also acquired a renewed love of Antique furniture and are happy to have found a gem of a place locally with some great furniture at unbelievable prices!

Our latest project is converting this Mahogany desk to a TV cabinet.  This is how we found the desk in the store.

We have cleaned, have built shelves for the desk and are in the process of staining.

Most recently we had a bit of a health scare with Booyah.  He is doing very well now but had us quiet worried.  Luckily, I was home on staycation and was able to be with him during this time.

It all started with a limp one morning.  He got up from laying down, yelped, starting limping and then pooped in the house.  As the day progressed, he had two more accidents and had lost function in his back legs.  He was very weak in his back-end and favored his left side.  I got him in to see my primary vet that same day.  They examined him thoroughly and felt it was a neurological issue and referred us to see a specialist to get an evaluation and possible MRI.  In the meantime, to keep Booyah comfortable, they sent him home on Rimadyl, Tramadol and a Muscle Relaxer.  He could not sit down without help guiding his rear legs and rear into a sit position.  When he did sit, he was in a lot of pain.  During the exam at the vet’s, they flipped his paws down, he had a very delayed reaction for his back paws in “righting” them.  That was so scary and painful to watch.  He had no concept spatially where his back legs were.  Could not lift his back paws up on to a dog bed.  We were very worried.  We made an appointment to see the neurologist on the following Monday.  They did a 4 x-rays and a complete blood panel.  Everything came back normal.  The next step was to schedule an MRI, as they were unsure what was wrong with him, but felt it was likely cancer or a ruptured disc.  I had to sleep on this before making the decision.  I had Booyah comfortable before going to the specialist on his med regimen.  After the visit to the specialist and going through mild sedation, we took 20 steps backwards.  The sedative made Booyah mean.  He attempted to bite me four times as I tried to keep him comfortable.  He was unable to get his meds that evening and was in significant pain the following day.  He could not stand for any amount of time without his back legs sliding into a sit position. After weighing all the pros and cons, we ultimately decided against the MRI. We do not have a DX.  He continues to do well on his meds and has a f/u appt in two weeks with our primary vet.  I did reach out to Dr. Couto at OSU and sent him Booyah’s neurologist consult, x-ray and bloodwork results.  Dr. Couto responded very quickly and advised that Booyah’s symptoms could be compatible with a clot on the spinal cord and suggested we start a baby aspirin once daily.  He advised to discuss with my vets to see if they agree.  I did and neither vet agreed with this DX nor did they agree with starting the Aspirin.  So we have continued with his current regimen.  We are happy to report that he is doing quite well.

We share all this in hopes someone in cyber world has experienced this.  Any insight you could give, would be helpful and very appreciated.  We would still like to have a DX, but aware we may never have one.

Booyah did celebrate his 9th birthday on Saturday.  A very special birthday indeed!  He is on restricted activity (no stairs, leash walking only, no rough play etc.) but seems back to normal in every other regard.

I am way behind on keeping up with blogs, but hope to get a chance to catch up this week. 🙂  We hope everyone has a safe and fun 4th of July!

At the end of the last post, I shared a picture of the cute Robin’s eggs in her nest by the Holly tree.  Sadly, a few days after they hatched, they were destroyed by a Crow.  Sucks! 😦  I did manage to get a couple of final pics.

Momma bird keeping a close eye on me while I check on her babies.

Little Robins.  Only a day old.

Momma Robin laying on her babies.  This was taken during my lunch break.  When Mitch came home from work, only 3 hours later, the babies were gone and Momma Robin was chasing a Crow from her nest.

We hope she will lay eggs again in our tree in the future.  We are now keeping our eyes on a Woodpecker family.  It is challenging to get good “close up” pics even with my 75-300 mm telephoto lens.  The nest is way up the tree.  Here are a few I took today.  Momma Woodpecker is super fast when she comes in to feed, but I hope to get a picture of her also.

The nest.

Baby Woodpecker waiting for mom.

Opening its little mouth for food.

Hoping to get some better pics soon.  🙂

Last weekend we had perfect weather for playing in the yard.  Booyah brings Mr. Bear out to play.  There is some background about Mr. Bear you should know.  Mr. Bear belonged to me.  He was given to me by a good friend many, many moons ago.  When we were packing up to move, I put Mr. Bear along with some other stuffed animals in a bag for a Goodwill donation.  I placed the bag in the foyer along with some other donation items.  I left the room to continue to pack.  When I came back Cueball had taken Mr. Bear out of the bag and was laying with him.  I picked the bear up and placed him back in the bag.  Cueball got up and got Mr. Bear out of the bag again.  I again placed Mr. Bear back in the bag.  I waited a few minutes to see if he would do this again.  He did not so I continued to pack in another room.  Later in the day, we started loading up the van with all the donation items that needed to go to Goodwill.  When I picked up the bag, I noticed Mr. Bear was missing.  I looked around the living room, kitchen area…….no signs of Mr. Bear.  We were in a bit of a rush to get going so I could not do an exhaustive search.  Later in the evening, I found Mr. Bear upstairs on our bed.  Cueball must have taken him out of the bag again when I left the room.  At this point, I felt bad about giving Mr. Bear away, so we let the kids keep him.  I don’t know what he found so intriguing about this stuffed toy laying among the many other stuffed toys.  Mr. Bear did wear a green/white tee-shirt at one point, but the kids kept taking it off of him, so I threw it away.  I guess they prefer Mr. Bear in his bare fur.  He is now a house favorite.  They all play with Mr. Bear.

After Booyah took Mr. Bear on a tour of the yard, we played catch and tug-of-war.

Booyah had a great time playing with that Bear.

At this time, Mr. Bear is still residing outside along with the chicken stuffie and the two cuz toys.  Our yard is covered in pollen so the stuffies are a bit dusty, dirty and I don’t want to bring them in until they are cleaned up a bit.  Pollen does not bother me, but Mitch’s allergies are awful this time of year.

Among the girls, the cuz toy is a favorite.  Maggie got two new cuz toys for her birthday last year.  The green one lost its ability to squeak not too long after we got it, but the pink one has been spared its squeaking ability.

Pippi wants to play too.

Maggie only played for a little bit, but I was so happy to see her sprinting around the yard and playing with Cuz.  I know she is getting old; I don’t like to think about it.  She is my heart dog.  These moments are precious and make me smile.  I hope to have many more of moments like these with her, but you never know what life holds in store for you, so I am cherishing all of them.  Okay, enough of that, my eyes are getting teary.

Pippi and Mitch play.

Mitch is teasing her.

What is that saying…..Keep your eye on the ball.  I think she does this very well.

They all seem to want to spend more time outside at our new place.  Maybe because the weather has been so cool.  We will see when summer arrives if they change their tune.  Maggie and I will be lounging in our baby pools for sure.  We will definitely miss our pool at the old house this year.  We have lots of projects we are working on inside the house.  I may share some of them here.  It will be the first time for us to remodel a kitchen and two bathrooms.   I am hopeful that it won’t be a renovation nightmare.  🙂  Mitch is very handy and I am eager to help and follow instructions very well so we are sure to be successful!

One of the things we are working on in the back yard is raking up all the leaves around the Magnolia tree.  We have already raked 15 bags.  We have 15 or so more to go.  Years and years of leaves!

Booyah enjoys laying in the leaves.

Another is removing all the holly trees along the back side of the house.  We have successfully removed two.  They took an hour each to dig out of the ground.  Just 8 more to go.  We are going to finish this project hopefully by fall.  I visualize a patio from the deck all the way along side the back of the house ending at the master bath window.  There is a reason why we will be stopping at the master bath window, but will share that later, when we get to that point.  😉 We learned a lot from building our last patio.  We know what not to do now.  I want something that will be maintenance free.  🙂

But before we can continue with removing the holly trees, these little guys need to hatch and leave the nest.

This nest is in the holly next to our a/c unit.  I can see it from our dinning room window.  I hope I am home when they start to hatch and wish I had a video camera that I could set up.

Happy Easter everyone!  We hope you have a wonderful day with family and friends!!

Cueball has found a new past time.  Digging.  Not just with his paws, but with his snout!

There are now two good size holes in the yard.

I must say he is quiet proud of this, trotting along in the yard admiring his work.  Every day, when we let him out, he goes to check on these two spots.  He runs over, digs a little with paws first, then begins pushing the dirt up and out with his nose. After he is satisfied with his masterpiece, he takes off running around the yard.

He has created some sort of game out of this, racing around the yard happy as can be.  He has not attempted to bury anything in the holes or lay in them to keep cool.  He just likes to dig.

Booyah digs to perfect a cool spot to lay down or to bury his stuffie.  The girls have no interest in digging unless they pick up on an unusual scent that they must investigate.

Anyone else have hounds who love to dig?  Do they dig with their nose or just with their paws?  Just curious.  🙂

We still call him goofball, but now he has a secondary nickname…..Digger.

We finally got our fence installed.  Well, most of it is done.  We have two sections of temporary fencing up until Dominion Power can make it out here to bury the power line.  The kids are thrilled to finally be able to run and roam free.  We are happy to not have to leash walk four dogs 6 times a day!

Below are just a few pics from the pups first romp in their new yard.  🙂  I think their bubbles say “Freedom!”

At age 11 and 1/2, Maggie does not run much anymore.  So we took the opportunity to have our picture taken together under the Magnolia after the action from the other pups was over.

The Magnolia is my favorite tree in our new backyard.  Unfortunately, it has not been maintained very well.  It is pretty stumpy and wide instead of full and tall like most Magnolia’s we have seen.  We got some advice from Southern States on the proper way to prune.  Spring is the perfect time to do this.  We removed a lot of the lower branches.  We don’t think it has ever been pruned, so we took care of that last weekend.

It looks so much better and hopefully will start to get taller.  🙂

Back inside, the pups have been doing great with the new no laying on the living room furniture rule.  🙂  I guess dogs can break familiar habits.

Pippi loves to be wherever the sunshine is.

Maggie loves all the sunbeams from the big bay window.

Cueball loves the den……..

but spends most of his lounging time on our bed.

 We are all settling in nicely in our new place.  I think the pups are happy with their new home and new yard.  We sure are!

The last weekend in our first home we got snow.  It wasn’t enough to amount to much of anything, just a dusting really, but it sure was pretty watching it fall.  The pups all love to play in the snow.  I only managed to get one good action shot of Cueball running in the snow (below), but it had me remanicising about all the fun we have had watching the pups play in the snow over the years.

I went back through the snow pics I have saved on my computer.  I have more that have been moved to CD’s, but they are boxed up somewhere at the moment.  😉

Here are some of my favorites over the last year or so.  We hope you enjoy taking a trip down memory lane with us.

Booyah:

Booyah and Cueball:

Cueball:

Maggie:

Pippi:

We have had two snowfalls, which did not amount to anything but a dusting, since moving into our new home.  Without a fence up yet, I have not been taking any outdoor pics.  The fence work should be done this week and just in time for the arrival of spring.  I am hoping to get some great shots in our new backyard and the pups are ready for a good romp.  Cueball has been quiet restless.  🙂  I am hoping for a snowy winter too.  I can’t wait to see the pups play in the snow in their new yard.

It is that time of year again to start going through photos and getting them ready for submission to the CG 2013 calendar. It is always fun looking back at photos!   I may send a few above in as well.   We will see.  If we even get one in, we feel very honored, as hundreds, maybe even thousands are submitted each year.

If you would like to submit your greyhounds photos, here’s how:

Good luck to all who submit!!

We hope everyone is enjoying the start of Spring!

It has been a long while since we have updated the blog.  We have been busy.  I hope we still have readers out there.  🙂  After a long two years of being on the market, we finally sold our home.  It wasn’t easy, but we finally found the right buyer!  I could write a book about our experience over the last two years.  Some of it was quiet crazy and made you scratch your head.  Maybe one day.  🙂

We decided to get pods and move ourselves.  And how many pods does it take for the Ridlon move?  5!!  2 and 3/4 of another were all garage stuff.

NEVER again!!  Next time we move, which won’t be for a little while, we will pay someone to pack us up and move us.  The pods arrived two weeks before our closing date.  It all worked out in the end, but we were so exhausted and we had little energy to unpack/clean etc.  Thank goodness for all the help we had over the weeks before closing and for the storage space at my mom’s house, as a lot of the garage stuff (6 truck loads) are now there.  We made so many runs to the dump and goodwill.  It is amazing at the amount of stuff you can accumulate over the years.  Especially in a 3 1/2 car garage, which Mitch built years ago and where no cars are parked.  That garage had been the bain of my existence for years.  The Subi only parked in it a very few times.  I was very proud of Mitch for working so hard to empty it.

He got rid of a lot of stuff!  I was so happy to see it empty and was excited to actually park my car inside of it, but my bubble was burst when Mitch reminded me that the pods were sitting in front of the garage.  😦  So even in the end, the garage did not get used for its intended purpose.  LOL!

We gave almost all of our furniture away.  Mostly to a Halfway house project and the Goodwill.   A friend of a friend of mine helps set up half way homes for adults who are coming out of rehab for drug/alcohol abuse.  He is a recovering alcoholic and has been sober for 20 years.  He is involved in helping set up these halfway homes all over Richmond and these projects are near and dear to his heart.  They just finished a house in the Church Hill area of Richmond for women and were in need of everything.  The timing was perfect for us and it felt good to help these folks get a new start in life!

With all the furniture donated, we lived like this for 2 weeks.  I wouldn’t recommend it.

In all the time we lived in our home in the country, we had never taken a picture in front of the house together.  So we took our last day to do just that!

We sure came a long way in the years we lived on Adkins Road.  It feels like we came full circle.  We purchased the land (6.5 acres) in February of 2000, cleared it our selves, designed and contracted with Mod-u-kraf homes to build our home.  We moved in early October of 2000.  Over the years we put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it and created some great memories!  I found some very early pictures when I was packing up that I will share once I can scan them in.  Will save those for a later post.

Of course we had to have a pic of the pups on our country porch.  We spent a lot of time hanging out on that porch with the pups.  It was an awesome place to be during rain storms.

We are going to miss it, but it is time to start a new chapter in our lives!

We moved in to our new home last Friday evening.

After looking at 17 homes, we decided to make an offer on this one.  It was house #13 that we saw, so I guess 13 may be a lucky number after all, at least for us, if you believe in that sort of thing.  We got almost everything on our wish list.  No garage, but a nice, big storage shed for Mitch and a one car car port, which will be converted into a one car garage in the near future.  🙂  We are still in the process of unpacking and settling in, but we love our new home and the many conveniences it has afforded us, like being able to have pizza delivery, which have not had in 11 1/2 years of living in the country.  I now have a 10 minute commute to work instead of 50 minutes one way.  The pups too are enjoying this new lifestyle.  One story living is certainly easier on the Queen.  She is started to get a bit wobbly in the rear and already has a screwed up back leg from racing, so no stairs is extra nice for her.  We are in the process of having a fence installed, so no yard/outdoor pics to share just yet.  🙂  Leash walking the pups for a month is not going to be fun, but we will make it.

The pups have settled in nicely.  I thought surely that the Queen was going to freak out, as she does not deal with change well, but she did great!  Booyah on the other hand did not.  He had major anxiety and wore a belly band for the last week in our old home and the first week in our new home.  He is doing fine now though.

Since we donated all of our furniture we got to start new.  🙂   We decided on a bonded leather set for the living room and den and are trying the no pups on the furniture rule.  So far it is working out well.  We went to Costco and purchased 8 new dog beds for the pups.

Mitch relaxing in our den on one of our loveseats.  Please excuse the make shift window treatment.  Our sellers were not as courteous to us as we were to the folks who bought our home.  They left us with no curtain rods or shower rods in ANY of the rooms.  And they did not patch any of the holes/repair any marks that were left when they removed everything.  URGH!!! 

Anywho, all the pups love looking out the big bay window.  Even our cat, Misty, has settled in and she HATES change.

The queen prefers to be wherever I am.  She has become accustomed to sleeping in our bed every night, much to Mitch’s dismay.  She has been very good about not getting on the couch though.

Cueball has become very found of the den and spends most of his time in this room.  He even sleeps in this room.  We leave the bedroom door open so they can sleep where ever they want.

Well that’s it for this post.  I know it was long-winded, but I hope you enjoyed reading about our home life transition.  We will have more to share as we get completely settled and look forward to posting pictures of the pups playing in their new backyard very soon.  Spring is just around the corner!!  We can’t wait!!!

We are a little late on posting, but we hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!  We certainly did.  As Christmases go by, I enjoy more and more watching family and friends open gifts.  I try to put a lot of thought into each gift I give and enjoy shopping for others and espicially enjoy wrapping gifts.  I love to see the expressions on my loved ones faces as they open their gifts.  The older I get, the more difficult it becomes to answer the “what would you like for Christmas” question.  This past year, Mitch and I just did stocking stuffers.  I could only think of one thing I wanted, which was a particular type of perfume and would rather just spend a relaxing day with family and friends laughing, talking, sharing memories and enjoying a lovely meal together.  When it comes to the pups, they do not know Christmas Day is anything other than a normal day and they are happy and appreciative of anything they receive.

Watching them unwrap their gifts was the highlight of the day for Mitch and I.  Should have recorded it, it was really cute and Maggie is quiet the pro.  Pippi had no idea what was going on, but enjoyed being “supervisor” of the activities and got lots of treats for being such a good girl while the others tore into their gifts.

She had a blast unwrapping this toy.  Her favorite cuz toy in purple.  🙂

Booyah got a turn.

I call this one the Hokie Bird toy.  Sure looks like Virginia Tech colors to me.

After watching Maggie and Booyah, Cueball gives the gift unwrapping a try.

He was confused by this toy and wasn’t quite sure if he was supposed to chew it.  Too much like a “real inside animal” I guess.

How Pippi spent her Christmas morning…..

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!  Life is getting pretty crazy busy for us with our anticipated upcoming move so I will be MIA for the next month or so but I will be checking in on your blogs.  🙂