Not too much going on lately, just trying to get our property back in order after the wake of hurricane Irene.  We have been very busy with lots of yard work clean up.  We did get our power back after being without for 8 days.  🙂

We were thrilled to see the repair guys pull into our driveway.  It was a relief to know power would be restored soon.  Mitch plays supervisor.

I have some cute pictures to share which I have taken over the last month or so.  Below is Sunday, who we doggie sat a few weekends ago,  getting some ear scritches from Mitch.

Booyah sleeping on the couch.  Why do they sleep with their heads hanging off the couch?  This can’t be that comfortable.

Synchronized napping session.

Cueball in his favorite chair.  I hate this chair.  It is the “Frazier” chair in our house.  If you ever seen the sitcom Frazier, you will understand what I mean.  It is a misfit.

Mags gets a turn.

Pippi chillin by the breeze that was flowing in from the top portion of our new storm door, which coincidently we purchased after Hurricane Irene, to stay cool.  this was taken during our time without power.  We knew the house was getting a bit warm when Pippi started laying on the cool tile.  She is usually the last to complain about being too warm.  Unfortunately our generator cannot power the A/C.  Luckily it wasn’t too long after this was taken that we finally got power back.

Booyah just being cute.

Pippi squeezes into the smallest spot on the couch.

I am very honored to have two of my pictures selected to be in the CG calendar for 2012.  🙂  We received our copy on Saturday.  Congrats to all those whose pictures made the calendar.  =)  Both calendars are packed full of beautiful photos!!  If you would like to get your own copy, the adoption group I volunteer with is selling some.  Just visit VAGA’s store.  Flipping through both the desk and wall calendar, I was happy to see some of our greyhound friends made it in as well (Stanley, Stella, Paker and Jamie from Genji’s corner  , Anna from Greyhound Fairytales and Macy from Treasure What You Have blogs).

Pippi (below) makes it in to the wall calendar.

And Sunday (below) on her adoption day makes it into the desk calendar.  🙂

Lastly, for cuteness.  Below is Finley, Sunday’s brother, taking a nap.

A month ago, Mitch, myself and our good friends Jackie and Trevor made a trip to Saude Creek Winery in Lanexa, Virginia.  Another winery less than 30 minutes from our house, yippee!!!

Jackie and Trevor’s son, Collin, came along with us.  He is a very well-behaved 3-year-old and a lot of fun to have around!  Jackie and I go way back.  We have been friends since 8th grade.  We were best friends in high school and lost touch after going to two different colleges.  We reconnected last year through Facebook.  It is like good old times again!  It is great to have friends who you have not seen in years and reconnect with so quickly like time never passed.  We are fortunate to have found each other again and have made a promise to not let losing touch ever happen again.  🙂

Anywho, back to the winery.  This is fairly young winery.  Just opened to the public in July of this year.  We tried their wine at the Virginia Wine Expo back in February and have been waiting for the opening.  Like most VA reds I have tried, I did not care for their reds but did enjoy their whites.  I did like their Chambourcin wine though.  The winery itself is beautiful.  The people are friendly too.  They are starting to have bands play on Friday evenings.  We plan to go to one of these Friday night events.  It will be so nice to be able to enjoy events like this so close to home.  We have been envious of others in other areas of the state being able to attend events like this at wineries close to them.  Now we finally have something to do so close to home on a Friday evening.  YAY!!!

Mitch and Trevor check out the listing for the tasting.

Jackie and lil buddy Collin in front of the winery’s beautiful fireplace.

Jackie, Collin and Trevor.  The winery has a huge wrap around porch with lots of seating.  They also have a patio and upper level deck.  The porch has lots of ceiling fans so it stays nice and cool.

Mitch and I enjoying a glass of the Saude Creek Vidal Blanc.

The view from the upper deck.

Another view from the upper deck.  You can see the patio and the “cat walk” part of the lower deck which leads to the huge wrap around porch.

You can see the Pamunkey River from the upper deck.

And Westpoint.

Trevor posing as the thinking man cracks Mitch up.

We had a great time.  We will be visiting again very soon.  🙂  Hope my wine friends in Virginia will venture East to check out this winery.  😉

Cueball is making a distress call to Dominion VA power.

Please fix our power.  We have been very patient.  8 days is enough.  We have enjoyed quality family time and the feel of “camping” in our own home, but now it is time for some much needed cooling air of A/C.  Thank you, Cueball!

As a continuation from my last post (since it got lost, boo!).  I am in a better mood now at least.  🙂  Now onto this week’s weather non-sence.  Good Grief!!!!  As most of you are aware, Central VA, Mineral, Virginia to be exact, had a 5.8 earthquake on Tuesday.  Mineral was the epi center of the quake.  The quake occured at around 1:51 p.m.  I was at work and Mitch was home with the pups.  Mitch said it shook for about 3 seconds.  He thought at first that it was a low lying plane flying over, as they sometimes shake the house and we do have Military planes that fly over quiet frequently. Tthey are low lying and powerful jets and do shake the house.  He soon realized that it was an earthquake.  He went outside checked the foundation, under the crawl space and around the property for any damage.  Luckily there was none.  The pups all did fine.  Maggie wore her thundershirt for a bit afterwards.  Meanwhile, I was at work on the phone with a patient when the shaking occured.  I work on the 5th floor of a local hospital.  The building felt as though it was swaying and shook a good 30-40 seconds.  Work is a bit closer to the epi center than home is.  Although, Virginia has had 20 quakes since 1973, this is the first one I had ever felt.  I will have to say it would be fine by me if I never felt one again!!  It scared the crap out of me, espicially being so high up surrounded by glass windows.  There have been several after shocks, as expected, but neither Mitch nor I have felt them.  They say the quake was felt from as far North as Canada and as far South as Alabama.  I read somewhere, might have been FB can’t remember, that someone here in VA texted a friend in NYC to let them know about the quake and a few seconds later the person in NYC felt the quake.  That is a bit erie, don’t you think?

Now if that isn’t enough weather anomoly for any storm chasing thrill seekers out there, we also had a Hurricane yesterday.  I have to wonder what is next.?? Now we have survived a Hurricane in our house in 2003.  Isabel; which brought tropical storm type of conditions to our area; did quiet a bit of damage.  None of which was to our house, thankfully.  We lost around 20 trees.  All in our yard and none in the driveway.  We were without power for 11 days.  The ground was already so saturated prior to Isabel that the mud under the trees and the excessive water just weakened them and they fell one right after another.  It took us weeks to clean up the aftermath Isabel left.  We did buy a generator after the storm.  We have been preparinf for Irene all week.  Does anyone else think it is erie that both Hurricanes start with the letter I?  I have been thinking this all week.  When you live out in the country like we do and rely on a well, you know how bad things suck when you don’t have power.  We filled up both bath tubs Friday night (so we could at least flush toilets), took out 3 gallons of our distilled water from our emergency essentials kit, stocked up on food, gas, propane, batteries, etc.  This is where my OCD is helpful.  Situations where advanced preparation is needed…..I am your gal.  Other times OCD is just annoying like when I have to check the iron 10 times just make sure it is really off.  But, I digress…….I also do not trust our local meterologists to be reliable when predicting extreme weather such as a Hurricane.  I have learned over the years to rely on Dave with Weather Risk (www.wxrisk.com).  He is usually spot on the money.  He had been predicting a massive storm since Monday.  Needless to say, we were prepared for the worst.  The winds/rain started for us in the early a.m. and got increasingly worse as the day progressed.  Below is the first sign of damage to our mini van. Back wiper…..gone.

This was no big deal.  Then I found this guy (below) by our front porch.  Not sure where he came from.  We have lived here 11 years and I cannot ever remember seeing any turtles in our yard.  We took him to safer, higher ground to ride out the storm.

Then around 7:30 p.m. things went downhill fast.  We began to see those 60-70 mph wind gusts and sustained winds of 50 mph in addition to continued rain throughout the entire day.  We estimate we got about 7 inches in total rainfall.  Oh and did I mention we lost power at 2:30 p.m.  Yes, it is still out.  I anticapate to not have power for at least a week.  The pups did really well through the entirity of the storm.  Maggie wore her thundershirt all day.  Best $38 I ever spent!!!  Other than not wanting to go out to potty, who could blame them, they were angels through it all.  We woke up at 5:30 a.m. this morning and headed outside around 6:30 a.m. to assess the damage.  We knew trees had fallen, we heard them last night. we just did not know to what extent and where.  Below is what we saw.

The mini van upon further inspection only suffered minor damage.  One dent on the hood. No big deal.  I was quiet relieved my car was able to be squeezed into the garage.  Mitch worked all day Friday cleaning a space otherwise it would have been parked right beside the van and would have had significant damage, I am sure.  We lost 5-6  trees down the driveway and one in the yard.  We were completely blocked in.

Looking down the driveway.

Almost mid way down the driveway.  You can see my neighbor’s house across the street.

Good-sized Oak bit the dust.

Driveway by the road looking back towards the house.

We now have 2 Oaks and 1 Maple that will need to be removed.  We hate to do it but these trees are now leaning towards the house and the root/support structure has been compromised because of the storm.  They will be taken care of this week.

Below is our Hurricane clean up kit!!!

2 1/2 hours, 1 Chainsaw, 4 peeps (including two of our neighbors) and 8 beers later and our driveway is clear.  Horray!!!

They will be back to cut up the trees and take the firewood.  Pretty fair trade I think.  Well that and the beer, a case that is.  What they didn’t drink, they took with them.  By 10 a.m., we were no longer trapped by downed trees in the driveway.  It was a good feeling.  There is still much to pick up with all the debris around the yard but we are all okay and only slight damage (one piece of siding) was done to the house.  We were lucky!!  Just plain lucky!!!!  Our thoughts are with those who remain in the path of this storm and to those who lost loved ones during the storm.  We are continuing to keep a watchful eye on Irene as she makes her way North to New England.  Our prayers are with our family in Maine.  We hope they are as fortunate as we are.

A calm after the storm.  It is sunny, no wind, 90 degrees, beautiful skies and beautiful day today.  It is a bit toasty in the house as I am typing this.  The gernerator does not run the AC so I am bit freaked about the pups.  I keep checking their bellies to make sure they are not over heating.

It has been a busy, crazy couple of weeks for our household.  🙂  My apologies that I have not been around to read your blogs.  I plan to do that today and tomorrow.  🙂  A few weekends ago Finley and Sunday (littermates) came over for a sleep over so that their mommy and daddy could attend a wedding in Northern VA.  They are both very sweet, tail wagging all the time dogs.  They were quiet amusing also.  They both do not like slick surface floors and although we have several throw rugs down throughout our house, they were not willing to come out of the living room.

I will have to admit, it was quiet nice not having two more pups following us around the house.   We did manage to get them out to go potty when they needed too.

They are very well-behaved and are welcome back to our abode anytime.  🙂

Below is Sunday.  Everyone else was outside and I am trying to entice her with treats to come outside too.  Eventually she obliged.

Finley occupies his time by taking in all the different smells.

He seems pretty happy.

“Hey Misses!  Can I have a little privacy here?”

“Hmm…..Finley was right.  There are all kinds of smells at this place!”

“This will be fine for one night, so long as mom and dad pick us up tomorrow.”

Happy girl!!

Strike a pose!!  He has that Cueball ear thing going on.   Too cute!  Maybe they are related.  🙂

“My ears do funny things too!”

Back inside the pups do what they do best…….CHILL!!

I had more pics to post and had this whole long post typed up to include the Earthquake and Hurricane, but for some reason wordpress has lost it.  I am LIVID!!!!  The F bomb was dropped quiet a bit!!!  And Mitch had to hear my rant.  Hopefully I will be able to post tonight when I am in a better mood.

A few weekends ago, we were invited on a walk with the Around The Town Hounds walking group in Richmond.  For the July walk, Three Lakes Park in Richmond was selected.  It was a really nice place to walk and is a park tucked back behind subdivisions.  It is one of those if you did not know it was there, you would never know it was there.  🙂 Those are the best kind.  Nice and quiet.  We pretty much had the trails to ourselves.  🙂  We met up early in the morning, so the temps were not too hot and we enjoyed a stroll around three lakes.  There were about 20 hounds walking with their humans.  Nice turnout!  We and our pups had a great time!

Unfortunately, the setting on my camera got bumped during the walk so the pictures are not great.

Pippi and Jackson.

The boys happy in the van after a really nice walk.

In the van on the way home I realized what had happened with the setting.  Hate when that happens!!

Van ride home.  Still happy pups.

Maggie in her spot near the front seat resting her head and enjoying the warm sunshine on her face.

And in other news, a few weeks ago I received a very nice promotion to Medical Office Coordinator at work.  🙂  For those who do not know, I work for a group of Cardiac and Thoracic surgeons in Richmond.  Started the job 4 years ago this September with no medical office experience and have worked my way up.  It certainly is nice to be recognized when you are doing a good job and receive a promotion for your hard work.  Mitch says it is well deserved.  I appreciate that!  I have always prided myself on a good hard work ethic and it certainly has served me well in every job I have had.  I am finally in a work environment where I can really build my career and keep moving up.  It is a good feeling and I have given myself a nice pat on the back for a job well done and Mitch gave me a nice date night out at Felmings (no pictures of our dinner).  Below is a pic of us when we returned home.

If you have a Flemings in your area, we highly recommend it!  The food is phenomenal.  For the foodies out there, here is a breakdown of what we enjoyed.  No doggie bags needed.  It was too good to leave anything on the plate.  🙂

Appetizer:

LUMP CRAB LOUIS WRAPS butter lettuce, avocado, bacon, egg, tomato

Main Course for me:

PETITE FILET MIGNON

Main Course for Mitch:

TUNA MIGNON seared rare with poppy seed au poivre and tomato vinaigrette

Shared Sides:

CHIPOTLE MACARONI & CHEESE smoked cheddar and leeks

SAUTÉED OR CREAMED SPINACH

Dessert for me:

Crème Brûlée
creamy tahitian vanilla bean custard
served
with fresh seasonal berries

Dessert for Mitch:

Black Berry Sorbet

We rarely ever go out to eat, but when we do, we don’t want to be disappointed.  More fun to come, so stay tuned!

It is no secret in the Ridlon household that our sweet Maggie suffers from anxiety during thunderstorms.  Any loud noise really sets her off. She pants, shakes, paces and looks for the tightest spot she can squeeze herself into.  Her safety place is anywhere that surrounds her on all four sides, is dark and somewhat quiet.  Usually my closet served as her safe place.  Now dog experts will say, never comfort dogs when they are anxious as this somehow encourages or lets the dog know that this behaviour is acceptable.  Makes sense.  Just like you would not want to make a big deal out of leaving or coming home, as this causes anxiety for dog.  It is also really hard as a compassionate human who thinks of her dogs as her children not to want to comfort them when they are anxious and upset.  I always did my best, but there were times when I would just sit in the closet with her and hold her until the storm passed.  In some instances this meant me sleeping on the floor of the closet with her through the night.  If you don’t know or haven’t guessed yet, there is pretty much nothing in the world I would not do for my fur kids.  They are certainly worth it!!   For the past four years we have used a homeopathic drop to try to sooth her anxiety.  It works well with the exception of having to give it to her 30 minutes to an hour prior to the storm, which was not always possible.  I did not really want to drug her up so the homeopathic drops were a great solution.  They are all natural and safe.  I knew she would still act like herself, only calmer during the storm.  Recently we had been debating about what we could do to help her.  There had to be other dogs going through this and there had to be a solution.  Before I could begin my research, I saw a post by a friend on Facebook about Thundershirts.  I had honestly never heard of them.  Before adopting Maggie, I had never experienced anxiety over storms with a dog before, so it was never something I had to worry or think about.  So I looked at the website (www.thundershirt.com) and read about how the shirt works.  The shirt was less than $40 and I figured it was worth a shot.  It arrived while we were on vacation and lucky for us we got to try it out several times the week we returned from vacation.  It took about 5 minutes, but we saw a huge difference in Maggie.  She no longer looked for or sought her safe place.  No more panting, shaking or pacing.  She was actually laying on the couch quiet relaxed.

We were amazed!  We were also sold on this product!!  For Maggie the shirt has worked even if we did not get her shirt on time and the storm has already begun with cracks of thunder and lightning.  Takes about 5-10 minutes for her to calm down once the shirt is on.  Much improved from anxiety and fear during storms.  We keep the shirt on our nightstand in our bedroom.  Maggie knows where her shirt is, as she is usually sleeping either beside me in the bed or on her dog bed right next to me in front of the nightstand.  We have had a month and multiple storms to test this product and would highly recommend it to anyone who has a dog who is suffering from anxiety.  It is not designed just for thunderstorms. There are lots of uses for the shirt to help anxious dogs.

Check out the website linked above.  You will not be disappointed!  Maggie loves her shirt!  She has woken me up in the middle of the night during a storm to tell me to put her shirt on.  Maybe I am giving too much emphasis on how smart I think dogs are, but I really think she knows that the shirt helps her.  It has become her hero.  🙂

Recently we celebrated the boys’ eighth birthdays.  Booyah turned eight on 6-30 and Cueball on 7-16.  Since the hounds have a new-found love of Frosty Paws and the weather has been a bit hot lately, it was a great choice for a birthday treat.  Our pups like the Peanut Butter flavor the best.

Does anyone else feel like this year is flying by super fast?  Maybe it is just us, but it feels like time is moving by on super speed this year.  Hard to believe the boys birthdays have come and gone.  Another year older and wiser.  🙂  We kept their birthdays simple this year.  Just some good quality time at home enjoying snuggle time, romps in the yard, lots of love and lots of treats!  We know how very lucky we are to have 4 healthy hounds.  We treasure every day we have with them.

There is no fooling this pack.  Pippi and Booyah knew exactly what was going on.   There is always good stuff to be had in the kitchen, especially things that come from the island.  🙂

I think their conversation was something like this:

Pippi:  I was here first and will be waiting here until mom gets all the frosty paws ready in our bowls.  I am on guard and at ready of all things food.

Cueball:  I am just here for the warm sun on the face.  I know I won’t get left out.  Silly pup!  You have much to learn in this life.  Mom always feeds me first, Booyah second, you third and Maggie last. Patience is a virtue.  Maybe if you stopped jumping up on mom when she is trying to get our food and treats ready she would feed you first and not make you sit before you get your treats.

Pippi pushes Cueball and Booyah’s buttons a bit and you can always tell when she has gone too far.  They quickly put her in her place.  She is a very loving pup with a lot of great qualities, but she does have habits and behaviours that are quiet annoying.  She is still very much a puppy and is almost 7 years old!

Booyah enjoys his nice birthday treat.

Then he takes a nap.  Happy Birthday Booyah!!!  We hope you have many, many more wonderful years!

We repeated the frosty paws treats for Cueball’s birthday.  The weather was a bit cooler in the afternoon, so we let the pups have their treat on the deck.  At first they were quiet confused as to why their bowls and feeding stands were being taken outside, but soon figured out it was for good reason.

Look at that crinkled tongue.  How the heck did he do that?