The last weekend of April we went to the Greyhounds in Gettysburg event (www.greyhoundsingettysburg.com).  Mitch and I went to this event in 2007 with Maggie and Booyah.  We just went up for one day and did a ton of shopping.  I will be honest it was not our favorite event and we did not really have a desire to go again.  We decided to go to this event this year to hear Dr. Couto speak, but we enjoyed a lot more of the event than just his speech.  If you have the opportunity to hear Dr. Couto speak, make sure you do.  He is amazing and continues doing wonderful work for the wellness of all sighthounds and is a greyt resource to the Sighthound community, even from afar.  If you are on Facebook, you may want to check out his new page “The Greyhound Health Initiative”.

We were both pleasantly surprised at how much fun we had and plan to attend again next year.  We arrived mid afternoon on Friday, had lunch and did a bit of shopping and walking around visiting with greyhound friends. After day one of walking around and shopping, the kids, except for Ziva, were pretty tired and slept very well in our hotel room.

Our sweet Pippi girl.

Cueball sleeping with one ear up to make sure he doesn’t miss out on any adventures.

Ziva enjoys her first hotel bed.

We stayed in the 1863 Hotel right in Downtown Gettysburg.  Which put us within walking distance of battlefields, shops, and restaurants.

We went out to dinner at Sweeney’s Tavern just done the road from our hotel on Friday evening. It is very similar to the Farnsworth Inn and actually has the same menu. I had the Game Pie (Duck, Turkey and Pheasant) and it was fantastic! It was a period time dining experience. We learned some neat things about the Tavern. During the filming of the movie Gettysburg, the film crew spent a lot of time at the Tavern. In 1992, the Tavern purchased the Gettysburg movie props from Turner and has the case proudly displayed along the wall of the restaurant.

On Saturday, we took a short morning walk around one of the battlefields that was close to our hotel. We did not go on any organized battlefield tours but would like to do that at next year’s event.

Mitch and the kids pose for a family picture.

After our walk, we headed to the Expo Center to hear Dr. Couto speak, which was the highlight of our trip. I never get tired of hearing this man talk. He spoke for 1 1/2 hours and then took questions for another 1/2 hour. We learned a lot and it never hurts to hear information you have heard again. 🙂

Saturday was a beautiful day. We ate lunch outside with the kids and then relaxed for a bit before heading back in to do some more shopping and visiting.

Lady, who you may remember from our recent post “Greyt wines and Recently Retired Hounds”, came by to visit with us. She is doing great and enjoying her retirement. 🙂

She is a stunningly beautiful large fawn female.

Pippi is our touchy-feely hound and frequently uses other hounds to rest her head. Cueball doesn’t seem to mind too much.

Ziva was intrigued by the Iggy’s having their turn in the fun run area.

After a fun filled day, we headed back to the hotel for a quick nap and bite to eat.

Ziva proudly displaying the toy she picked out from VAGA’s booth while we were shopping.

While the kids rested at the hotel, we went for a walk through downtown Gettysburg. We met these two lovely siblings.

And the lovely Oreo, who was giving carriage rides through downtown.

We stopped for some ice cream at Kilwins before heading out to the winery event at Hauser Winery.

Unfortunately, it was so windy at the winery that after 45 minutes we pulled the van around to where we were sitting in the grassy area and put the kids in the van. I was hoping to get a lot of pictures at the winery, but it was just too windy. These were the only two shots I was able to get. We did enjoy good conversation and some good wine.

We packed up and headed home early on Sunday. All in all, it was a great trip and we look forward to attending again next year.

Happy Easter from our family to yours!

And hooray for Tripods, Digital Cameras and their self timer continuous shooting mode, which made this family pic possible. 🙂

Cueball would like to show his blogger friends his bendy nose.

Not only can he do neat things with his ultra cool ears, he also likes to bend his nose.  I was able to capture this one above during one of his daily stretches.

The weather turned cold and rainy again this week but before it did, the Crabapple Tree that we received as a gift in Maggie’s honor bloomed last week. Such delicate little pink blooms.  A fitting way to honor our Mags.

It was beautiful to see.  I miss her so and can’t believe it has almost been a year since I had to say goodbye to my special girl.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you, my sweet Maggie Mae.

In happier news, the hounds, Mitch and I are getting ready for our trip to GIG next weekend.  GIG was the first big Greyhound event we had ever attended shortly after we adopted Maggie and Booyah in 2006.  That was seven years ago and we only went up for one day.  We are looking forward to going back.  It will be a special trip, as it will be a first for Cueball, Pippi and Ziva!  I hear a lot has changed in seven years.  We are also excited that we will get to hear Dr. Couto speak on Saturday and of course all the shopping and visiting with fellow Greyhounds and their people. Oh and a planned trip to a winery too.  We have lots of fun planned for next weekend!  I hope to get some great pics of our trip too.

Until then, Pippi says we should just take it easy and get some beauty rest so we look our best for all the photos mom plans to take.

Happy Easter to all our blogger friends!

After an early (up at 4 a.m. to meet the hauler at 5 a.m.) and busy morning helping four newly retired Greyhounds go to their forever homes yesterday, we packed up the van and headed out with the pups to Cooper Vineyards.  Cooper Vineyards is a very dog friendly winery about an hour from our home.  The Winery has a beautiful tasting room and large covered deck.  They have live music on the weekends.  When we arrived, we did a tasting and then got a bottle of their Pinot Grigio and made ourselves at home outside on their large covered deck.  The pups were happy to be out and about with us.  They also enjoyed the cheese and turkey slices from our small picnic.  🙂  We were hound sitting Apollo this weekend, so we brought him along for his first Winery visit.  He did great.

Below are just a few pics of the hounds enjoying their afternoon yesterday.

Pippi kept me company and laid next to my feet most of the afternoon.

Apollo and Cueball listening to the Musician, Curtis Prince, play his guitar and sing.  He came over to our table and met the hounds during his break.  He dedicated his album to his dog, Sam, who was his best friend and who traveled up and down the East Coast and to Texas on all of his gigs.  Dog people are the best!

Ziva just looking pretty like the princess she is.

Apollo thinks Wineries are relaxing.  We couldn’t agree more!

My handsome hubby, Mitch, enjoying the music.  He liked the musician so much, he bought his CD and gave him a tip. 

And of course, I must include the four lucky hounds with their new forever families who were adopted on Saturday.

Above is KB’s Money Power, now known affectionately as Davey and his mom Renee.

Below is Devils Elbow, now known affectionately as Ivan and his mom Annie.

Below is Bon Vivant, now known affectionately as Tess and her mom and dad Ellen and Lou.

And last, but certainly not least is High Praise, now known affectionately as Lady Grey and her new mom Karin.

Adoption days are always the best!  We had an early, and busy, but successful morning and ended our day enjoying great music, our wonderful hounds, each other and some great wine!  I hope we have a long Spring this year so we can have more weekends spent just like we spent this one. 🙂

Our long and cold winter is finally over.  We are so happy to welcome Spring and so are the pups! We will have pics of them playing in the yard in the upcoming weeks.  We have some fun activities already planned for Spring. 

As you may remember, Apollo came to stay with us for a few days.  He is one of the calmest Greyhounds we have ever met.  He is a beautiful and sweet boy.  He is certainly welcome to stay with us again, any time.  Mitch did not want Apollo to leave.  Unlike me, he doesn’t feel that way about every hound we doggie sit.  🙂  He has told me that he is going to ask for a hound like Apollo when we are ready to adopt again.  That won’t be for a long while.  We are at our max with three.  Below are a few more pics I took of this sweet, velcro boy. His velcro personality made him hard to photograph while he was standing.  He loves to lean against you and bear all his weight. 

One of the many great things about Spring aside from the beautiful weather is all the pops of color you get from the blooming trees and flowers. This is one of our Forsythia bushes.  I love the bright yellow this bush produces this time of year.  We have 5 of these along the driveway.  So pretty. I just wish they bloomed for a longer period of time.

We are in the process of totally re-vamping our flower beds in front of the house.  After two years of trying multiple plants with little success, we sought professional help from a landscaping company (Natural Progression Landscaping).  I had a coupon for 60% off of the consultation, which included the landscape design.  The landscape designer met with us, took measurements and pictures of our current flower beds, chatted with us to find out what our needs/desires were and then designed a plan.  She sent us the design in a PDF file and also gave us tips for planting.  One tip we got was how to rid your property of voles. We have had a terrible time with getting rid of voles and our plants have suffered because of these pesky creatures.  She advised us to use Permatil with all our plantings.  We both had never heard of this product, but are willing to try it and will hopefully be saying bye, bye to the pesky voles! 

We accomplished 90% of one of the two flower beds this weekend.  We planted 23 of the 28 plants on Saturday.  We are waiting for the nursery to get in the 5 remaining Perennials that we will plant in this bed.  We plan to work on the other flower bed in early May.  We have 25 plants to plant in that bed.  We wanted to have color all year long and with the variety of plants she choose for us, it should be beautiful during all four seasons.  🙂

Some of the bulbs I planted two years ago are blooming also. I am hoping more come up soon.  I planted 50 along the driveway last year. 

I love the fragrance and color of these! I have no idea what they are (lost the tag), but they are pretty and very fragrant.

We also have lots and lots of birds.  One of the many things we love about this subdivision.  It is very park like.  We have a feeder in the front yard that will fill twice a week.  We have seen Cardinals, Blue Jays, Wren’s, Oriels, and Woodpeckers feed at our feeder.  They are really neat to watch.  This is what Cueball had his eye on in our latest Wordless Wednesday – Expressionism post. He loves to watch the world out of the big bay window. The birds have become use to us now and continued to feed while we were doing our yard work.  The feeder is just feet from the flower bed we were working in. 

I did not have my zoom lens outside with me.  I wish I had, probably could have got a pretty decent pic, darn, but this one gives you an idea. The feeder is in front of the Greyhound statue.

We have bird’s nest in our carport.  I just noticed this on Saturday.  They were pretty creative constructing the nest around our chemical bottles.  Have not seen any babies yet, but hope we do.  Birds are so neat, aside from the daily defecating on my car.

We have a wine tasting trip planned with the pups for next weekend, should be fun! It is that time of year for festivals and outdoor fun.  Pippi is ready for an adventure as are Cueball and Ziva.

We hope everyone is well and is having as good of weather as we have had of late!

We are still dealing with Winter here in Virginia.  One day it feels like Spring (in the 60’s and 70’s) and the next day we get snow.  We had snow again this past Monday, who hoo, I am over it.  We are expecting another winter storm on Tuesday.  Saturday was a beautiful day.  Warm enough for me to wear shorts and a T-shirt.  Today I am back to wearing a sweater and jeans.  It is a wonder we are not all sick from all the temp changes.  Our monthly Greyhound Meet and Greet fell on Saturday and with the nice weather, we decided to bring all the hounds with us.  We chatted with several folks who are interested in adoption.  Fingers crossed that they apply to adopt. 🙂

Below are a few pics from our day.

Jade….

Cueball was our donation dog for the day.  Orange is his signature color.  🙂

Ziva.  She is one month s/p her accident and doing great!

Jade and Pippi.

Apollo.  He just came up from Florida three weeks ago.  He did awesome at his first meet and greet.  You will see more of him on our next post.  We are doggie sitting him for a few days while his dad is at a work conference in Williamsburg.

Last weekend we joined our walking group (Around Town Hounds) for a walk at Forest Hill Park in Richmond.  The park has an interesting history.

We will definitely visit this park again.  It is close to home and was a beautiful setting. Below are a few pictures of some of the hounds who joined us on the walk.  This walking group is now at 112 human members!!  Not sure how many hounds, but there is at least one hound per human. That is a lot of humans and hounds!  We enjoy these walks and hope that we can make it to more of them this year.

Lastly, I finally got a new lens (50mm EF f/1.4)!  I am really enjoying it so far.  This lens has been on my wish list for a few years.  So happy to finally own it!  I used it to take the Meet and Greet pics above.  I will share more pics using the new lens soon.  I am still getting the hang of it. 🙂

More practice shots.  Outside and in the sun.

Maybe it is because the older I get, the less I like cold weather, but Old Man Winter has over stayed his welcome this year for me.  The pups enjoy a good romp in the snow, but after a day or so they are over it.  It just becomes a mess and is too crunchy.  It is hard on their pads of their feet.  After a day of the white fluffy stuff, I am ready for it to all melt.  Last year, we had snow in March, late March, which was a first that I could remember ever getting snow that late.  We just had another snow storm last Monday.  I was fortunate enough to not have to go to work, thanks to our office closing.  The roads were a slick mess. The storm started with rain, then sleet and then eventually changed over to snow.  I should mention that just the day before, we saw temperatures in the 60’s!!  I read on FB that Virginia is a place where you can experience all four seasons in 2 days.  I would have to agree.  Our weather is bizarre and seems to get more bizarre as the years pass.  Quiet frankly, Mitch and I are ready to make our final move to somewhere much warmer.  A place where we will still experience our seasons, but without snow and ice.  We look forward to sunshine and palm trees.  That is our idea of paradise!  We are working hard to make that happen, hopefully within the next three years.  🙂

Okay, I am done with my little rant now.  I feel better.  🙂  The snow did allow me to get a few decent action shots.  I learned a valuable lesson too.  The first time I let Ziva out to play, I thought I had everything set correctly on Manual mode to get some really great pics.  Ziva was frisky and wanted to play, so it was a perfect opportunity.  Alas, I forgot to change the setting from MF to AF.  Needless to say none of my photos were in focus (one example below).  I kept clicking and did not realize the camera was out of focus the whole time until I downloaded the photos.  😦 Major bummer!

Later in the day, I tried again.  This time I made sure the camera was set on Auto Focus.  I am not thrilled with the shots I was able to get and have a lots to improve on, but with every mistake, I am learning more and more.  🙂

Below are the ones I thought were decent action shots.  I would like to get a whole lot better in this area. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.  I still have not tackled editing so these are “raw” in every since of the word.

We really hope Spring is about to be sprung!  Go away, Old Man Winter!  Seriously, go away!!