Books

Books, originally uploaded by rox130.

I don’t know if I mentioned that another of Mia’s antics is chewing on paper and/or books… I have since moved all of the books from my lower shelves. I found it funny that the book she decided to gnaw on is my BRAND NEW Dog Owners Veterinary Handbook that my secret santa gave me at work last December. The pages are fine but she chewed half the jacket and some of the binding. I’ll think of her everytime I open that book now won’t I? Hahah

Did I say we love her?

Did I say we love her?, originally uploaded by rox130.

Today at lunch I went home to feed Mia…. Apparently the dogs pulled on the baby gate and yanked it open. April and Echo are fine anywhere in the house.. But Mia is still confined to the kitchen area near the doggie door where there is NO CARPET to pee on while she is potty training. So…… free to run the rest of the house, she got into the bathroom garbage and spread it all over the living room. She took the wrapper off of a duraflame and chewed on the log, she tore out fake moss stuff from a fake plant, dragged the toilet cleaner brush and holder out, peed on my carpet, POOPED on my carpet, put pieces of paper towel on the stairs and various other parts of the house. Little BOOGER! She has only gone number 2 in the house once before this when she was locked in..so this was the first deliberate #2 since we’ve had her!!

After work I drove to Petsmart to get a 41 inch center gate tension doggie gate. It went in as soon as I got home from work!! And yes… We still love her. Naughty little puppy!!!

Puppy mischief

As you can see the rest of Mia’s body is starting to catch up to her huge paws and her huge ears! Haha. She has GROWN like a weed and we have to feed her 4 times a day.  She is about 16 weeks old now…  While she is starting to understand more of the house rules… not without causing LOTS and LOTS of havoc in the meantime…

So far she… brought bark in the house and chewed it into little itty bitty pieces, brought ROCKS in the house and chewed on them, got all over the couch with dirty paws (it is covered in sheets for when she does, even tho she’s not supposed to), TORN and chewed on that sheet, chewed on a basket, opened a cabinet and took out cookie cutters to chew on, cocoa powder to lick and seeds to eat (baby latches are on all lower cabinets now), put a hole in  my sock and a towel as I was taking it out of her mouth…. took down a recipe book off a shelf and chewed pieces of the cover off….

DUG a hole in the deck with her paws….

 

 

 

 

 

Chewed off fabric from the kitchen window seat.. AARG!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dug her paws into the water bowl splashing water all over the floor.. then tipped the whole bowl over … which is why the bowl is now outside…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And these are only the one I can think of and remember at the very moment!!!! HOWEVER… we love her… she is learning quickly and has a very sweet nature and demeanor.  She has a MEAN sounding deep guard dog bark which we only hear once in awhile so far…. and she brings so much LIFE to April and Echo! 

 

And.. so much joy and life to us too….  Not to mention we are practicing patience, calm assertive energy, leadership, rules, boundaries, discipline… and we have to be CONSISTENT or believe me she lets us know when we are not! And the kids are also learning how to teach and set boundaries for her too!  All great life skills that can carry over into the rest of their lives too…  our sweet little mischievious Mia…  sigh.. only about 8 more months of puppy madness right??

More teenagers!

At the end of July, Aaron and Austin officially became teenagers. I say officially because they’ve been acting like teenagers most of the year! Haha  So, now there are FOUR teens and only 1 little Joey….  and actually he’s turning 11 pretty soon… so he’ll be hitting pre-teen before we know it! Can’t you feel the excitement in the picture below! Haha. Too cool to look excited….

Instead of cake the boys like their own individual ice cream just for them.  The rest of us make ice cream sundaes! Yummy! We got a little more enthusiasm from Austin than Aaron.. but Austin loves the camera… or if you were to ask him, he’d say the camera loves him! 

 

Here’s the two oldest teens goofing around….

And last but not least…  radar radar…..  Mia’s satellite ears…

April and Echo’s baby

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Meet Mia, April and Echo’s baby… haha.. okay so she’s not their baby but she sure looks like them!  Mia is a 14 week old German Shepherd puppy!  We have had her for almost 2 weeks now! I have never had a puppy before so we are learning how to potty train her and have had to add baby latches to our kitchen cabinets!

 

 

 

 

April took to Mia right away and vice versa.  Echo is okay with Mia but growls at her when she tries to interrupt his nap.

That’s all for now.. I had much more to say but seeing as this has taken me almost 2 weeks to post I better keep it short and sweet!!!

Garden pickings, cute dogs and dishwasher duty

 Here is our first batch of nectarines from out tree in the backyard!  We gave some away, ate some and I froze MANY.  Last year when I froze them I mistakenly threw them in a plastic freezer bag altogether after cutting them…  and ended up with a huge frozen BLOCK of nectarines.  This year I cut them, placed them on cookie sheets with waxed paper  and froze the pieces individually lined up on the cookie sheets THEN transferred them to a ziploc freezer bag the next day so I have beautiful individual pieces of nectarine frozen to add to our fruit smoothies all year long!

 

I also picked our first slicing cucumber (looks like a scary snake)  and our first lemon cucumber.  Both were yummy and I can’t wait for the rest to grow and ripen!  Our tomatoes are green… we are waiting for them to ripen before we can enjoy them. 

 

 

 

 

While I garden, sometimes I let the dogs come out with me.. here’s a pic of each of them watching me garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few days after the first batch of nectarines some started falling off the tree.. so we had to start picking again!  Here’s the 2nd batch!

 

 

 

Lastly, one of Joey’s chores is to unload the dishwasher when we ask him to.  I opened the cup cabinet and this is what I saw! Hahaha. I couldn’t stop laughing because he stacked these little cups on top of these big red ones!! Kids are so funny!!!

Why I want to live at Whole Foods Market

Kev and I went to Roseville the other day because I found a great deal on a used snowboard with bindings on Craigslist! Here is a picture of the lovely board… its a 145 Elan with Flow Bindings! It was just sitting in this guys garage collecting dust and he wanted to get rid of it! (As a side note I have purchased my Sequoia, my desk, a DS lite for Joey and a snowboard for myself off of Craigslist! All GREAT deals too!)

Anyhow… on to why I want to live in the Roseville Whole Foods Market.  I have been to 3 Whole Foods Markets total.. and so far this one was my absolute favorite!  It was much larger than the other 2 I’ve been to so it was more spread out and it had more to offer than the others I’ve been to. From left to right… a Taqueria! A Pizza Station!  And a made to order Asian counter with noodles soups, etc!

 

 

 

 

Also, this Whole Foods had a make your own trail mix bar, and ROWS of delicious food that you could choose from and plate  or box yourself and then were charged by the pound for.  We ate dinner here and I had one turkey meatball, some zucchini with basil and garlic, some cabbage salad, a yam, some garlic mashed potatoes and some collard greens.  I’ve never had collard greens in my life, but I figured this was my chance to try them. They were yummy. To top it all off, ALL the food made here is free of preservatives, hormones, etc etc… the salad bar had ALL organic veggies.  (It also had a bakery, a coffee station, a made to order sandwich deli, a smoothie bar, etc etc etc….)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other reasons I love Whole Foods Markets is they have all the health and beauty products I like and use which are free off added preservatives and toxins… and they have lots of other “green” and earth saving items.  *Sigh* if only one would come to Lodi!!!

Flowrider

Yesterday we took all the boys to Elk Grove to try the Flowrider, an indoor surf simulator.  Here is a pic of it without the water flowing…… Kev and the boys were on it for one hour.  You basically get a “turn” and once you wipe out, you get in line to try it again. 

Here are some pics of Kev and the boys in action…. at first I tried getting only pictures of them successfully standing or flowriding… but then I decided it was more fun to get pictures of them falling! 

Kevin

 

Matt

Sorry the falling pic is so blurry, there is a plastic guard in front of the flowrider to keep the water from coming out.

 

  

Aaron  

 

 

Austin

       

    

Joey- no “falling” picture because he just used the boogie board each time.

 Little Kevin – holding up the wall while watching his dad and brothers.

 

The boys LOVED it and want to go back again.  I was the Japanese tourist with the camera the whole time. Haha. The cool thing is they have a live web cam link on their website so all the grandmas and their Nina Jenny were able to see them LIVE while we were there! 

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th everyone! Here is a jello dessert I made called Patriotic Layers. You can see the recipe here.  Of course the one on the Jello website has PERFECTLY straight and even layers.  Mine.. not so much…..  but fun to make anyways.  Have a great day!

Food Grade Diatomaceous Earth

Since I’ve been into all these non toxic and “green” products, I’ve been trying to find natural weed killers and natural pest control instead of using the toxic kind that might also harm my dogs or other pets.  According to internet searches, Diatomaceous Earth is used to kill all kinds of insect pests ( ants, bedbugs, carpet beetles, centipedes, crickets, cockroaches, earwigs, fleas, grasshoppers, millipedes, slugs,  silverfish, spiders) without harming pets, children and earthworms.  Diotomaceous Earth is odorless and nontoxic and looks like white powder. It is composed of finely milled fossilized shells of minuscule organisms called diatoms. The microscopically fine, sharp edges desiccate the insects’ exoskeletons upon contact and the pests dehydrate and die within hours. The insects also die when they eat the dust.

My mom gave me some in a recycled parmesan cheese container to try in my garden and around my house.  We have ants around the backyard and I have tried spraying vinegar on them…  (read that somewhere online)  but it didn’t keep them from coming back… it only annoyed the ones I sprayed.  A few weeks ago I found the same trail of ants I once sprayed with vinegar still at work.  I powdered the diatomaceous earth near the trail. I kept going back to see if anything happened but it looked the same to me.  A day or so later, that entire ant trail was GONE! And I don’t have to worry about the DE harming my dogs who will eat and lick anything.  (Although they have shown no interest in the DE yet anyhow…) 

 

I just found another ant trail behind my garden box.  A big one… so today I sprinkled some on the trail.  You can see some lovely weeds there too…  now that one I have not figured out yet.  I also tried spraying vinegar on the weeds.. but without much success.  If anyone knows of or has heard of a natural way to kill weeds besides trying to pull them all please let me know!  I pull as many as I can but sometimes its just ridiculous .

 

 

 

Some ants are also invading my nectarine tree. I was trying to follow the ants to their hole. I think I saw a hole in the ground right next to the nectarine tree!!!!!  It sure feels good knowing I can kill these ants without harming my nectarine tree and without adding chemicals or toxins to the nectarines that come off of this tree!

 

Oh and if you decide to use this at your house, my mom told me to be careful not to inhale the DE in your lungs while powdering it.  I tried holding my breath while doing it but found a little mask much easier. Haha. Some websites also say that you can use this indoors.  I haven’t done that yet.  I don’t know if I want to see a white blob of powder in my house anyhow.  I guess that’s better than seeing bugs in the house though.

 

What does this picture have to do with this post?? Absolutely nothing.  Just another chance to see my cute dogs faces.  One day we walked to a Dr. appt near our house.  I sat with the dogs and waited outside while Kevin went in for his appointment.  I took this picture of them while we were waiting.  I think they look like they are waiting for a bus or something!!  Anyways, happy bug hunting.