Catching Up - Spring 2010

Blog updates have slowed down a lot, but after attending a wedding this past weekend and being prompted to post some updates, I figured I would go ahead and invest a few minutes. Hmmm, what has been going on....

Well back in January Abbey and I took a trip to Florida to pick up a newly purchased vehicle for a friend and drive it back to Missouri. Here is Abbey with her feet in the Atlantic Ocean in early January while back home Michael and Abbey were off school due to a snow storm.

I'm happy to report that things at work have stabilized after a very rocky 2009. Thankfully I never lost my job although pay cuts were across the board and fully reinstated back in April. Whew. A nice reminder about the importance of saving money and not blowing it all.

In the spring the strawberries started producing like crazy and Michael invited some friends over to have a campout in the backyard for his birthday. This picture was taken the night before his campout after we got the tent set up and while the girls were picking strawberries.

Back in March I bought a new gun, which is about the only thing I actually enjoy shopping for. After charting out all the different options and laboring over each feature, I finally bought a Glock .40 (G26). It is purdy. A man I go to church with is a police officer and after he discovered our mutual interest in firearms he invited me and Michael out to shoot at the police department's shooting range since he is the range officer and weapons instructor. We went out one night after work and shot with a couple of my handguns, the officer's personal assault rifle, and the officer's service pistol. It was a lot of fun, and I learned Michael is an excellent handgun shooter. Here I am shooting my first assault rifle!

And in this shot Michael is using my 17 year old Ruger P89 (9mm), which he loves by the way. You can see the spent casing mid-air.

And this photo opportunity was irresistible. I had to ask if we could pose Michael with the AR and the officer's police car. What I wouldn't have given to have a picture like this when I was 14!!!!

As for other news, Annette's part-time job at Six Flags is going well and we are headed to Branson this summer for vacation. The kids are still on the swim team and loving it. I am about to re-start my partially completed project of drywalling part of the basement, among other things. That's about all of a smattering of things I can think of now. More later. Maybe.

Our Dog, Maggie

In 1999 I began to hunt ducks and geese for the first time, introduced to it by a co-worker. I was quickly hooked and realized that a well trained retrieving dog was just as valuable as a gun. When another co-worker told me her son had a Labrador Retriever who was about to have puppies, I was hooked. Actually the pups were 75% Lab and 25% German Shorthair Pointer, still an awesome hunting mix. One Saturday in February 2002 I drove to the son's home in Tennessee to pick out a pup, and I brought home Maggie.

Maggie was seven weeks old on her first day at home, and Michael was 5, Abbey 4, and Mae was 1, just short of her second birthday. Here is a picture of Maggie's first day at home with Michael and Abbey.

Early on I dedicated myself to training her to retrieve and she took to it very well. We were constantly going to lakes and fields to practice. I checked out a retriever training video at the local library and followed their instructions. In a short time I had Maggie retrieving real birds in addition to "dummies" and also working from hand signals.

In September 2002 she retrieved her first dead goose on our first hunt together. This was the same hunt where my Uncle Jim killed his first goose ever. Though this is a bad picture, it's me and Maggie with her first goose after she went and fetched it out of the water. She was only 9 months old and I've got the goose in my right hand.

Later that same year I captured a very nice picture of Maggie on a late season goose hunt in northeast Missouri. Because Maggie was wearing a Cabela's camo hunting vest, I sent the photo in to Cabela's and they published it in a seasonal flyer they send out. I have copies of that flyer somewhere. This is the picture they published.

As the years went by the kids got older and my affection for waterfowl hunting tapered off, so Maggie became less of a hunting dog and more of a pet. Last December 23 Maggie had her 8th birthday, but it might be her last.

Over the last 14-16 months Maggie's coat has changed considerably. She has gone from a deep chocolate to a rusty/orangey color and her hair is brittle. Now she pants a lot, drinks tons of water, and recently developed infected sores on her body and ear infections. She was due for vaccinations last week so I took her in. Instead of vaccinations we did bloodwork, and the results are in. She has Cushing's disease. I had never heard of it before but it's caused by a tumor which forces the overproduction of a chemical in her body, creating every symptom she has. I didn't realize it, but she has lost 13 pounds since her last visit to the vet. Muscle mass wastes away and now her ribs and spine are visible. Treatment options are outrageously expensive and don't prolong her life, so here we are. Tonight we told the kids that our time with Maggie is limited and that she won't make it to old age, like 12. I assume it will be much less. She has been a good dog, a really good dog, and I know that even though a dog can get on your nerves, we will miss her.

Here is a picture I took today and you can see we have Maggie's elbow bandaged due to infected skin sores. She is losing her coat now - the disease causes that. The hair around her neck is gone and her belly is almost bald. Eventually she'll have hair on nothing but her head and legs, if she makes it that long. Eight years isn't that long for a dog to live, so we are very sad, but it's still eight years with a great dog that we are glad to have. These pictures were taken about two hours before Annette and I told the kids Maggie is terminally ill.

The Snow Falleth

I've often heard people say, "We just don't get as much snow around here as we used to. Remember when we were kids? There was a ton of snow." Well, I was a kid in the 1970s and I just learned a few weeks ago through a weather trivia type link on a St. Louis news webpage that the 1970s included three record setting years for snowfall, making the 1970s a very snowy decade, so yes, the 80s, 90s, and 00s have seen less snow than "when we were kids."

But if you live in the St. Louis metro and you trust Dave Murray, then we were told this could be a snowy year. So far I wouldn't yet call it "snowy," but we've gotten a couple decent dumps. This past Friday I took off work while the snow fell but the kids headed to school, only to be released early due to an all-day snowfall. While the snow fell, I stepped onto our deck and took this photo of our backyard:

The snow was very wet which made it heavy to shovel, but also excellent for snowballs and snowmen. Today (Saturday, 2/6), I was outside with the kids just doing a couple jobs when, not surprisingly, someone started a snowball fight and I was all too happy to participate. Here are a couple shots of the fight:

Here is one I really like - Michael letting go of a snowball aimed directly at my butt while I was bent over trying to reload and hit Abbey. (Notice the snowball in flight - thankfully it missed the mark!)

We also went to work on a snowman and we built the biggest snowman we ever have.

Oh, and we're supposed to get 6 - 8 more inches in the next couple days!

Annette Got a Job!

Annette has looked for part time work that fits her schedule and that is hard to come by because she likes to be available to substitute teach and be close to the kids on school days, but she recently landed a summer job at Six Flags, where she worked as a teenager. The pay isn't great but the hours are just right (or so it would seem) and we get all kinds of amusement park perks.

Oh, and here are a couple pictures of the kids taken on a January thaw day. All the pent up frustration came up and while their bodies may have enjoyed the exercise, at least one ended up unhappy!