Early Morning Excitement!

There's nothing quite as exciting as waking up at 4:15 am to find police right outside your house! Woo!

As I looked outside, I could see the police car, lights on, but no other cars. Then I spotted the police officer running up the street. My first thought was a raid!

So I popped my head out the front door, and found not a raid, but this!
One of the neighbor's cars was on fire! And it was making little explosions! That was enough to drive me back inside. But within another minute, 2 firetrucks had arrived and those guys had the fire out pretty quickly.
It was hard to get back to sleep after that, and before I knew it, it was time to get up.

First order of business? Pictures!
Boy, that thing was toasted!
So that was our excitement today. No word on the cause yet. We'll have to see if we can get the scoop from some of the neighbors.

Busy weekend!

Joe and I took advantage of the gorgeous morning weather and took a nice long bike ride this morning. What a great way to start the day!

After lunch, I spent some time working on that little workbench project. It's coming along nice and is almost done:
I know, simple, but functional and inexpensive. What do you think?

It's been about 2 weeks since we have seen that pesky squirrel. Maybe she finally got the hint and found a new place to try and make home. While out patrolling this afternoon, Max and I came across this visitor:
Max tried to sniff it, but he/she decided that was a little too personal and hopped away into the neighbor's yard.

Finally, I have one more zoo picture to share:
This was from the butterfly exhibit. There were so many and they were all so colorful.

Everyone having a great weekend?

Enjoying the Zoo

Joe's sister and her husband came up for the weekend and we went to the Minnesota Zoo! I went a little camera crazy and took over 200 pictures. I think I'll only share a few... :p

This guy was preparing to attack - inside the fake prey was some sort of food stuff.
He/she knocked it down, his/her sister came over and stole it. Not fair after all the work to get to it!

On the funnier side, the little prairie dogs were cute as ever and provided lots of entertainment:
I love horses, and some day we will have 2 ourselves. These are Asian wild horses (or was it wild Asian horses?):
Wait! What's this wild creature!??
Oh. That's me. Never mind. Let me tell you, the little tunnel to get to this pop-up in the middle of the meerkat exhibit was clearly meant for smaller kids! But that didn't stop me!

Finally, this little monkey decided to take a giant leap and surprise-attack another older monkey:
It did this a few more times before the older one go tired of it and walked away.

All in all, a fun time and a great way to spend the day outdoors.

Back with a vengance

Joe told me when I got home, I would NOT be happy. But he wouldn't tell me why. I did not expect to see this!
What is it? That little bastard rodent from hell is back, and is on a mission!
That squirrel has eaten 3 holes in the deck screens already, and Joe caught him/her this morning eating from the hanging basket, and trying to chew it's way into the enclosed porch!
It's literally eating our deck!

It must be stopped. Nothing is out of the question now....this, is war.

Finally!

The fence people were back out today to finish up the job. And we are pleased with the results!We had them put in a wooden gate, which we think looks a little nicer than the chain gate: And the verdict from His Majesty?I AM FREE! THIS IS ALL MINE! I LOVE IT!

So, we think this was a good thing.....

Heaven....

...is being surrounded by oodles of cute puppies! In this case, dachshund puppies!
Joe and I just happened to stumble across a lady that breeds dachshunds, and she had puppies. This guy is the brother to the guy above, and they were sooo cute and fun to play with.

And yes, that is our camera bag. He really really liked it :p

She also had a relatively new litter of these chocolate dapple rascals:
It was her idea to line them all up for a family picture, not mine. I swear!
3 males and 1 female, about 4 weeks old. She also had 2 other litters that were about 4-5 weeks old. Joe had to drag me out of there. I think the breeder lady was worried I might just never leave.....

Countdown to Freedom!

For Max, that is. Ever since we moved in, Max has been tied to a leash in the back yard, since the house did not have a fence. After getting a few quotes last fall, which we rejected, we finally found a reputable place that was more in line with what we were thinking it should cost. And they started yesterday! They had some pretty fun tools - like thsi post-hole digger: They mixed the cement out front, and then the poor guy had to wheel-barrow it all the way up the hill in the back.
Not a job I would envy. But after only about 2 1/2 hours, all the posts were in.
They will be back in a week or so to finish up, and then Max will have full run of the entire yard! This makes Max very happy.

It's Project Time!!

Thankfully, this one does NOT involve any remodeling, wall removal, electrical work or any of the other nigthmarish things we took on with our Maryland house!

This is just a simple workbench project. I did an official Jeff sketch for my plans:
...and we picked up some lumber yesterday. Woo!

We started the frame this afternoon:
I made 2 of these, before running out of screws. Grrr!

This should just take a few weekends to wrap up. Then we will get really organized in the garage!

Enjoying the Weather

We have been looking for a pick-your-own farm to get some strawberries, and settled on Afton Apple after seeing it on the news. Not too far away, it turned out be a great trip. And fruitful. Very fruitful. 14 pounds fruitful. Haha. Thank goodness we love strawberries!

Aside from the berries, they also have a small petting zoo area set up, and of course, I made a bee-line:
This Llama (or alpaca - does anyone really know the difference?) was very unusual:
And this guy was able to scratch in very interesting places with this set of antlers:
Oh yeah, the berry part....the field was full of plump, juicy strawberries, and we had a blast!