Marian's Trip

 Dan took Marian on a little trip to Washington, D.C. just because we love her.  She got to spend the weekend with her very best friend and she had a great time.  As part of her make-up for missing 2 days of school, she had to make a power point about D.C., so Dan had to take her out to see some stuff for that.

Saying goodbye to my girl at the airport. 

Here she is with her dad, all ready to go!  She was so ready to go that she was wheeling her suitcase towards the door while I was hugging Dan goodbye!

Dan was pretty good about getting her picture taken with things around D.C. 

I especially love that she loosened up enough to pose with this one! 

 Of course they had to stop by the Iwo Jima Memorial.  Marian said this was her favorite.

They went to Arlington and got to see an awesome funeral procession.  

Dan had several pictures of it and they were all cool, but this was my favorite.  Nobody does pomp and circumstance like the military! 

Marian was so impressed with these blue chips at the USO in the airport that she had to have a picture of them!  She raved about how great they were.

They had a good trip.  Sadly, Marian ate too much junk at the USO and the angst of leaving Adrian, combined with travel, and the too-full tummy proved to be too much for her.  She made it all the way home before she threw up, which earned her another day off of school.  Her power point presentation went well.  I don't know if it was a success because of the information, or because Joshua had so much fun adding extra visual effects for her.

And now for some other children!

I have no idea who took this picture.  Probably Callie, but it just showed up on the Camera.  I love this girl!

Callie wanted to pose with the dog.  He is a really tolerant dog and was happy to let her position him where she wanted.

And Levi was so patient with Rylee.  They were having a very good time playing together and Levi was letting her sit on his head and bounce on him like a pony.  I think Rylee thinks he is her sibling and she treats him that way.  Thank goodness Levi is long-suffering and forgiving!

Growl!

My computer is excruciatingly slow right now.  I would blame the internet, and I know that is part of the problem, but my laptop is moving much faster.  I think it is time to clean up the Mac and see if that helps.  Sadly, I don't think anyone in this house knows how to clean up a computer.  We tend to wait for utter failure before acting on it.  Sigh.

The point of that is to explain why I have not posted.  I have lovely pictures, but I cannot get them to upload.  And the effort of putting them on a thumb drive and moving them to the laptop to share here is just not gonna happen. Well, it certainly won't happen until I'm completely convinced that the Mac is never going to upload them.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Not very Gruntled

I'm feeling grumpy tonight.  I'm not sure if I made poor choices today or not.  Someone is mad at me and I'm not sure they really should be, but maybe.....

Let me start at the beginning.  I was walking Delaney home from school, when 2 dogs came racing across the busy street.  They came to me when I called, and I took them home.  Neither had a collar.

These are the 2 cuties.  We put them in the yard, but they were happier in the house.  Levi was ballistic over having actual friends to play with. 

I took these pictures and posted them on the housing website.  I did say I'd keep them till tomorrow.  

It was an odd contrast.  They were both very friendly, very social, and very happy to put up with the 3 little girls fawning all over them.

See, totally sweet!  But check out the ribs.  You could count every one on this dog.  I put water out and they guzzled the entire dish.  I gave them food and the black dog ate it all in 2 minutes.  I put out more and he scarfed that down too. I put the boxer in the house and gave him a bowl of food, since the black dog was obviously not going to share. It vanished also.

See, all the water, and every rib. And no collar.

But check out the sweet face.  

So, I have 2 dogs now in my yard who are obviously hungry and thirsty, but also obviously comfortable with people and kids.  I realize Dan is coming home tonight and he is NOT going to take kindly to extra animals, and were they to be in the house, he might become apoplectic.  Plus, Levi has discovered that the black dog wants his toys and there is some growling going on.

I know I said I'd keep them till tomorrow before turning them over to animal control, but I realized there was no way I could keep them overnight.  I had assumed they could hang out in the yard, but when left there, they barked and barked. Reality set in and I made the decision to take them over to the local shelter now, rather than later.  What else was I to do with them?

Someone suggested dumping them in the dog park.  I didn't feel comfortable with that.  These dogs were hungry and thirsty and I didn't want to just release them into the dog park.  I had no way of knowing that anyone would get them or that they'd be taken care of at all.  So no, I didn't take them to the dog park and turn them loose.  I drove them to the shelter (which is a no-kill shelter, by the way) and turned them over.  Callie cried all the way home because she loved the dogs and missed them so badly.

So, I get home to a message on facebook that the dogs belong to a lady and she would like them back.  Oops, too late.  I responded that I had taken the dogs to the shelter.  She was not happy.  She is quite cross that it is my fault she has no dogs now and she has to tell her children their dogs are gone, and I should have notified housing (which I did) and I should have put them in the dog park (which I was not going to do at all).

Personally, I wanted to tell her it is her own fault for having dogs with no collars, and why the heck is her dog starving?  I am kind of glad they are at the shelter.  When I turned them in, they commented at the prominent ribs of the boxer.  I hope that they don't let her have the dogs back until she knows how to feed them properly.  My guess is that the black dog steals all the food and the boxer goes hungry.

So, my question is this,  what should I have done?  Based on the information I had, I do not feel bad.  I still do not feel bad.  The dogs had no collars and they were hungry and thirsty.  But this lady is not happy with me.  What would you have done?

Being Humbled

Today Delaney was having a hard time getting up and ready.  She dilly-dallied and screamed and cried when I encouraged her to get her shoes and socks on. Sadly, she was not ready to walk out the door at 7:45.  I sent the other kids on to school and told Delaney for the 5th time that her shoes were upstairs.  This time, instead of screaming "NO they are not!" she actually went up there and found them.  She was still too late to catch up to her siblings, so I had to walk her sad self to school.  Rylee was still in her jammies, and I just plopped her in the stroller with her blanket and off we went.  I was quite grumpy.

I was doubly grouchy because the crossing guards leave the crosswalk 5 minutes before school starts and I watched them walk away.  I was even more grouchy when I watched a man pull up and stop in the middle of the crosswalk, stopping traffic on the busy road so he could dump out 5 children.  Fine, I was a little happy that he had stopped traffic so I could cross the street, but I was still mad enough to shout at him that this was not the proper place to unload children.  I detest people who cannot follow the rules, being a neurotic rule-follower myself.  He looked at me and I shouted, "You can't drop kids off here!" and I'm sure I had the angry mom look in my eye.  He smiled and said, "Thank you."  Talk about deflated!

Then, I got Delaney to the school and she held my hand and looked at me and said, "I'm sorry Mom.  I'll get ready faster tomorrow"  And she smiled at me and she ran off to class.  So I felt pretty sheepish after all my anger.

And I learned something today!  If you are walking the dog up on the levee, and he drops his ball off the side and runs after it.  Do not follow him, thinking you are still young and fit and agile and that you'll just step down far enough to reach the ball.  Odds are pretty good you will embarrass yourself and slide all the way down and then you won't be able to climb back up it and you'll have to walk a ways at the bottom till you get to a road up.

iPad Dump

Dan unloaded the last few months of pictures from his iPad. This means when I went to see what pictures I wanted to share, all I saw were HIS photos.  So I am going to post those, rather than go back to see whatever else was worth sharing.  Yeah, I'm having a lazy day.  Not true, it has been a crazy, busy day and I'm really just tired!

 Dan got to go to Montana a few months ago. In addition to his work stuff, he managed some sight-seeing as well.  He stopped by the Billings Temple.

He also managed a detour through Idaho Falls. 

Which necessitated a trip to Rexburg and Big Judd's, where he has fond memories. 

 And Ricks. He had a good time visiting his old stomping grounds.

There are a bunch of these sort of pictures.  Why are they on the ipad?  Why didn't they get deleted?  Since I know Rylee loves this game, I bet she did this! 

This is a blurry record of the special moment when Joshua got his yellow belt in Karate.   He has moved up to the teen class and is really getting a workout each time he goes to class.  He enjoys it and it is so good for him!

Dan's favorite sign from Vicksburg.  If you look at the movie listings, it says, "Wimpy Kid hit and run campaign".  He found this quite amusing. 

Dan had the opportunity to go out to Braithwaite, where Hurricane Isaac was really damaging.  This is what he saw on the drive out.

Dan spent one Sunday helping to gut this flooded Baptist Church.  Check out all the debris they removed from it.

So I guess what we have here is Life, According to Dan.  Based on the pictures from his camera, I think we can tell a lot about him!