More animals

In April of 2007 our cat was very pregnant. She had eluded us when we had made an appointment for her to go to the vet, and so she ended up pregnant before we could do anything about it. One day she disappeared for a long time. Then she showed up very skinny. So we searched and searched for the babies and couldn't find them. We followed her eventually (without her noticing) and she went under our neighbor's house. We attempted to talk to the neighbor, but the adults wouldn't answer the door and the little girl wouldn't listen when we tried to tell her there were kittens under her house. So we just assumed we wouldn't ever meet the babies. Then about 4 weeks after they had been born the cat showed up to eat breakfast and there was a kitten on the porch. Then the next day, there was another kitten on the porch. Then the next day another kitten showed up. They were all wild and afraid of us, so we had to wrap them in towels to even hold them without getting scratched. I took them all to the vet because they had nasty, crusty eyes, and got Ghost's shots. She was scheduled to get spayed and we were left to try to tame them.

This is the kittens playing on the porch with Ghost. Whenever we came outside the female baby would run and hide. It took the longest to tame her, but then she became the sweetest of all three.



By this time Shawn ended up being laid off and we were wondering how we would feed this many kittens. So we went to Pets Inc and got the kittens signed up for the weekend program. We would drop them off on Saturday morning and then, if they weren't adopted we would pick them up on Sunday afternoon. They each got collars with their own id number on them. They got the rest of their shots there. This is them all in our dining room waking up because we were taking pictures.



The orange kitten was adopted first, after only 2 or 3 weeks. About a month later the gray boy was adopted. But the little girl was very unhappy whenever she was at Pets Inc and her wonderful personality was never shown. We had her for almost 6 months and kinda got attached to her. We have tons of pictures of her and so we took some of them and made a flier describing her to put on her cage when she went to Pets Inc. The very first day she had the flier she was adopted. They called to tell us she had been taken by an older couple. Someone out there has a very wonderful and sweet lap kitty. This was her sitting on my lap while I was on the computer.



Before we bought our house we ended up rescuing a stray dog. She found our house (after obviously being dumped on the side of the road). We did the exact wrong thing; we fed her. Our land lady lived next door and didn't like the dog staying around. She called the pound, and before they came we got the dog in our truck and took her to my parents house. So she lives right next door to Goldie. We named her Katie because she was a lost dog, and there was a character named Kate on the show Lost. Of course she doesn't know her name and just comes when you call for her or whistle. She is a very energetic dog and it was hard to take her picture. This is her wanting Shawn to pet her.



When she finished eating she finally settled down and posed very nicely. One day we plan on fencing our backyard in and bringing the two dogs over to our house. Until then we just visit them at my mom's whenever we can.

Animal Kingdom

When I was 16 I got a dog for my birthday. She was the last puppy in the litter. No one had chosen her because she was the smallest. We took her home and she was named Annabelle. He mother had been a golden retriever and her father was a springer spaniel. She loved the water and would run to the creek next to our house to go swimming. She was very hard to take pictures of because she would always run up to you to lick you or jump on you. The easiest thing to do was have someone take a picture while you held her. A little over a two years ago she died. She had gotten pretty old and was moving a lot slower, but it was still hard to lose her.



From her last litter of puppies we kept one because she was the smallest one and because she had her back leg broken as a tiny puppy and had trouble running. I didn't want someone to take her and then get rid of her if she got worse. This was her at about 6 months old. As you can tell, the golden receiver came out strong in her.


She is a very lively dog and loves to swim too. However, with her weak back leg she doesn't get in very deep water because she isn't strong enough to swim against the current. We've had to "rescue" her from the other side of the creek before. This is her a few weeks ago.



Now, the baby goats are over a month old and are very lively and bouncy. They are also scared of people (just like their parents). These are the first two that were born.



These are the other two (each have different moms). This was the closest I could get to them without them running away. I zoomed in on them as well. You can't really get any closer than about 6 feet from them before they run away.



There is still at least two goats that haven't had babies yet. So we shall see when that happens.

Torturing the Cat

We sometimes do things that some might call torture. Our cat will handle whatever we do to her for a short time. Then she gets aggravated and won't put up with it anymore. We do simple things like putting a plastic bag on her, but there are other things we do that get photographed.

Here we took leftover fleece from the blanket I made my brother and fashioned a scarf for her. This was the best pose of all the pictures we took. The other ones she just looked like she was walking backwards trying to get rid of it.



Last Christmas we bought a little sweater for our cat to wear in a Christmas picture. It was a little too small so we ended up getting something else, which will be seen in a moment. This year Shawn took the sweater and cut it to where it would fit her. This was her response (she wanted out immediately).



For Christmas last year we bought a stocking full of cat toys. This was a fishing pole with a fish attached to it. We attempted to get her to play with it, but she would rather sleep.



And of course this is the second sweater we bought for her. This was last year's picture. She grew so much that it barely Velcros closed anymore. And of course she is sitting at the door sending looks of hate at me while I take the picture.



And finally our cat just mostly lounges around. One night she was too hot in her normal spot so she got on the floor and sprawled out under the ceiling fan. She contorts her body about every 20 minutes because she is a cat and that is what they do.

Bad day

Today started out badly and then just got more aggravating. I didn't want to wake up this morning so I ended up waking up kinda late. The whole reason I didn't want to get out of bed was because we ened up going to bed late. I had decided to look something up on the internet last night but before I could do anything the antivirus software popped up saying that we had a Trojan virus. It acts like a worm, infecting files if you open them and then spreading around. So we followed the instructions to disable some programs and them we had to download the "fix" program. When it started running the fix it just froze up part of the way through. So we had to reboot the computer in safe mode (which I have never heard of, but luckily Shawn knew what that meant). Then we had to start the program again. It did its thing but by this time it was after 11 and way past our usual bed time. We had stayed up late to watch the Clemson vs. Duke game (which by the way was incredible, but Shawn was not enjoying it because he is a Duke b-ball fan). The instructions had said to run the program twice to ensure that all of the Trojan was erased. So we had to restart and then run the program again. By the time we got in bed it was almost 11:30. I was tired and Shawn felt like he might be getting sick. So I knew I was going to be tired when I woke up.

We ended up not getting out of bed until 5:45, which is late for us. Then I tried to rush around so that we wouldn't leave the house late. The end result was that as we were driving down the road I looked down and realized that I had left my rings at the house. I immediately felt like something was wrong. I haven't gone outside the house without my rings since we were married. Then while I was trying to get a cd out of the console I couldn't get the the cover back on right and it got stuck. At that point I got aggravated and just lost it. So while trying to drive and hold a cd, Shawn fiddled around with it until it came out. Then I put the cover back on.

Oh, and to top things off, it was 19 degrees when we left the house. That is cold. I honestly don't remember having this many days of consecutively cold temperatures. It stays chilly in our offices and we keep our thermostat set at the same temp all winter long so our house was even feeling a little chilly. I love cold weather but this is crazy.

Unless our comuter at home is experiencing more problems then I will add more pictures later.

More rooms

Rather than scanning in pictures that I had already taken, I went around and took more pictures with the digital camera. Our old printer/scanner combo is not Vista compatible so you can't just push the scan button anymore, so I am not scanning pictures in for a while because I have to learn how to do it again. Anyway, these are pictures of the kitchen (which I painted most of, Shawn just did around the ceiling and floor) and our bedroom.

This is the kitchen looking from the laundry room. In the background you can see the breakfast area.



This is the kitchen from the breakfast area. Not much to look at other than mess.



This is the wall on the right side as you walk in the bedroom. The white wall in the door way is the hall/bathroom area. When we get paint for that we are also getting a new paint color for the walls. It will be a light rose color above the chair rail and a darker rose on the bottom with the lighter color for the bathroom. The room is set up so that when you come in the bedroom door you have a sink on your left side right across from the closet. Then next to the closet is the room with the tub and toilet. Once you pass the "bathroom" you walk through a door frame into the main bedroom.



This is the wall on the left side as you walk into the room. We just moved all the furniture around so this is something even my family hasn't seen yet.



This is the view right as you walk into the door. The bed is against a bay window so it looks like a wall of fabric, but they are all curtains. The bay window is also in the dining room. The paint we are looking at getting matches the border of the comforter. The chair is one of a pair that Shawn's mom bought at a second-hand store and cleaned up. It had been a lot darker. It is actually pretty comfortable. Between the nightstand and the fan you can see the cart that my sewing machine is on. I really would like to have more room for crafting type stuff, but we don't always get what we want.



Whenever we paint (after we get our tax refund) we will take more pictures and show the new room off.