Meet Cruz Dale

This little guy is our first nephew. He was born September 22 at 4:12 pm, weighing in at 8 lbs 1 oz, and 21 1/4" long. We haven't seen him yet but we will get to soon and I can't wait. It might be hard to leave without taking him with me, but it won't be too much longer til we get to see ours on the big screen again (Friday Oct. 3 1:00pm).

The Nesting Begins

We had to take out the carpet in the living room. It was pretty gross and I wasn't about to leave it for my kid to crawl around on. So we took out the carpet in the living room, hall, and one bedroom (the rest of the house is government VCT tile, commercial type stuff). This is what the floor under the carpet looked like. It would have taken a zillion hours and a ton of work to refinish the floors, especially since it was two different colored stains. So we laid laminate flooring on top with the help of Jeremy and Jen. It only took a day, starting at 10, with breaks, done by 6.
You can see the two different colors. Our house was one of the last homes owned by the Town of Fort Peck, and it wasn't really taken care of. But when are rentals taken care of?

And after. We did the livingroom and dining room. I ordered the carpet for the hall and three bedrooms last week. Our flooring projects should be done by the end of next month, with the exception of the bathroom and kitchen, both of which will take much more than just flooring.

The Dog Days of Summer

I can't imagine a tougher life. A few weeks ago Cindy, Mesa, and I went to Billings for a "girl's weekend" full of shopping, lounging in the pool, stuffing ourselves with Mexican food...Mesa took advantage of a weekend at the pool without Abby and Landon. As you can tell from this picture, she really enjoyed herself. What a lazy bum.

The Moment You've All Been Waiting For

Finally, I have a reason to post (besides hunting or fishing). Yes, I am indeed prego. The little "bean" is 16 weeks 6 days old today. I'm due February 14, 2009, or any other day two weeks before or two weeks after that date. These ultrasound pictures are from week 8 and not the clearest. My next appointment is October 3rd. Until then I'm looking for wives tales for determining the sex, so if you have one, post it. We haven't decided if we're finding out what the "bean" is, so if you have a prediction, post it.

More Fishing Of Course

You might wonder why I put a picture of Landon swimming on our blog. You may also notice he is swimming with a shirt on. What you can't see is why he is swimming. He is swimming because Mike tried to net a fish and he needed to extent the handle to reach it. Well, the net didn't click together right and the net end went flying into the water. It is aluminum and was starting to sink. It was such chaos in the boat that Landon, not willing to lose a net, jumped in after it. The water was about 70 degrees-cold enough that I would have had to buy a new net. It's always comical to me what he will do for one of his fishing things. Last year Mike even went scuba diving for a rod Landon and his dad, Dave, lost in a tournament. Now that's dedication.

Landon's mom, Karen, and Mike came over for a weekend o' fun. We went to the play and went fishing. Landon let us catch all the fish, these two at the same time (they're lake trout for those of you who haven't educated yourselves with the previous fish identifying post). Don't worry, both of the fish lived. We only kept one out of the five to eat.

Too Lazy to Find a Bigger Patch of Shade

I had to take this picture of Mesa. She had been laying in the front yard most of the day, moving with the shade of the teeny tiny tree. If she would have just moved to the north about 20 feet she'd have been in the shade the whole day-without moving. Or she could have moved to the shade in the back yard, or to the other side of the house with shade from the neighbors tree. She just has to be in the front where she can see everything that is going on. It think it was about 90 degrees that day, which normally she likes and would lay on the black rug on the front steps. Dogs sure do wierd things.

My Very Thoughtful Husband

My husband, by all accounts, is a 27 year old adult. He is responsible, dependable, honest, dedicated, and mostly recently he has let his thoughtfulness shine through. Why, just last night as we were sitting at the table, waiting for the dishes to do themselves, he tells me that there are frogs in the tupperware in his lunch box. He found them at work. WHAT POSSESS' A GROWN MAN TO BRING HOME FROGS IN HIS LUNCH BOX? I'll tell you what-fishing. At least he was thoughtful enough to tell me they were in there BEFORE I started doing dishes and found them myself. Thankfully, he took the frogs and Abby and left before they got loose. He will most likely bring more frogs home tonight-there is a catfish tournament on Saturday night and frogs make good bait. If all his fishing and hunting wasn't putting meat on our table, I would have gone crazy by now. All I can do is shake my head and hope these "lessons" help me when we have kids.

Stinky Pete

Meet Pete. He's a stray Westland Terrier that was found in a raceway at the Fort Peck Multi Species Fish Hatchery. Landon felt sorry for him and brought him home. He was really matted and smelly so he had to stay outside. Then the cold weather came back. I told Landon he could come inside but he had to have a bath first (notice the hot pink gloves). So this is Landon giving Pete a bath. He had to wear rubber gloves because Pete stunk so bad and we weren't sure what he had for bugs.

He cleans up pretty nice. We had him on Tradio and the Dog Gone Show for about 10 days before someone took him. We never found his real owner, but did find someone who wanted him. I told Landon we weren't keeping him and if we did that he couldn't have another lab until we were down to one dog. And since we all know that small dogs live longer than big dogs, he would have ended up hunting with a Westie or a Chihuahua and that didn't sit well with him, so Pete had to go even though we were attached. I'm afraid our kids may inherit the "bringing home stray animals all the time" gene from Landon.

More Fish Work

This link will take you to the Billings Gazette Outdoors section (I think) with the article about Pallid Sturgeon and a picture of Landon with a fish he caught. http://billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/05/15/features/outdoors/28-sturgeon.txt

The Ground Is Just Not Good Enough

I guess the hammock works the same if it's upside down. She was sleeping until I got the camera. She just doesn't like laying on the ground, but she'll run through the smelliest mud to retrieve a duck, what a weirdo.

This is what's left of Abby's chair after one year. She just sits in it like a human, so we're not sure how they get destroyed so fast. She'll sleep in it all night if we let her (using the arm rest for her pillow)