Brightly Colored Salamanders

Whole chicken in the crock pot. It was a new recipe for me and the first time I've put a whole chicken (or mini-turkey) in the crock pot so I was a little sketchy about how it'd turn out. Would it cook all the way through? Would it be dry? Would it be good?? Lemme just say that the recipe was fall-off-the-bone AWESOME!

The aftermath of one of Legion's "sticks" from the woodpile... And lemme just say how F-U-N it is to clean this up when we don't have a well-functioning vacuum...

Look grampa, they get cereal with bananas for breakfast too!

Our frosty front yard!

More holiday goodness!!

We got our Costco tree on Friday and set everything up on the following Sunday. Last year, we were so unmotivated to get the decorations up and probably wouldn't have had Josh's parents not come to stay with us. This year, we couldn't wait! Mostly, I think we couldn't wait to see Legion try to take down the tree because he thought it was a stick for him....

Let me set the mood..... Gina and I were being lazy last weekend and falling asleep in the living room. Hayden was fast asleep at Gina's feet , Legion was sleeping upside down (probably to cool himself off ????) on one of the dog beds near the floor lamp, and Abbi, well Abbi is very put out that I would not share the love seat with her and that Hayden had already laid steak to her favorite spot next to her mom.... Well, after several disappointing attempts to convince me to reconsider and several stare-downs and high pitched, but soft whining sessions, she relented. She then decided she wanted to snuggle under a blanket as she often does. She scooped at the blanket several times and finally gets under and decides now that she is under the blanket she just needed to find a comfy place to blindly lay down. she started at the mid section of the couch when first getting under the blanket , but now had no idea where she was after frantically trying to get under her blanket. Unknown to her she was dead center of the room between the end of the couch and the fire place. I could see her look right then left then right again. She then decides to try to get out of the blanket to see where she is going to finally lay down. Now, however she is completely entangled in her own blanket and cannot get out. So she does the only logical thing, she runs full tilt in one direction. Well her direction of travel was straight into the couch, then thatsolved nothing, so she then turned 180 degrees and ran the the other direction right over Legion (who was sound asleep) tripping over him startling him into kicking his feet that in return kicked Abbi whom by this time had already stumbled into the wall and had turned and ran back over towards the couch. And was still entangled in a panic blindness of blanket horror. Legion then knocked over the floor lamp, which toppled over and hit Abbi ( not hurting , but she thought she was being killed, she bolted for the bedroom still covered by the blanket crashing into a crate on the way out. Gina is slowly waking up to my laughter and of course the comotion. We vthen listen for Abbi's return which did not happen very soon. We here the panting of the terrified princess out on the back patio and then the long sobering lapping of what seemed to be gallons of water to chase away the reality that the light was going to kill her while she was blind and still not cuddled up next to her mom.
The moral of this story is: Abbi is crazy
Abbi thinks the moral of this story is mom is a jerk for letting Hayden stay there instead of her, dad is a jerk for being selfish for not sharing the loveseat, Legion is a jerk for trying to kill her with a lamp and blankets are nice and cozy, but don't ever trust them.

I'm sure to the great dismay of the leaf-lickers, we've been using the heck outta the fireplace! We haven't turned the heater on at all since it's been chilly here. But I think that's more because I'm a bit of a cheap-o.... Hey, that's what blankets are for, right?? And when you have about 215 pounds of DOG on you, it tends to be a bit toasty.