Foster Update

Of our most recent foster cats, Darla, Dulce, Duff, Biscuit and Mysteria have all been adopted. Dugan and Demi are still in their condo at Feeder's Supply, a local pet store chain here in Kentuckiana.
Moses (green collar) and Noah(blue collar), our two labs that we rescued (see previous post, Anybody Want A Black Lab?), were accepted by an amazing rescue group in Muncie, IN called Adopt-A-Lab. We were very excited because they have a very successful program placing unwanted labs from our region in homes up in New England. So far they have not been adopted yet, but we watch the site regularly for updates on their status. These pictures were taken by the rescue the day we took them and if you look at their "before" pictures, it is amazing to see how they transformed in the month that we cared for them. They are absolutely gorgeous!
Speaking of "absolutely gorgeous", this is Neela, our newest foster. We named her Neela because it means "blue" in Sanskrit and she has the most beautiful blue eyes! Also, Neela Rasgotra is a character on ER, one of our favorite TV shows. Neela was a feral kitten trapped by a fellow Shamrock foster but she is not your typical wild barn kitten. Although she is a bit skittish and might hiss if startled, she is very quickly warming up to us and loves to play and be petted. We're going to give her another week to continue coming out of her shell and then we'll post her on the website/Petfinder to be adopted. She's such a pretty thing I'm sure we'll have lots of applications.
We still have our foster cat, Sensei (aka, Stilts), who I will have a hard time parting with. He sleeps with us under the covers at night and is almost ALWAYS in my lap when I'm eating or watching TV. Here is a cute video of Sensei and Gypsy demonstrating the vocalization of the Siamese/Balinese cat. I did get a hit on Petfinder today that sounds like it might be a good one. Hopefully they'll send an application and we can get him into his forever home. He has only strengthened my resolve of someday adopting a retired show Siamese from a RESPONSIBLE breeder. I cannot speak out enough about "backyard breeders" and the like that bring more cats into the world than they can care for, just trying to make some money, and do not take responsibility for them when their owners can no longer keep them!

Christmas in Review, Continued...

On to the Cunningham/Wagner Christmas! There were sooooo many presents!
Here's Aunt Kimberly with little Eli on his first Christmas!Caleb, with his favorite thing in the world...Elmo!!!I love my new chimes! and my nature sound machine to lull me to sleep:)Uncle Curtis and Caleb in their new hats.....and we're spent!Daddy monitoring the candy making process...he serves as quality control. We took the Mint Oreo Truffles to the Dubois Christmas and managed to also make an appearance at the Cunningham Family Christmas! The Hardacre Family Christmas had a great turnout and we used a new facility, Rainbow Christian Camp, and I really liked having it there! There were games for the kids, enough space to move around and a great kitchen for serving dinner. I hope we continue having it there.I participated in the giant gift exchange (Dirty Santa style) for the first time in about 3 years and it was pretty mild and I enjoyed myself...I got what Leslie brought and she got what I brought.Daddy, Leslie, Travis and I went skiing on New Year's Eve at Perfect North Slopes and had a blast! Me, sissy and Travis all tried snowboarding...I stuck with it the longest, but then decided I really didn't want to hurt myself and traded in for some familiar skis.It was a really beautiful day, not too cold, not too crowded.Here are my Christmas decorations...wish we'd had some snow to go with them...I tried to have "candles" in the windows too, but they kept getting broken. Curtis went and bought a TON of christmas lights at Walmart when they dropped in price, so we might be able to light up the whole fence next year!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and safe Happy New Year!

Christmas in Review...

I haven't had much time to blog lately because of family Christmas plans and work being hectic during the holidays...but I don't have to work tomorrow (MLKJr. Day) so I have a minute to catch up! Here are some pictures from our Christmas vacation (we both had a week and half off and it was wonderful)!Here is our beautiful Christmas tree all decorated and lit up!Travis and Leslie came to visit, bringing Milo (our former foster, Nebu) along...he and Hobo had fun playing and playing "King of the Tower." They also left with another kitten adopted through Shamrock.
Sensei is much more tolerant of Gypsy than of Hobo...she was visiting Sensei in the foster room.
Sensei, making himself at home, has joined the "general population" and will tolerate Hobo being this close for short periods of time.And this is Hobo's new trick...I believe he's asking me, "Why is all the rum gone?"
Christmas at the Hardacres... Travis and Leslie with their babies Merlin and Milo.
Curtis's present from me, an air nailer...I expect great things to come from that gift!
Curtis and I with our "haul!"

I will pause now to catch my breath...and continue the review in my next post!

Painting the Kitchen

We've started the changes we want to make in the kitchen. I selected "Spanish Tile" for our new paint color. Here's the before and "after" (I still have a bit of edge work to do...and I might paint under the cabinets a little ways...it will eventually be tiled):
Other things we' have plans to add/change:

*tile the backsplash

*install an "over the stove" microwave

*install under cabinet lighting

*change hardware from gold to black

*trim out windows and opening between the kitchen and dining room

Anybody Want a Nice Black Lab??

Because we have two!

This is Noah...
and this is Moses...
They used to belong to our neighbors, but they kept them chained to trees with no shelter and when we started to see the dogs ribs show, we called animal control. Our county "shelter" has a very high kill rate, so we pulled them to foster.


As you can see, they were so neglected (Noah was downright emaciated) but you'd never know it with how sweet and loyal they are! They've both put on about 10lbs each since these bottom pictures were taken and they're doing great with their crates!

My Uncle's Birthday

I promised my Aunt Barbara that I would post some pictures and a video of my Uncle Rodger's 50th Birthday party, so that my cousin, Brent, could see. So, we'll see if the video will load.

The event was a suprise "roast" and there were lots of family and friends there...After the "roasting" we sang some Karaoke and Barb and Rodger did their standard "I got you babe" by Sonny and Cher and Rodger did his infamous "Soul Man."Little Rodger and Jessica were super funny with their speech that they (and Brent) had written.

½ Second

Curtis writes:

It is amazing what can happen (or not happen) in ½ second. I had a very close call while driving to work last week on I-65. Everything happened so fast that it is hard to take it all in.

I was in the middle lane when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye to my right. It was a gray Dodge Durango coming in my direction in the air. Apparently this driver was going too fast or hit a slick spot on the ramp onto I-65, went down the embankment, hit the road and became airborne. The SUV landed in the lane beside me blowing out its front-left tire and careened across every lane of traffic and about 2 feet in front of me. Pieces of tires, sparks and other shrapnel flew in my direction. The SUV came to rest after hitting concrete median.

At first I was simply amazed at what had just happened. I’m not sure if I even hit the brakes. It was almost a scene out of “Days of Thunder” where the racecar drivers speed up and power through the wreck in front of them. It felt like I just ran a marathon as my legs were cramped from tensing up and I was breathing hard from the excitement of it all.

It took me a few days to realize how lucky I actually was. I brushed it off as an interesting story to a normally mundane drive to work. However, after thinking about it for a while, if I was 6 feet farther than what I was I could have been into the median wall with the Durango. Or, I could have gotten clipped, spun around or even flipped my car.

I am very thankful for every day of my life right down to the ½ seconds.