Long Time No Blog

Since it’s been over a month since Rachel’s last blog entry (I’ve been nagging her to get it going!) I thought I’d share what I’ve been up to. I am sure Rachel will go over “Thunder Over Louisville,” foster stuff and so on with plenty of pictures to share.

The Bats are off to a great season and are currently in 1st place in their division. I’m of course busier than ever and the next stretch of games will be a long one. We have games from this Thursday to next Thursday that include two of my “Education Days” with my second “Dog Day” in the year coming up in the next homestand in June. I’m even “catering” (I’m using the term lightly) for the players/coaching staff on one of the days. I’ll be making 180 mini sandwiches out of Hawaiian Sweet Rolls and meat, cheese and a butter/garlic/onion/poppy seed topping. A thanks goes to Kristin for the recipe! If you were at our open house last January you know exactly what I’m talking about….soooo good!

Joe and Huff made a couple trips down to see us in the last few weeks. The first time they stopped by on their way to Nashville with a couple of friends to go to a Dave Matthews Band concert. And then a couple weeks later Joe, Huff and Taylor came down to see a game. Visitors are always welcome!

I finished a garage project the beginning of this month. Of course, it took longer than I expected, like it always does, but it’s done and serves its purpose. I should have taken a “before picture” to show how much the garage was in disarray. One whole wall was cluttered with things stacked on top of each other and we could fit both of our cars in, just barely. I found some pictures online of different shelving designs and settled on this one because it is adjustable.


We have also taken out the rocks that lead from our deck to the garage and replaced it with stepping-stones with grass (if it grows) in between them. We don’t have the best of soil around here so getting things to grow is a trial to say the least. The area is seeded with some green spots as of right now. Some other projects that I’d like to see done this summer is refinishing the deck, staining the fence and starting in on some landscaping. We’ll see what happens!

Dog Day!

Wiley's ready for Dog Day at Slugger Field tomorrow. He's sporting his new "Adopt Me" bandana! Hopefully someone will fall in love with him!

All the pretty babies...

This is the "M" litter, babies to Madeline. These babies are about 5-weeks old now, starting to use the litterbox and crunching on some dry food. They play each other and with mom, climb their little single level condo and are playing with toys.
Mirium
Mary
Martha

This is the "J" litter, babies to Jewell. These kittens are about 4 -weeks old, wanting to start exploring a bit and moving with less wobble. They wrestle with each other but can't see well enough yet to play with toys.
Janis (f)Josie (f)Jade (f)Joan (f)Josie (f)Jasper (m)-flame point!Jimi (m)

In other pet news...we took in Wiley's "yard-mates" because their owner was being evicted. So we are very, VERY temporarily housing "Malachi" and "Doll", two 1-yr old Lab/St. Bernards or Labernards. They had a similar life as Wiley, chained to their dog houses...but they're going to a better life! A rescue in Chicago is taking them this Saturday! Yay!On a sad note, Gypsy prolapsed again Tuesday night. She went to the vet on Wednesday to have it "corrected" and now she's on another round of trial meds/food to see if we can prevent this from occuring again. She is such a beautiful sweet cat, it's so frustrating that this is happening to her.

Kitten Season

Now is the time of year when the kittens are popping out right and left! So, for the second spring in a row, we are fostering kittens, be they orphans or mamas with babies.
The Sunday after we got back from our trip, we picked up mama cat, Jewel, and her 7 (!!) 3-wk old babies. You can tell she's been down this road before because she is very protective of her brood and is taking great care of them. We've named her two boys, Jasper and Jimi, and her 5 girls, Jade, Janis, Joan (Joni), Jovi, and Josie. All the names are either gemstones or singers:)
Then, a few days later we acquired mama cat, Madeline, who is not much more than a kitten herself! She has 3 little girls that we named Mary, Martha and Mirium. They are a bit older than the first litter at 5 weeks old.

I'm sure glad we have the mamas this time around! Bottle feeding 10 babies this young would not be very fun. A few of the girls in the "J" litter have not been gaining weight like they should, so we've tried moving the big boys over to the "M" litter for a few hours a day...hopefully the little girls will catch up this way. Plump babies are healthy babies! I'll post again with individual pics on the babies so you can see how darn cute they all are:)This is Janice...she's the runt of the "J" litter....more cuteness to come!

The Much Needed Vacation

We just returned from our much needed vacation at Fort Myers Beach, Florida. Mom, Dad, Curtis and I flew down (thanks for the tickets) on Sunday to stay in my Uncle Bill's condo (thanks for the lodging). We had a wonderful time, best vacation we've had since our honeymoon! My uncle's condo is very beautiful with panoramic views of the Gulf and the bay. The weather was perfect, 75-85 every day, no rain...a little breezy but we didn't mind. We saw dolphins every day, went to a Twins game at their spring training facility, took an airboat ride in the Everglades, rented bicycles to go to the shops, walked beaches, including Lover's Key, Bowman Beach on Sanibel Island and of course Fort Myers Beach. The week went by so fast...we wish we could have stayed for two. Here are some pictures from our week away from it all...Just stepped out of the Fort Myers Airport and waiting for our ride.
Living room of condo looking towards lenai...you can see the bay out the window in the living room.Here's a view of our condo. We were in the penthouse suite, 10th floor, on the right hand side of the picture.This was at Hammond Stadium, spring training site for the Minnesota Twins.

Nice view of Fort Myers Beach from the pier. Sunbathing on Fort Myers Beach off of the Chapel Rd. beach access. We slathered ourselves in sunscreen and managed to avoid the burn for the most part.
One of many beautiful sunsets we watched from the condo.
Curtis, Dad and Mom waiting on our Airboat ride in the Everglades!
View of the propeller in the airboat...amazing how those things work! I don't know how fast we ended up going, but it was FAST...thought we were going to fly out a few times!
Brown Pelican that landed on our boat. These birds are abundant in this area, we saw tons of them everyday.
There were no alligators on our airboat ride, but they told us where we could find them. During the "dry season" the 'gators move inland for "sweeter" water. We didn't see any manatees during this trip...Mom and Dad saw them everyday when they came in August of last year.
We saw plenty of alligators, large and small, at just this one site...I was glad they were inland.
Curtis and I drove over the bridge to Sanibel Island and Captiva. We weren't that impressed with Captiva...just a bunch of huge mansions that you can barely see behind their gated entrances. Sanibel was very cool though. We went to Bowman Beach ($2/hr) and were amazed by the seashells. They were literally everywhere...there are more shells than sand!
There were so many beautiful birds on this trip, but this Great White Heron takes the prize. He was on Sanibel Island, about four feet away from a couple in beach chairs, begging for the meat of their turkey sandwich, haha.
There is a greyhound track in Fort Myers/Naples so we went to see a few races. I WILL adopt one of these dogs someday!
Our favorite beach was Lover's Key. We walked around the point to the Gulf side and found a little inlet where there was little wind. Behind us was protected area, very natural, very rugged and beautiful.
I made a sand manatee, since we didn't see any real ones.
Curtis loved our little private beach...he had fun taking pictures here.Lover's Key had lots of driftwood and fallen trees. This one was really cool because it had hundreds of seashells stuck on the root system. It looked like a christmas tree decked out with ornaments.
We saw wildlife on this beach as well, including osprey (w/nests) and these horseshoe crabs.
Osprey on its nest. A male and female kept collecting sticks and adding to the nest.
We finally hit the condo's pool on our last afternoon in Florida...we had to wash of the sand from the beach without dirtying up the condo we'd just cleaned that morning.
And then we were back in the airport...2 hr delay on our flight this time, didn't back to Indianapolis until midnight.

Flying makes vacations worthwhile. Planes can just transport you to a different world in a fraction of the time, where you can forget your troubles and stresses, without any effort on your part to get to that destination. But, those planes can just as quickly, bring you back and plop you back down into the "real" world, where it's still rainy and cold and summer weather is still months away.

Leslie and Travis are there at the condo this week and I'm sure they're having a great time as well. Curtis and I hope to be able to go and vacation there again next year...possibly in the fall, with hopes of seeing Manatees and Sea Turtle Nests!

Foster Free!...or so we thought!

Neela was adopted last weekend to a lovely couple, so we are free of fosters for a few weeks!

Or so I thought...

Then we found a stray dog stuck on our hill with a choker chain and tie-out chain on, wrapped around all the brush. He'd been down there for several days when our neighbor finally realized he hadn't really moved from that same spot and came and told Curtis. He was so hungry and thirsty. Even though we were reluctant to return him to an owner who would chain him out with a choke chain, I made signs and posted them in town. Curtis got the call last night from his owner, who admitted she'd been trying to find a new home for him. She ended up just giving us a $20 to offset cost of feeding and letting us have him. So now we have a foster dog...his name is Wiley. He looks like a little black coyote, don't you think?He likes to try to climb into your lap and snuggle, even though he's a bit too big for that.He loves to fetch tennis balls and frisbees and just to be loved on! I've promised him he'll never be chained again. He'll also be off to the vet soon to take away some of that testosterone...

Fun with Photoshop

Ok, most of you know, I have an extremely beautiful and talented sister, Leslie. Last spring, she was singing in a wedding and the photographer, Polina Osherov, took a stunning photograph of her during her song. Leslie was considering advertising herself "officially" as a wedding singer to make some extra income and I suggested she ask Polina to use the image. Polina approved so I took the image and "extended the canvas" in Photoshop and added Leslie's information. I also changed it to black and white, so it (hopefully) won't cost as much to print. I only have the 30-day trial photoshop, but it is soooo fun! I might have to track down a permanent copy:)First I just had the info listed and hadn't adjusted the color.Here's the final version with "curved text" and credit to the photographer.