Nutcracker

This year we're finally going to go see The Nutcracker. We got a deal where I get in for free and Min-Ah gets 20% off so we couldn't resist. Plus it's only a few minutes from home. Should be a good time...

Squirrel Feeder Build Plans

A month ago I built a squirrel feeder that used a one gallon pickle jar to hold the squirrel food (I use unsalted roasted peanuts). We had no squirrels at all the first month then a couple days ago we had our first squirrel. Tira loves squirrels and she just camps in the backyard, rain or shine, and watches for it to return. She'll be in the yard for hours on end, will forget about dinner, and runs around like a crazy girl. This is the best "diet" plan we've found and hope she likes it...

Squirrel feeder plans (774KB)

Tira Tried to Trick Us

Every morning we go through the same routine: we wake up, Tira gets excited, runs downstairs, and waits by the door to go outside. Then she runs out, pees, and runs back in to eat. Recently I noticed she pees really fast so I watched her run fast as she can to the deck stairs, pause, then run back inside. She thought she could fake us out, make us think she peed, then eat her breakfast even sooner. I caught her do that a few mornings in a row so pointed to the yard and told her to go potty, she did, and that fixed that. I wonder what other things she's figured out how she's tricking us...

Reading Bible for First Time

A couple days ago I started a 365 day Bible reading plan using YouVersion's free site. I had been skimming some sections on my iPod Touch using their great Bible program (and all the free translations).

Who Taught Tira That?

Yesterday I was in the backyard with Tira when I noticed a leaf bug on the screen on our deck. It was about five feet up. I called Tira over to show her the new bug and when she saw it she put her front feet up on the railing and swatted the screen twice gently with her paw to get the bug to move. When she did it took off and fly into the yard where she went off to chase it.

She just thought of doing that all by herself. She does little things like that all the time. Another example is when she was little we taught her to go potty in the yard. When she grew up a bit she had to go potty but we weren't paying attention so she rustled the vertical blinds by the back door and looked at us. We'd let her out but she figured that out by herself. She does that all the time now so we don't have to worry about her but recently she'd sometimes rattle the blinds then go to her food bag to try to get a snack. That didn't get her much food but it's nice to see her thinking things through.

Snake!

The other day I finally got around to cutting down a 20ft tall hedge-like tree on the corner of our house. I checked it out for bird nests (the other tree had robin eggs in it so I waited to cut that one down) and saw none so I started sawing it down with an electric chain saw. After I got a few vertical limbs cut down, my dog got Tira got really excited and was looking my way. I went to her and looked around thinking she saw a bird, butterfly, or squirrel but didn't see anything so I went back to the tree to get back to work. The next limb I cut down was a big one and when it hit the ground I saw a 5ft shiny black snake slithering away as fast as it could go. Tira had seen the snake in the tree over my head. I hated to think what would have happened if it had fallen on me when I was cutting the tree down...

I identified the snake as a black rat snake and let it be...not scared of it but I don't like snakes (that's the one thing I have in common with Indiana Jones). The snake picture below isn't the actual snake in our yard...just a snake photo I found that's of the same type as the one we have.

Craig's First Recipe - Spaghetti Sauce

I made spaghetti today using my original recipe. It delicious and easy to make, I've make it dozens of times and for some reason decided to write the recipe down to share. Hopefully, someone else will like it as well which may encourage me to write down my other recipes...

Craig's Spaghetti Sauce Recipe (53KB)