New Blog

So blogger is making some changes and I won't be able to FTP any more. I'm not sure what this means for this blog, it'll probably just get a new URL and I'll just link to that but if something goes haywire you'll know why.

A New Addition

No, not that kind! A puppy! Last Monday I stumbled on an ad on Craigslist for some Blue Heeler cross puppies. Jeff went out and picked up the last available puppy that night. Of all the puppies in the litter we ended up with the only black one. The rest were all blue merle. The mother is a blue heeler that is apparently a great herding dog and the dad could be one of two dogs, the neighbor jack russel terrier or the neighbor black lab. I think our puppy has webbed toes, but I'm not certain. And she's got some pretty decent sized paws so I'm putting my money on the black lab. Rumor has it, the black lab is out of Raven from KARE11. So in the end she has some good breeding (even if she is a lab).

She's staying in our shop for the week until we deliver her to the farm on the weekend. She's a surprise for the family and so far they are doing everything in their power to mess up our plans ;) There's some talk of Jeff's parents going to Colorado this weekend. We haven't spilled the beans yet, we're waiting to hear what's going on.

She's quite the handfull, this little girl puppy. The first night we had her home she was scared and quiet. She played a little bit but was pretty mellow. The next day after work she was a ball of energy. Barking, running around, jumping and hopping, walking on her back legs, whining, and chewing on everything. Since then we've tried to wear her out by playing for several hours after work and as long as we can before work. She seems to do well over night but she gets pretty bored and riled up during the day.

We haven't thought of a name for her yet. The only thing that comes to mind is "little s**t" which while it's applicable, is probably not the best name. And I think we have to give her a name better than "black puppy" (similar to all the cat's names). We're hoping she'll be a good herding dog. She seems to show some heeling instinct. Jeff is hoping she'll want to swim at the lake with his friends and their dogs (since she's part lab after all). I'm hoping she'll stop trying to walk under my feet.

FYI I'm going to schedule this to post after we've supposedly made our puppy delivery to avoid ruining the surprise.

Happy Holidays

In lieu of a holiday letter, here's a blog post! Yay!

The annual Mojo holiday party was another success. This year's theme was the 60s and 70s. Well actually we couldn't tell what the theme exactly was, there was some conflicting information. So we went with gogo dancer dresses and bell bottoms. And since we waited until the last minute that was kind of the best we could do.

Thanksgiving was at our house again this year. But this time I borrowed some folding tables and we were able to get everyone a spot. So no one had to balance their plate on their lap or sit around the pool table.

A sad update about Gray Kitty. She was just too tame for her own good and found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily she didn't suffer and she had a pretty decent life up to that point with a warm hay shed, lots of leftovers, and catfood.

And we did a bit of farming in the fall and I got to do a fair amount of digging with the new GPS and autosteer setup in the big tractor. Go me!

2 Years

Hey we made it 2 years!

Kayking Trip

After getting up at the crack of dawn on Saturday we trucked it up to Grantsburg for some kayaking action. Brad, Amy, Cody, Jeff, and I all were in for the adventure. Before we even got into Wisconsin a bear crossed the road right in front of us. So the theme of the trip was how many different animals can we see. In all we saw wood ducks, trumpeter swans, eagles, otters, turtles, bear, hawk, herons and probably a couple others that I cannot recall.

We ended up kayaking about 17 miles on Saturday and about 10 on Sunday. The paddling was pretty uneventful on Saturday. Brad took a little swim not on purpose but that was about it. We claimed our campsite, one which I've been to before, it's off the beaten path a bit and we were happy to see it was empty.

Sunday's paddling involved a lot of rapids which was a nice change of pace. Especially since past years there hasn't been enough water in the river to paddle on much less have rapids. It was nice not having to get out of the boat ever. We had our lunch at the Old Paint Mine and it wasn't much later that we were pulling out of the river and on the way home.

SCUBA

Jeff got his Open Water SCUBA certification lat weekend.

Jeff is finally home!

Hopefully to stay for a little while at least! He's got some posts up on his blog with some photos from the Hot Rod Power Tour.