The writing's...in the flowers?

Todd and I took the dogs up to Casper Mountain last weekend to get them out - and wear them out.

At Bear Trap Meadow there's a loop we like to do that's easy and fun for the dogs to run around.

We stopped for a bit for me to take some photos of all the pretty meadow flowers.  When I finished I realized Todd had been staring at a little bunch of flowers off the path.

He said, rather casually, "You know, if a person looked at 'em just right...you could imagine them spelling out 'I love you.'" (As in "I ♥ U")

I gasped!

"You're right!  Holy crap!!

And this is what we were looking at...

This is a 100 percent undoctored, unplucked, untouched in any way photo of those flowers.

I bet you're saying holy crap now too!

Explain it how you like, but my take is two-fold: Todd is truly the person I'm supposed to be with; and God was telling us he loved us.

There is no other way, in my mind, flowers growing like that can be explained.

Semi normal operations

As you know, we've been going to town on the house with renovations.  Over the last couple of weeks we've made some major leaps toward being civilized!

Namely, we have appliances.

Beautiful, hooked up, working appliances that are all located in the kitchen and not in the living or dining rooms.  

Ok...we still have one major appliance in our living room.  I have to get it cleaned out to post on Craigslist...

And the hood for the new stove is in that cardboard box next to the old fridge. Once that is moved out we will be appliance free in the living room!


Let's take a look at all our beautiful appliances...


Todd readying the new dish washer...

When the drywall went up in the kitchen it wreaked havoc on the dishes in there.  This is only a tip of the iceberg...

No more dish pan hands...!

Thank you new dishwasher for coming into my life.  I love you forever...

Next, the thing that helps turn my clean dishes dirty...


I mean the stove, not Todd, though he certainly has a hand in dirtying dishes...

It's a convection oven.  I've never cooked with convection before.  I had to do some serious reading up on how to use it and why I would want to.  Turns out, it is wonderful for cooking certain things certain ways.  That fan blows the heated air around to help food cook more quickly and evenly.  It will make the outsides crisp while keeping the inside juicy.  I've never made better french "fries" before..."

Todd hooking up the gas line...

Drum roll, please...

And let there be light...!  

Oh, happy, happy day!  A WORKING stove and oven and it's GAS! I hate electric stoves. Gas is the only way to go.  And anything but the Fabulous 400 is totally the way to go!  Even electric...

The last lovely appliance. Our nice, extra-large fridge...

I'm still not sure what I think about the freezer being down below. I mean, I like how much space it gives us up above, but it's kind of annoying to have to dig around all bent over...

So, the kitchen is getting there.


All we need now are the cabinets back in!


One day...

Digging her own grave

Lulu is digging her own grave - quite literally, I'm afraid.

Over the past week or so we've had issues with her and this little plot of dirt in front of our porch...

There's a nice clematis there we're trying to coax into filling out.  But curiously, we keep finding puppy tracks in the dirt...

And annoyingly, we keep finding holes at the base of the vine. Big holes.  Not scoot-the-dirt-around-while-something-was-sniffing holes.

Little clues such as this...

And these dirty dog prints across my somewhat clean floor have tipped us off to a fresh digging...

Consequently, we've been on hole patrol any time she goes outside.

Todd has repeatedly filled the holes and repeatedly rubbed her face in the dirt while sternly telling her "no!"  The digging has subsided some, but today, after a particularly loud punishment yesterday, we saw two little holes...

These holes are nothing compared to some of the others we've found.  Whole root systems have been exposed by holes ironically large enough to fit a small dog.

If I were Lulu I'd be cautious of a guy with a shovel standing over an empty hole...