One Year Older and Wiser Too

I can never remember to buy candles for birthday cakes, so here is my one back-up candle-which won't melt down to quickly.

Nate turned 14 on the 3rd. He starts High School in a couple weeks. It's no wonder that I'm starting to see a few strands of gray hair and more wrinkles. If he wasn't such a good kid, I might have even more. (That reminds me of the story of a father talking to his son saying, "everytime you do something wrong I get another gray hair." The son thinks about this for a minute and then with eyes full of surprise he says, "So it was you that gave grandpa all his gray hair!")

I wanted to record a few of his favorite things, so he can look back and compare them in later years.

Nate In a Nutshell

Favorite Color: Green

Favorite Meal: Navajo Tacos

Favorite Dessert: Cookies or Double Fudge Brownie ice cream by Dreyers

Favorite Pasttimes: Can't decide between soccer, hunting, or fishing.

(I would say his favorite pasttime is teasing his younger siblings.)

Favorite School Subject: History

Best Friend: Blake

Favorite Movie: Oceans Eleven

Favorite TV Show: History Channel's Dog Fights (it's about WW II airplane fights, not re-enactments of Michael Vick's past criminal history)

Most memorable experience this past year: ?

Most embarassing experience: My Mom trying to coach my soccer team.

Biggest challenge this past year: Trying to gain weight, or getting my Mom to stop blogging about me.

Conehead

Sunday night Steve went out to feed the dogs. After a short time, Ashlyn ran into the house yelling that there was something wrong with Marge, one of our pointers. I came out to see what was the problem and saw that Marge had somehow managed to cut open a 3 inch gash on her hind leg, just above the knee. The cut was wide and deep, but luckily it wasn't bleeding. After a quick call to the Veternarian, we decided it could wait until the next morning. On Monday Marge went in for minor surgery to clean out and sew up the cut.

We opted to put Marge in a cone collar, in order to keep her from chewing on her stitches. But she managed to get that off her head and pull out all her stitches a couple days later. Back to the Vet and an upgrade to staples. A few days later Marge somehow worked out how to position the cone so she could reach her leg, and she pulled out all but one staple (of course it was late Saturday night and the Vet office was closed). We haven't returned to the Vet yet, because amazingly the wound has remained closed. I would post pictures of her cut, if it wasn't so gross. Once this heals completely, Marge will have a nice scar to remind us of our ordeal.

Playing Catch-up

Time is speeding up and our summer is quickly coming to a close. The knowledge that school will be starting soon is a bit of a shock. One day you are enjoying your carefree summer activities and the next you are looking through all the newspaper ads for the best back-to-school deals. Ihave neglected this blog for a few weeks to attend to the kids activities. Here is a quick update of what we have been doing, in no particular order.