Meet Ruby Pancake

The long dog search is over. Six weeks ago Elise and I went to the Camarillo animal shelter and temperament tested two dogs (out of the over 100 dogs that were there, only two passed my initial cage inspection). One of the two we took out was a beagle basset hound mystery mutt mix. The shelter didn't know how old she was but I guessed a year and half based on how clean and sharp her teeth were. She seemed wonderful and passed our battery of tests (interested in people, highly social, affection seeking, no food aggression, more interested in people than playing, etc., etc., etc.) with flying colors. We adopted her on the spot but she had to stay at the shelter another week to get spayed. We brought the girls to visit her and make sure she was good with the little people. She did fine with them although they were terrible (fighting, ignoring the dog, knocking dog training appparti on top of one another, getting a bloody nose).

We brought her home five weeks ago and despite her tendency to escape out the window, chew up random objects, and bay/bark when overly excited, we're keeping her. She is cute, loving, extremely tolerant, loves, loves, loves people, plays well with other dogs, is fine when left alone, house-trained, good with the cats, and very trainable. She is also very funny. Here are some pictures of her. Now that I'm not spending all of my time searching for dogs on the internet (and am instead spending lots of time exercising and training the dog), I have more time to update the blog. So more blog posts later.

Welcome Ruby!

HippieKindergartner Thanksgiving

Hippie Kindergartner Thanksgiving involves:
yummy potluck (we brought cornbread. Parents and teachers barbequed many turkeys).
playing hand drums
hearing a Chumash Elder tell stories
Making butter
Making cranberry sauce
Playing Predator and Prey freeze tag
Singing "Imagine" by John Lennon as well as other similar genre songs
Being thankful for the green and growing things (from LuLu).

Piggy Gets Invited to a Party

If you read Mo Willems then you know what I am talking about. If not, just enjoy the photos. I imagine that this is what the girls would wear if they were invited to a fancy costume pool party. Fabulous!

Jo-Jo Fashion Queen

Here's Jo-Jo wearing my new french scarf that Seth and Elise brought back from France for me. Doesn't she look nice?

I love snails

Well I don't really, but Lucy does. I don't because they eat my lettuce and they are non-native and they are kind of slimy. But they are o.k. I guess. They do have cute antennae and their slime trails are shiny and some of them have attractive shells. And the ones in our fish tank are eating the algae that was building up on the walls. So they aren't all bad.

Lucy really loves snails and periodically does nutty things with them, like brings them inside (against the rules!), carries them around in the bucket of her tricycle, builds houses for them, and takes pictures of them on our coffee table. We always let them go before they are harmed so they can go and eat more of my lettuce. Here are some of Lucy's snail pictures.