::::

Everybody loves the baby. Sultan loves him so much we have to protect him vigilantly from over-licking anytime his face is within reach.

::only in NM::

We were driving home from "town" the other day and came across this scene right before we were about to turn onto our little road.

Standoff between Fedex truck and cowboys with a herd of goats. (Imagine that whistling standoff music from The Good The Bad & The Ugly right here.)
Have any of the rest of youguys ever run into a situation like this?

At some point the Fedex truck made it through, and we drove a little closer to have a look. Sultan was with us in the back and he got really upset with the goats running everywhere.


I think that the goat herd is in our neighborhood in order to "organically" crop the community land. Can't think of something much more organic than a goat.


Go goats! Eat the weeds! But look out for Sultan, because he's the troll under the bridge and he'll eat you up.

::dog in abstract::

::staycation activity #2--sultan on the tramp::

Whenever Max is out playing in the backyard and gets up on the trampoline, Sultan always looks at him with this kind of sad and wistful glance. I always think he's wishing he could be up there bouncing around.
But does he really?
On Saturday we thought we'd test it out. See if he really liked the tramp or not. When Kris was growing up his dog would hop on tramp whenever anybody got on it and bounce around driving everybody crazy.

So Kris grabbed that lovely section of fencing that's just been sitting around making our yard look so nice, and made a little ramp. Sultan didn't think the ramp looked like much fun, but he went up it anyway after a little encouragement.
He walked around a bit and then jumped off.
Then we asked him to do it again, and he did.
He was rewarded by some pats, and he liked that.
Then he jumped off--not via the ramp, but just from the bouncy part of the trampoline to the ground.
THEN we asked him to get up again. And he completely bypassed the ramp. He really didn't like that ramp. He just jumped straight up from the ground to the tramp! It was quite impressive.
And then he spent some time reveling in the love and attention he got for being such an amazing stunt dog.




Then, after he rolled around and got the trampoline all hairy he lept off. Probably never to get up again. He's a bit of a pleaser. If everybody's cheering him on he'll do something he would never otherwise do.
But we don't care. He was awesome with his leaping. Way to go Sultan!

::stuff::

Wow! The first post of the new year. And it's nothing particularly special. I know it's supposed to have all sorts of contemplative year-in-review sorts of things, and resolutions. But no. It's just for fun.
I just wanted to show you this:

It's our archway of fame. This is why I love Christmas cards. They're fun to send, and so much fun to receive. It was so fun to see everybody's faces and their cute kids and read about what's happening in their lives. Thanks everybody. I hate to take them down, they're so festive.
But we're taking things down. I did a bunch of cleaning up and putting away yesterday and Sultan helped:

Alright, he didn't really help, but he did keep me company, and he did fuzz up the rug so if I was bored later I could vacuum. He's thoughtful like that.

We're happy it's the new year even though we couldn't stay up late enough on New Year's Eve to watch our whole Back to the Future marathon. We only made it to midnight and halfway through the second movie before we crashed. Maybe we'll be more fun next year.

2010 here we come, there's a lot for us to do this year and a lot to look forward to. We're going to fasten our seatbelts and hold on tight!

::house::

On monday evening we got together with our good friends to make "gingerbread" houses. The gingerbread is in quotation marks because we really made them out of graham crackers. But that's A-OK.
So I brought my big heavy camera all the way over there and got it out and started taking photos. I was more than a little dismayed to see the camera flashing it's "NO MEMORY CARD" prompt at me. ARGH.
So no pictures of all the construction and candies, smeared up little faces, excitement, dads trying to build impressive structures and having them flop all over the place.....etc.
But I did take a couple of pictures of our finished product the next day.



So three photos may be more than a little silly (not) gingerbread house deserves, but there you go.
I designed it and I think it turned out pretty cool--kind of modern, kind of southwestern. It looks like the roof should be made of solar panels rather than candies, right?
The house was actually more impressive at one point. It had a snowman, two more trees, an intact fence and lots more candy on the roof. But unfortunately Sultan decided to sneak around, and at 2 in the morning we heard a tremendous crash, and Kris ran in to see the house face down on a chair and Sultan chasing chocolate candies around the floor. Needless to say Sul got in trouble. My architecture held up pretty well though, don't you think?
Christmastime is fun. We're so glad to have good friends out here!

::three-dee::

All summer every time we went to the store Max would spy out this package of sidewalk chalk that said it was "3D." He wanted it so bad. And I didn't want it bad enough to pay $5 for it. Plus he had a whole bunch of other sidewalk chalk. Non 3D I guess.
I also thought it was a gimmick. I mean, seriously? 3-D sidewalk chalk? So anyway, a couple of weeks ago I was at Target and saw that they had marked the 3d chalk down 50%. Now that's more like it. So I snagged a package and brought it home to Max. Needless to say he was excited and headed out to try it right away.

He was very diligent about following the instructions. You were supposed to use certain colors next to each other.



The package came with these little 3d glasses. I guess the way it works is that certain colors look like they're raised up higher than others when you're wearing the glasses.

And truthfully, it sort of did look 3d through the glasses. I tried to take a picture through the glasses, but I guess since the camera doesn't have two eyes it didn't work. Ah well, that's the breaks.
The best part was, I got out his old chalk and drew some stuff and all that looked just as 3d as the special expensive chalk. Hah.



But despite the over hyped 3d chalk we all had some fun outside together, and that's all that really matters. And plus, I blogged about it. Does it get better than that?

::stink, stank, stunk::

While Max and I were off having fun in Florida, poor Kris was home working. Working and slaving away.
What could be worse than being stuck at home alone working while the rest of the fam is on vacation? I know something. How about if the dog gets sprayed by a skunk after midnight on a weeknight? Yeah. That works.
Poor Kris. He was up scrubbing and soaping the dog at 1AM in the cold rain when he had to be at work the next morning. He said the smell was so bad. I'm glad I wasn't there for that. I wouldn't have handled the skunky house well I'm afraid.
By the time I got home Sultan had been bathed at least five times. This is a dog who's really not supposed to be washed more than about twice a year in order to not dry out his hair and skin. He's just not used to it. Nor is Kris. Nobody likes it.
And thank goodness for google. It was a quick way to find out the most effective formula to wash a skunky dog.
When I got home the house still smelled pretty weird. The dog seemed ok, but the house didn't. We aired it out and lit candles.
But then the dog proved he still stank. When he scratched or moved the right way, a smelly stink would rise from him--kind of like the yuck that follows pigpen around in Charlie Brown. The stink was the kind that you can taste in your mouth. Ick.
So anyway, saturday morning the Sul got another wash. By both men of the house this time.

Sultan seemed pretty resigned to it, though we're not resigned to the lingering stench. The wash helped, but there's still something slightly wrong swirling in Sultan's atmosphere.
We're just hoping that the skunk who decided to move in under the shed doesn't come back. And that Sul learned his lesson. (hah)

::he's six::

Yesterday was Sultan's birthday. WEll, it's the day we decided to celebrate Sultan's birthday anyway. A few months ago Max realized that we hadn't ever had a party for Sul. I told him we didn't know what Sultan's birthday was. He said it was in August. August 17th to be exact (somehow 6 months from Max's own b-day). So we wrote it down on the calendar, and finally the exciting day came. Max kept reminding us--there was no way we could forget to celebrate it. And since we don't get a lot of birthdays to celebrate here in our house right now, we thought, why not?
Max thought hard about what we could get Sul for a present. His best idea was cheese. I loved the idea. In fact I wanted to make a birthday cake that looked like cheese. But yesterday dawned so DANG hot in our house. There was no way I was heating up the oven to make a cake for a dog's birthday. So instead we got a yummy ice cream cake from Trader Joes. Sorry all you poor deprived people without a trader joe's!

We got some dog snacks and a squeaky tennis ball bone as gifts for Sul. He doesn't like the bone yet, but we're working on it. He loves the snacks.

He didn't get any cake, but he certainly thought he should. Max blew out the candles for him. It was so funny, we're singing the birthday song, Kris puts the cake down so Sultan can see it, and Max starts saying, "NO NO NO" like he thought Kris was going to let the dog snarf the whole thing.

Kris did let Sultan lick the frosting off a couple of the candles. I think he ate at least half a candle.

A little wax never hurt anybody, right?

So, Sultan probably doesn't realize he had a birthday party, but at least it's an exercise in Max thinking about somebody besides himself. Since he's the only kid in the house he doesn't get a lot of opportunity to do things for his "peers."
And it was fun. And we got to eat cake. Yum.

::a boy & his dog::

::time travel::

It seems like we're slipping backwards in time somehow.
This was May:

(at least the end of it)

Warm sun, sweaty boys, popsicles, pink cheeks, blue skies.

Panting dogs.

But June? So far June has been really disappointing. I don't even have any photos to illustrate my point. It seems to have been raining pretty much the whole month, and I don't think it's gotten warmer than about 75 degrees. Even on the sunny days (like when we got the tramp) it's rained either at the beginning or the end of the day! It's been grey and soggy and sometimes chilly.

We're not sure if summer is ever going to actually get here. And I'm worried that once it's here I'll want it to go away again. I like heat in small doses.

Really we've just been hoping it would be nice enough that we could go to the beach with our friends before they graduate and move away in a week. It's not looking good for that though.
Remind me in August that I was wishing for heat and sun now!

(for some reason lately when Max is out playing hard and gets hot and sweaty he comes in panting and says "there's one dead animal looking for a popsicle" I'm not sure where he got it, but it happens all the time. Dead animals keep showing up, and they want popsicles morning and night.)

::not just for jumping::

::prizes::

The first chore prize that Max got was rollerblades!
We really wanted to get him some anyway, now that we're someplace he could actually use them more. He had also run across my old pair before we moved, and insisted on bumbling around the house in them, until that was outlawed.

So the chore chart was just a good excuse to get the man a pair of blades! I found a great huge 2nd hand sporting good store out here and picked up a small pair. They're cool because they adjust about 3 sizes. So he should be able to wear them for a while. If, that is, he can ever figure out how to actually skate.






He spends most of the time like this:

We had to watch him a lot at first and make sure he didn't bash his face in--we know all about that kind of thing. But he's gotten a little better since.

But I would recommend against rollerblading around a hyped up crazy dog who's running circles.





Ahhh! Moon Bear attack!!!

When he lived through the Sultan attack I knew he was going to figure out these blades eventually. Luckily he has all summer to do it!

I just wish I could figure out some way to harness the energy of the boy and the dog and put it to good use-like generating electricity or something. Or if I could just borrow some of it for exercising with.