Fall is in the air .....

Well, aside from the fact that the Packers lost to the Vikings by a miraculous 56-yard field goal IN THE LAST TWO SECONDS OF THE GAME yesterday, we had a wonderful fall weekend here.

Saturday it rained all day, so we slept in late and just hung around the house being lazy most of the day. Seeing as we'll be spending more time indoors now, my mom decided to rearrange the living room. She also put flannel sheets on the bed, which makes for nice snuggling on these cold nights we're having now.

Sunday also started out gray and drizzly, but by the time the football game was over it had cleared up. Good thing, because my mom was about to pound her head into the wall. Instead, she took me out for a 30-minute power walk to work off the frustration! Then we had chili. You know winter is not far off when dad gets out the big pot and starts making chili again. As usual, it was proclaimed the best batch ever.

I then had fun running around the back yard while mom and dad raked leaves. Well, my mom rakes. She doesn't mind because she needs the exercise. She has to do something to fight upper arm sag now that there is nobody making her do pushups anymore, haha! Dad hates raking so he uses a leaf blower. Did I mention he has a thing for power tools of all sorts? My mom doesn't even ask how much he spends on them because they have an agreement whereby he doesn't ask how much she spends on shoes! Anyway, it was nice being outside in the fresh air playing in the leaves, until the sky turned dark and the wind whipped up. Suddenly it was hailing. What a sight, raking leaves in a hailstorm. Only in Wisconsin!

Rest in Peace Little Buddy

Maynard 4/1/90 - 10/18/05

Today was a very sad day at our house. Mom and Dad took Maynard to the vet, but he didn't come home with them. He stopped eating a few days ago, and Mom was starting to get real concerned about him. Then when Dad came home today he found the poor old kitty struggling to climb up the stairs from the basement. He just didn't have any energy left, so I guess it was his time to go.

I'm going to miss Maynard. He's been around my whole life. I remember when I first came to this house he was twice as big as me, and he taught me right from the start that cats are not to be messed with! But I don't think we will be getting another cat any time soon. It's going to take us all a long time to get over losing Maynard. At least we can all take comfort in knowing that he had a good long life and he knew that he was loved.

Packers 52 - Saints 3

Ok, so this isn't supposed to be a Packers blog, but this is big news!!!!! You almost feel sorry for the poor New Orleans Saints, being homeless and all that, but they have Mike McKenzie now and we couldn't let him beat us. It was a perfect day for football, sunny but cool, and everyone here in Green Bay is happy to see Brett Favre and the guys kicking ass and having a good time playing again!

I love the football season because we always have lots of fun company. Last night my Uncle Jim and Auntie Lisa came in from Chicago. We haven't seen them in a long time so that was fun. They all had a fun time at the game today, but I got to stay in the nice warm house because it was freezing (almost!) when they left early this morning. We had a bit of frost last night and we even turned on the heat for the first time late yesterday. Wasn't it just a few days ago I was writing about 86 degree heat?

There were no posts since that one because the Packers lost again on Monday night, but if you stayed up late enough you would have seen that they almost pulled it out at the very end. After being waaaaaaay behind for most of the game, they kicked into gear in the fourth quarter and ended up losing by only 3 points! But that's the thing about Packer fans ... they stay until the bitter end, no matter how far behind the team is or how freakin' freezing it is (or no matter how late it is on a work night when it's Monday Night Football!)

But this isn't a Packers blog, right? The real reason we haven't been posting is that we've been busy the last several nights turning "The War Room" back into a proper guest room again. So if you want to come and visit you can actually stay here with us now. Mom was officially retired from the Army as of 31 July, and now all the uniforms and gear are finally gone! Aside from one footlocker full of stuff that went out to the storage shed, she boxed all the rest of it up and gave it to the Salvation Army. There will probably be a whole squad of little Army guys coming around the neighborhood on Halloween this year!

PS - My dad will have you know that he was in fact wearing his lucky shirt today, but we really think the reason the Packers won is that almost half the women at the game were wearing their new pink hats. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Wear pink to show your support for the efforts to find a cure!

Two Tired Pups

The chocolate lab is my next door neighbor Bryn, and this is us after our walk today in the record high 86 degree heat. Check out the leaves already falling in the back yard. Hard to believe it's October already. Two years ago today it was a low of 20 and snowing. What's up with that? Oh yeah, we live in Wisconsin, haha!

As a rule I don't care much for other dogs - I much prefer the company of people - but Bryn and I get along ok. She doesn't get out for walks a lot during the week, so whenever my mom and dad manage to get home from work around the same time we bring her with us on my daily walk. She's a sassy young dog with lots of energy, but by the time we get home we're both too tired to fight with each other, so it works out good for everyone. Like my mom always says, a tired dog is a good dog!

There haven't been any posts in awhile because my mom has been extremely busy at work, and too depressed after the Packers lost by one point to Tampa Bay last week. Aaaaagh! This is not supposed to be a Packers blog (note there's no link .... yet ... until somebody figures out how that works!) but when you live in Green Bay it seems like the whole world revolves around the Packers schedule for about 1/3 of the year and that's all anybody ever talks about.

In just about 15 minutes we're going to watch them take on the Carolina Panthers on Monday Night Football, where they have the chance to redeem themselves and their 0-3 record on national television. We hope anyway! Notice I wore my Packer scarf today, and my mom has on a stylin' embroidered t-shirt too. She purposely buried my dad's "lucky shirt" in the laundry after last week, so he was forced to dig into his collection for one of the old proven winners from years past.

Are you ready for some football?!?!?!?!?!?