Life Right Now

Let me introduce Ruggles. She's our new little dog that we have had now for two days. We are only beginning to get to know each other and figure out each other's language.  Ruggles is a Yorkie mix although I do find she looks a lot like Juno so the Yorkie part must be pretty strong.  She ... and by 'she' I mean 'he' because Ruggles is a male and having only had a female dog I'm finding I have huge pronoun problems .. he is smaller than Juno and is underweight so we are doing our best to feed her and love her up.

********************************

Today we went on a winter cookout to a nearby conservation area. We were looking for a good way to remember my father as this is the one-year anniversary of his death and a winter cookout seemed just right. My dad loved the outdoors and we often went on hikes and cookouts all year round when I was growing up.  

We went to a place called Rattlesnake Point which is much prettier than the name might suggest. It is on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment with huge limestone cliffs and a forest along the top that we hiked through. There was a dusting of snow which is more than we have at home now since it melted last week.

  

We had a bit of a time lighting the fire and almost went through the entire Sunday New York Times newspaper trying to get it lit. Thankfully it finally caught and we were able to cook our hotdogs. It was nice to sit around the fire getting warm and drinking hot chocolate.

 

 

 
Ruggles did very well walking through the woods and then while we had the campfire, I carried her in my jacket so she didn't get cold (or into trouble). It was quite an outing for her second day with us.

*************************************

And in other news we finally have our Christmas tree decorated which I will show you pictures of very soon.  We made some owls to go on it as we wanted a Scandinavian woodland type of tree this year and they worked out really well.  All those toilet paper rolls finally came in handy!