Happy First Birthday Puppies!

I have been a bad blogger and not posted for quite a while, but now I have something fun that has to be shared. The puppies turned one on Dec 4th. To celebrate, we invited all the pups and their families to join us at the North Clackamas dog park for a puppy playdate today. Sunny and all five of her boys had a wonderful time playing, chasing and acting like a pack of wild animals. We have been in contact with all of the pups' new families except for the little girl (we called her Gracie, don't know what they named her). If her new family reads this, we would love to see pictures of her and have you join us at the next playdate.

Unfortunately, I didn't check the camera batteries before we left and they were low so the pictures turned out a bit blurry. You can still see how big all the pups have gotten and how much fun they had together.


That's Sammy in the front, Sunny in the middle and Sprocket (Butter) back by Tori and me. Even though he was the first to arrive, this is the only decent picture I got of Sprocket. The pups were so excited to see each other, they didn't stop for pictures.

Neo (Junior)

Wyld (Lil Buddy)

Jack running with the pack.


I think John missed Wyld (Lil Buddy) most.


Sunny was very happy to see him also.


Sammy trying to bully his big brother.

We are so proud of all the pups and grateful to their new families for taking such good care of them. We hope to see you all again in the summer!

Mother's Day

Welcome back! It's been way too long since I've posted on here. I guess I'm not finding our lives very interesting lately. Of course, once it hits me, I come up with several things to post all at once.

I got the ultimate Mother's Day gift, a weekend alone with my mom and brothers in Sunriver. None of us could remember the last time we all got to hang out together. It was a very nice weekend. We set out for a bike ride on Sunday morning that turned into a three hour trip. We made a couple pit stops along the river to rest and let Sunshine swim. The poor girl got so tired at the last pit stop she just laid down and couldn't go on. Ryan rode back to the house and got his truck to pick her up like a princess. I'm surprised she didn't join us in the hot tub to soak her aching bones too.

Brandon, Mom, Steph, Ryan and Sunny

Brandon, Heather, Steph, Ryan

Mom and Ryan

Catching my breath while Sunny swims

Brandon and Heather up a tree

Sleepy Pups

My Boys

Since the boys greatly outnumber the girls in this house (we make up for it in the henhouse), I figured they should get their share of blogage.

These are the human boys of the house.

This is as dressed up as they'll ever be. It's nice to see once in a while.

I asked them to give me a GQ pose.

The puppy boys

I loved how this series of shots of Ty and Woody turned out.

I can't leave out my girl! Here she is with her "baby" Sammy.

See How They Grow

We are down to just three boys now, Woodrow, Sammy and Junior. Yes, we decided to let Tori keep her Samster! We now have a live in babysitter for life. We are still trying to find Junior's new family. The longer it takes, the more we become attached.

Don't you just want to get in there with them?

They're not always so adorable. Sometimes they do horrible, horrible things like kill my best hen. I tried to be mad, but they looked so cute with their bloody little noses. She didn't learn to stay on her side of the fence after the first two times they got her, so it's kind of her own fault.

On to happier times. I took Woodrow out for his first hike last week with Tiffany, Oliver and Sunshine. We did the loop around LaCamas Lake in Washington. Woodrow had never been on a leash before and didn't get it, so we just let him follow. He was very well behaved. He even did fine when I put him on the leash towards the end of the hike.

Here he is testing out the water. He didn't go for a swim like mom, but he had fun playing on the shore.

The Bacon Experiment

UPDATE: The bacon is all done and I thought I'd share the results. We discovered that by hanging the bacon in the smoker instead of laying it flat on the racks, we could get much more in there. That left us with only two more batches to smoke. That wasn't the part that ruined it though. I didn't take into account that the seven days of curing was for a slab of pork. The sliced pieces soaked it up much faster and the bacon is overly salty/sweet. We found that if we cut it up into little bits and used it in dishes like scalloped potatoes, it was fine. It is too strong to eat on it's own though. Next up is the ham. If that turns out well, I'll consider trying again next year.

So far the great bacon experiment is not going well. What's the great bacon experiment, you ask? Each year we purchase a cow and a pig from a local farmer. This year, we decided to keep all of our pork fresh (uncured) so that we could cure it ourselves. I found this blog that made it look real easy, so without much planning, we began. Our first mistake was having our "bacon" (technically not bacon until it has been cured and smoked, but that's what I'm calling it) sliced by the butcher. It would have been much easier if we had left it in a slab, but what's done is done, so we move on. Our second mistake was curing nearly ten pounds of meat, then discovering that we could only fit about one pound at a time in the smoker. That means that a lot of it is drying out in the refrigerator and probably won't be as juicy as it should be. Maybe I'm wrong and that part won't hurt it at all. That would be a welcome surprise. Our third mistake was using a smoker without any instructions. Neither of us has smoked anything before (foodwise that is) so we just followed the instructions on the blog. Apparently, there is more than one kind of smoker and ours was not the same as the one on the blog. We left the bacon in there all night and it never reached anything near 150 degrees like the instructions said. It did, however, turn into jerky. I tried frying it to see if it was any good. Because it was so dry, it burned very easily.Once I finally got some cooked without blackening it, it was ok. Terribly smoky, but edible. On a positive note, mistake two probably saved the rest of the bacon from suffering the same fate. We have a second chance (or ten)! BUT, we won't know the fate of the rest of the bacon right away due to mistake four (is that right? I've lost count!). I'm not taking the blame for this one though. This was the fault of some very nosy puppies who were trying to get to the yummy meat smell that was just out of reach. They didn't get the meat, but they did get the full bag of hickory chips. And they were so proud of themselves too.
P.S. I just realized that the picture of the bacon in the fridge gives a rather disturbing sample of our diet. Despite what it looks like, we do not live on bacon and alcohol (tempting as that may be!).

So You Think You Can Dance?

Our youngest child sure can! He gets his sweet moves from his father. Here's just a sample of Jack's fancy footwork.