Here's My Boys!

I wanted to put pictures of our little guys. My oldest buddy is Rugby (Ruggles, Rugglekins, Kins), named after "Rugby" the cat from "The Christmas Toy". He is 6 years old and will be 7 in March. Robb took me to get him as a surprise when we lived at our apartment, cause I missed having a kitty. Rugby's first meal with us was a cheeseburger from Burger King, and drank water out of a bottle cap in the car on the way home. We got him from some lady that Robb used to work with who lived in the ghetto. She found him and his litter by their dead mom, so she saved them and gave Rugby to us. Rugby is a big orange, very soft, tabby cat (he can reach our kitchen countertops standing on the floor), who is a little wild sometimes, brave, not scared of dogs, loves to ride in the car (probably likes it from riding back and forth from our apartment to our house all those many times), has the loudest purr I've ever heard, and is very sweet. His favorite things to eat are shrimp and tuna, but he also likes butter and ice cream. Rugby is the boss of our animal kingdom. He is the first to eat every morning, and we use him to teach the puppies our neighbors get not to chase cats. All we have to do is put the puppy in the room with Rugby, and when they start to get him, he hits them and chases them back, which scared the daylights out of them forever. That solves their urge get cats. When Rugby was little he used to tear up my arms playing because as we found out later, he had Feline Agression Syndrome. This happens to kittens who are raised with no mother, so they don't get disciplined when they are playing to rough. Basically Rugby didn't know the difference between playing and attatcking. Rugby is fine now, but that's all because we got Chester for him...

Chester (Cheeser, Beezer) is our smaller little black and tan striped tabby cat. He is 5 years old, and will be 6 in July. We got Chester when we found out about Rugby's "anger management" issues. The only cure for Rugby was to get another cat who could teach Rugby how to play nice. So we signed up for this PAWS cat placement service, and went to several "kitty foster homes" to find a good match for Rugby. We needed a kitten who was not scared of anything (aka big orange cat), liked to play with other kittens, was pretty strong, and a little older, like 2-3 months, so he could handle the abuse. Finally we ended up at this crazy cat lady's house, got to observe Chester, and picked him to go home with us. Rugby and Chester go along pretty good after a few weeks. But boy, did that little kitty get beat up a lot. He even was smart enough to figure out to hide under our rocking chair cause Rugby couldn't fit in there to get him. In time they became best buddies, roll around and wrestle together, and curl up and sleep together. Chester is the most crazy and smart kitty I've ever had. We think a few screws got knocked loose when he was younger and Robb hit him hard in the head with a raquetball raquet. Here's some crazy things he does: wakes us up every morning by licking our eyelids, if I don't get up, he learned to open my jewelry box and take out rings, necklaces, earings, etc, so I jump out of bed to get them; he opens the kitchen cabinet doors to go in to try to get his food; he climbs on everything, loves to be up high; out of 20 or so fish, he likes to only watch our chinease algae eaters, they're his favorite; he likes to snuggle with our dog, Koby; and he is the worst bug killer I've ever had for a cat. He doesn't have a mean bone in his body (except when he wants to absolutly slaughter the cats that he sees outside). He is a really good kitty.

My Koby is my first dog I've ever had, and I can't even believe how much I love him. Koby (Yashi, Bear, Bearsie) is a cream colored labradoodle who is 80 lbs, and 4 years old. A labradoodle is a mix between a standard poodle and a labrador retriever, which makes him not smelly and supposivly not shed as much, and have a wonderful temprement who likes cats and kids. I fell in love with Koby when we were "just looking" for a dog, and went to this puppy store to get a fix. Well, I got more than that. Koby was the cutest puppy I ever saw, and I knew I wanted him. I took a picture of him on Robb's phone and looked at it a hundred times that night before we got him. Robb and his friend hurried up and finished our backyard fence so then Koby could come home. The next day we went and got him!! To this day he still likes to sleep on our heads like he did everynight as a puppy. One of us would always sleep in his puppy room, and that's were he'd always be, on our head. Koby's long name is Kobayashi. He was named after the right hand man to the most dangerous man in the world, Keyser Soze, from "The Usual Supects". (Not the pitcher or the hot dog eating champion) Robb always wanted to name our dog Kobayashi and call him Koby, so we did. Koby used to chase me up on the top of the couch when he was a puppy, and I didn't know what to do with him. I'd had all kinds of animals before but really didn't know what to do with this crazy puppy. So I'd put a shirt on him because it makes him literally freeze in place. It still works today, it's pretty funny. Koby only chews my things, shoes, sunglasses, underwear, just about anything when he is trying to get my attention, which if I'm home is what he's doing. Koby's favorite things to do are go camping, go hiking, wrestle with Daddy, and go rollerblading. He is really good at playing fetch, but can't catch. He also hates peanut butter, but loves pizza Friday for the crust. He is the sweetest dog I have ever known. He never is mean to any other animal, he is extremely kind to the little leader dog puppies, and he loves his kitties so much. He's a little shy around people that he doesn't know, but that's ok. He gets very frusterated when Rugby is in the way wherever he's walking, and won't go by him. It's really funny to see an 80 lb. dog so scared of a little cat! He really respects Rugby as the leader or our "pack". Chester and him have a different relationship though. They play together with the same toys, and cuddle up to sleep. I really didn't know a cat and a dog would actually really love eachother like they do. Koby is really the light of my life, I love him more than I ever thought, and I could never imagine life without him.

Here's the pictures of my boys! Koby baby, Koby baby and Chester playing, Big Koby and Chester, Big Koby and Chester, and Chester and Rugby.

Fun with Dry Ice

Since we had 4 pounds left of the 5lb minimum order (about $12 at Praxair) we did about everything we could think of, or have ever seen on Mr. Wizard, Bill Nye, or Youtube. Maybe I'll post a few video's later.

I added this today, it's really cool of dry ice making a BIG bubble.

Halloween

So....I bought a what was probably a $10 mask from Wal-Mart, and put on an old pair of black fleece pants, and a black long sleeve shirt. The mask "bleeds" between two layers of plastic, inside is white and the outside is clear. There is a tube that feeds from a heart shaped blood pump to the face of the mask, squeeze it with your hand and blood covers face. Stopped by the Library to get a scary sounds CD and our local Praxair to get 5lbs of dry ice. We figured I'd be a little scary, but with little effort at all, we had kids that would'nt even come close to me. Some would walk up and just stare, not even concerened about candy. Other than the mask leaking all over my hand, we had a fun night. My pumpkin is the skeleton, Carisa's is the Moose.

New England Fall Trip!!

We flew into Boston, saving our sightseeing here for last day of trip. Rented a car and drove up the coast to a B&B in Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine. A good portion of the trip was spent stopping in towns along the way. We ate clams at Bob's Clam Hut, spent too much money at L.L Bean in Freeport, exchanged a $4.95 Cabela's hat (purchased at Cabela's in Dundee, MI on the way to Uncle Tim's wedding) in Scarborough, ME, Hiked a path between million dollar homes and the rocky atlantic coast, Stopped at a bunch of famous lighthouses, Toured the Desert of Maine(yes real sand desert, dunes and all!), Hiked all around Acadia National Park (some of which was very difficult), Ate plenty of Lobster.
After our 2nd night at the Clefstone B&B we drove way up north to Moosehead Lake Region and stayed at Chalet Moosehead. The moose in this area outnumber people 3 to 1! Except for Hunting Season Week, which of course.. is when we went. Sea Planes are a common sight and snowmobiles and ATV's are more popular for traveling than cars. We only stayed one night at Chalet, but were able to make a 2-3hr fire 15 yards from Moosehead Lake and put down a 6 pack of SeaDog Bluberry Ale.
The next morning we were going to try and "see" a moose, which as stated eariler, would have been 100,000 time easier any of the other 51 weeks in the year. Since they were being shot at, we figured we would drive to Baxter State Park (no hunting here). The drive was unlike anything we've ever done. Some of the Drive......Kokadjo, ME - Population.."Not Many", Moose in pickup truck. Driving on 4 lane dirt roads. Logging trucks. 1 lane dirt roads, with logging trucks. What seemed like a gazillion acres of nothing but pine trees and rocks....oh and dirt roads. We drove forever...and never saw a Moose, but the trip in what all the locals call "real backcountry" was amazing, even Garmin had no clue where we were!
When returned to civilization in Boston on our last day, we did all the "typical first time in Boston things" Walked the freedom trail, stopped at Quincy Market, Saw the USS Constitution, someone told us that they liked Dunkin Donuts.......We were unable to find one. Here are some pics, I could type for days. I'll post about 10 of 1502 pics.

A Taste

Ok, so our regular computer is broken, and my laptop can't get our Maine pictures off our camera. (We were just there Oct 12-17th on vacation.) So I figured I'd start by putting 2 pictures of Robb and me up of our last 2 vacations. The one where we are dressed all fancy is from our cruise 2 years ago. No, those were not our choice in outfits, our luggage was not there yet, so the ship let us use those clothes. And the other is us in Epcot last year. Hopefully the link to all the photos will be coming soon, but in reality, probably will take quite a while. Enjoy for now!