Not Boomer's Favorite Day

Boomer is a pretty good dog but he is somewhat, how shall I say it, wild. JoAnn likes to take him and Sadie for walks but he is so rambunctious that it is difficult. He barks all the way to the park and he whines and cries while JoAnn is getting them ready to go. He refuses to walk at a leisurely pace and instead, tries to pull her arm off. When Richie comes home from school, he tries to use Caesar Milan's tactics to tame him down (as has JoAnn before him) to no avail. Richie finally swore that he would no longer work with Boomer until he got neutered. JoAnn has been after me to take him to the vet for at least a year now. Well the day finally came. I knew what was in store for us; Boomer becoming a small bulldozer, using the Elizabethan Collar to push things out of the way including the lower legs of any human beings in the vicinity. He crashes into doorways especially often and usually is moving at full speed. In the first photo you can see the collar is beginning to split. He only wore the collar for about 6 days and I had to tape the split in the collar 3 times. Luckily, he is now healed , stitches are out, and life is back to normal. Dustin told me I should have had him fitted with neuticles, but by that time, it was too late.

What is Senta up to?

One of the reasons I started this blog is because Senta had a blog and I loved to read it. She always had such great, creative stuff, it was wonderful. So, I figured if I loved to read Senta's blog, maybe my mother would like to read mine, which she says she does. Anywho, Senta is too busy these days to keep her blog up, which is a loss to the world. Since she hasn't posted lately, I thought I'd put some stuff on my blog that she has been doing. Besides working at SOS, she does a lot of freelance stuff, some of which is designing Cricut cartridges (whatever they are). She came over the other evening and was showing JoAnn a couple of cartridges she had designed so I guess I'll show you.

The BYU Museum of Art (MOA)

Last Saturday, JoAnn and I went down to the BYU MOA. She has been reading a book entitled "The Healer's Art" by Lloyd D. Newell and Don H. Staheli. On the cover of the book is a painting titled "Christ Healing at the Well of Bethesda" by Carl Heinrich Bloch. The book talks about various aspects of Christ's healing powers and relates some of them to the painting. Anyway, the painting is in the BYU MOA so we went down to see it (the story of how the painting, a national treasure of Denmark, got to BYU MOA is fascinating). It was a great experience to be able to contemplate this work and some of the other great works that are on display. Did you know the BYU MOA has the world's largest collection of Maynard Dixon works? Probably not.

By the way, if anyone from the BYU MOA reads this, I did not get the photo from their web site so don't go tracking me down for copyright violations.

Fun at the Burger King

As everyone knows, I always take PJ and usually Trey out to dinner and to the Walmart on Thursday evenings. This Thursday last, we went to the Burger King in Draper. The boys had the playground all to themselves and played for almost an hour. PJ started being silly and put on a bag instead of the BK crown. The reason he looks so funny is because I was trying to get him in a pose where I could see his face and the bag. As you can see, it took some contortions to get it.

Are We finished with Winter?

Looking at the photos taken by Richie this last weekend brought back fond memories of this winter's best snowstorms. We have actually had a fairly mild winter as far as snow goes. As far as temperature is concerned, we've had some very cold days and the inversions have been terrible. We're lucky here in Bluffdale that a significant number of folks have tractors and other assorted pieces of heavy equipment. Ron Johnson to the SE across the street has lots of equipment and has done a lot of work on the lane, winter and summer. Pictured above is Tim Llewellyn on his dad John's tractor scraping the snow off the driveway. As I recall, we only had about 5 or 6 inches, but when it is wet and heavy, it's a lot of work to remove. Now, in the second week of February, the snow has melted and the temperature is fairly mild. I hope it stays that way.

Parker's Fourth Birthday

January 22, 2010 was PJ's fourth birthday. I guess he had quite a celebration with the Grayson's at Chucky Cheese. The Wilcox sponsored birthday party was a lot quieter I'm sure; it was on Sunday, you know. We were going to have enchiladas but when JoAnn asked PJ what he wanted he replied "cheese pizza". So on Saturday, I went over to Papa Murphy's and got several pizzas including a cheese pizza so we could cook them on Sunday. However, when PJ arrived and was shown the cheese pizza, he definitely wanted chicken noodle soup. Senta made the lovely cake and the rest of us ate the pizza. For all of PJ's birthday photos, go to this link.