Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, good bye!

Ladies and gentlemen, the wallpaper I have been complaining about for almost six years is GONE.

Remember this loveliness?

And before we moved into the house, my office looked like this:

Now it's all gone, gone, gone..

I have to get everything back in place but I am SO happy!

I've ordered a new light fixture too. Eventually I want to ditch my Ikea furniture that's all falling apart, but I can wait a little longer.

And that is the END of wallpaper in this house. It is now all GONE GONE GONE!

Yaaaaaaaaay!!!

Alex even helped with the paper stripping! :)

The Friends For Life walk was a success!

We had lots of fun at the Ontario SPCA Friends For Life walk in Cornwall yesterday. The weather was cold and grey, but that didn't dampen anyone's spirits, and the rain held off!

Here's the start of the race. Can you see Gordon? He's back in the centre, but dogless. Our dogs aren't great in crowds of other dogs, so we kept them at home!

But our friends Mike and Sophie lent Zeus the Great Dane/GSD mix to Gordon...

Zeus is actually very good on leash but it looks like he smelled something exciting in this photo!

When we arrived, we were greeted by a great group of smiling volunteers...

And so many adorable dogs!

This is Snow White. She is a 6-mo Lab mix and she's up for adoption at the SD&G Shelter in Cornwall.

I saw a few cute Jack Russells yesterday!

And this little guy had a sock monkey sweater.

I took a lot of photos of this Bassett Hound. They are irresistibly cute!

This gal decided enough was enough and demanded some belly rubs!

Intrepid walkers!

At the barbecue tent.

Gordon, surrounded by a throng of fascinated women, as per usual.

Look at these two beautiful dogs! Such gorgeous coats.

And here's Faith the Shar-pei...

Faith was the spokes-animal for this year's event. She spent three years in a puppy mill, and was finally rescued from that situation. A GREAT family adopted her last year. She has blossomed. She's the sweetest dog. We walked her when she was at the shelter, and you could tell she was just dying for a family to give all her love to. She has a great, loving personality. We would have adopted her ourselves if we didn't already have two dogs, she was that appealing.

And here's the Basset again!

And this is Sunny the hound mix.

Sunny spent seven years basically chained up outside with a bunch of other dogs who fought him for food. He was finally rescued. One of the shelter workers fell for him and took him home. He's the sweetest guy and is loving his new life as a house dog! That mark under his eye is the scar left from some sort of tooth/gum infection that was so bad, it basically put a hole through his face. :(

But Sunny bears no grudges and is just the nicest, most adorable dog.

Sunny lives with Brutus, a very cute rescue Dachshund...

Here's the grill team at the barbecue tent!

And Napoleon the St. Bernard, another dog who was adopted out from our shelter. He comes to the walk every year.

Impressive strings of drool!!

This cutie won the "Best-dressed" contest category.

And this little one won "Best Trick"!

Here's Brutus and his mommy. Brutus has alopecia, so he's a little bald!

And here are Zeus, Sunny and Brutus together, three rescue dogs who now have love and happiness in their lives.

Thanks to everyone who donated to my walk! I raised $1625 and passed my goal of $1200. I'm very pleased.

Life, death and lawyers

Nice title, eh?

Another exciting day at the farm...

This morning, Lauren the Ameraucana was running around like... er... like a chicken with her head cut off!

Fortunately her head was still attached. But Penelope was in hot pursuit, because Lauren had a JUICY DEAD TOAD in her beak!!

She'd already thrashed it to death by the time I arrived, poor thing. Just a little toad.

Chickens kill me. When they find something particularly exciting to eat, they like to announce to the entire barnyard with excited squawking. Then they act all surprise when every other chicken wants to steal the treat away from them!

Lauren finally found a board to hide under where she could devour her snack in peace...

Ugh.

But it didn't end there. Next Sophie showed up with the hind leg of some unfortunate animal!

Not sure what it was from! Too small for a deer. Coyote maybe? I didn't bother taking it away from her. She and Tristan have cast-iron stomachs and eat all manner of revolting things when my back is turned! I did draw the line at the dessicated dead rat Tristan found last week. I took that away from him and trashed it.

The duck and chicken run is a bit of a cesspool right now. We are having a wire roof put over the run (to stop the damn birds from flying out into the jaws of occasional death.) Of course, the minute they started digging, it started pouring rain. So it's a mudbath out there.

The ducks think it's heaven and they are all brown now!

Meanwhile, Gordon had a civil case this morning that necessitated him wearing his full legal gear. He didn't put on his robes until he got to court, but here he is leaving the house in the rest of his court attire:

And that's some other news. He's in the process of buying himself a building in Lancaster, Ontario, to use as his law office! He's finally had it with working in his tiny office at home. He's buying a really cute old house currently owned by a massage therapist. I think it will be PERFECT for him! The location is great, right near the highway and just 18 minutes from our house. But it's also next door to the greasy spoon restaurant we occasionally frequent, which makes awfully good (if cardiovascularly devastating) poutine!

On top of all this, I am FINALLY getting my office painted. GOOD BYE fugly wallpaper!!!! No more hideous trompe l'oeil book border crapola. Yaaaaaay!

And tomorrow is the Ontario SPCA Friends For Life Walk-a-thon. If you would like to donate, there's still time. Click here!

And big thanks to everyone who has already supported me! 

Have a groovy weekend.

Yes, I changed a diaper!

Last Saturday, we babysat our godson Ben for the first time. It was a ton of fun, and I got to change a diaper for the first time in over 30 years. I used to be a very popular babysitter back in the day. And wow, diapers have velcro now. Who knew?

We kept Ben busy the whole time. Loaded him up in the stroller and walked over to our friends' farm to visit the Clydesdales and tractors!

Ben's jaw dropped when he saw the Clydes!

And the Clydes were very interested in Ben!

We also visited the tractors.

Ben LIKED the tractors! Maybe I'll be able to score him a ride in a combine harvester when he's older.

He liked this tractor, but in this picture he was looking at Bucky the llama, who hangs out in the coverall and had just wandered by!

We also visited the new chicks. Do you like the "I love bees" shirt I got him (and the bee hat, too)? And he's teething again, so he had a good gnaw on his fingers while we walked around.

Afterwards he was zonked out for the whole walk back.

Meanwhile, back at the house, he was fascinated by Julius on the other side of the gate. And Alex was fascinated by Ben!

Alex just loves kids! He was following Ben all over the place. Julius is less impressed with them and was just as happy to be on the other side of the gate.

We had a nice lunch together, too.

He can come back anytime! :)

And I just realized I haven't put up my photos from Quebec City yet. I'll get on that!