Our New Church

Yes, indeed, I knew there was a church down here for us.  One that would appreciate all my animals and welcome them into the fold, too.  A manger was good enough for Baby Jesus to come into the world and so I feel particularly like this church would fulfill my spiritual needs.  I can wear jeans and flannel and boots and no one would care if I brought a couple of dogs or a goat or two with me, just like Baby Jesus had.
Yep.  I think I've found where I want to go.  But we gotta get that front door fixed.

A week old!

Even though the pups were born a week ago on Thursday (today is Monday, so they were 11 days old today) I took some photos on their week old birthday.  Everyone is so excited, waiting for their pups to grow up!

In the third and fourth photo, to the right, the pup with the big spot is Diva, the only one named right now.  She is the smallest one but a mighty little soul is she!  She is going to be like Aisling, her great great aunt.  Aisling's full title is The Beautiful But Evil Yet Terribly Misunderstood Aisling.  Aisling says these pups are hers and it's so obvious since Diva is certainly her child.  She wants me to set up a puppy registry, she would like an iPad, DVD player and a 4 G whatever that is. She saw it on tv and so she wants one.  Aisling is Susan Lucci in a dog body.  She is a free spirit and does as she pleases, is incredibly intelligent and figures things out, particularly where there is food involved.  If you go to The Watching Story blog, you can look thru the old posts, there are a couple there.  I'm typing this on the way out the door to work so can't look it up right now, just wanted to get this up so everyone can ooh and aah over pretty pups. Anyhow, Aisling says they are hers and Tabi is just taking care of them for her.  On Aisling's last litter, she was trying to get the chickens to raise them for her.  :) 
Back to Diva, if she has a concern, she YELLS!  Where is my tittie?  I am COLD!  I am LOST!  And she peeps this mighty peep until some human somewhere comes tearing into the room and gives her what she wants.  She has climbed up on Tabi's neck and on her belly when Tabi sleeps on her back (open milk bar at that point, a place for everyone!).  She is going to be a little feisty one, I think, fearless and brave.  I find the little ones usually are more daring, for some reason.
I'll try to remember to come back and put in the links for Aisling's posts for those of you who have not read it.
Home, now, here are the two posts on Aisling:
http://thewatchingstory.blogspot.com/2009/10/beautiful-but-evil-yet-terribly.html

http://thewatchingstory.blogspot.com/2009/11/further-adventures-of-tbbeytm-aisling.html

For this, they cancelled school on Friday

Yep, this is it.  The road on the way to work on Friday.  Apparently, people down here go into a frenzy if they hear the "S***" word mentioned on TV. They mob WalMart, water, milk, bread, sandwich meat.  Probably ought to (arter) get a couple of new thick winter coats, too, while we are about it.  At least enough food for a week, wait, make that ten days, remember the big ice storm of '09?  The above is what I usually call a "dusting" of snow, just a little bit, enough to stick but will be gone in a couple of hours.  They called school here in the county the night before because of the S word.
And that's not all, the kids went to school the Monday before Christmas and then didn't go back the rest of the week because of the S word.  Then they were off all the week between Christmas and New year's day.  Then off most of the week after, too, due to the S word. We had about 4" of snow on Christmas, it was pretty and just nice.

Above is up the road a bit, below is off our front deck.  OK, now this is serious snow for here. But most of it left in a few days. This IS our "cold" season down here, ranging from 23 to 46 degrees.
Here are the horses:

They did some running and frisking in the snow, they seem to like it a lot!  Right now we have about an inch, it did continue to fall overnight on Friday night and I had to go to one of the bigger towns here on Saturday morning.  Most of the roads were deserted until I actually got to town, then it picked up somewhat.
I think the big "storm" that is coming to the south of us will mostly miss us but bring some ice/snow to the states below us, TN, AL and Mississippi, Georgia.  We have a little predicted, less than an inch.
I guess I have to go to work tomorrow.

And the final count is.....

Well, she fooled me!  Tabitha got stuck under the dresser on Wednesday night.  I had to get Jerry up to lift the thing up while I dragged her out.  She very happily took to tearing up papers. And was one of those girls who doesn't pant, pace, drool, throw up and make a lot of drama about pups.  Just looking slightly worried, a few pushes and look!  A puppy!
Of course she made me lose a day's work, and we are in the middle of a project at work.  Ah, well, everyone seemed understanding and anxious to see photos this morning when I did go to work.
The final count?  Well we STARTED with a dozen.  Yep, that's right TWELVE puppies.  She was enormous...we saved 8 of them, they must have been so stuffed in there that they could not all survive the trip out.  But I am grateful for 8, there are several families who are happily awaiting news on them and hopefully I have the right pups for the right homes.

Tabi loves her little children.  Four girls and four boys.....

Oh, she is soooo fat.....

This is Tabitha, who is due to have pups sometime in the next 72 hours or so.  She didn't finish her dinner tonight, and from her progesterone test two months ago, Saturday is the target day.  So I am not watching her too closely right now.  She has decided that under the deck would be a fine place to raise a family, though, and thank goodness we fenced that off some months back.

These photos were actually taken about a week ago, and she is much bigger.  According to her weight, she should have six but I think she will have 8.  She has given everything to her babies, she is eating but thin and so I believe she has more in there than I usually estimate due to weight.

She is literally dragging the floor!  Poor girl.  We are having a natural whelping this time, I loved the convenience of a planned c section but since she is due during the weekend, we will just let Nature take its course.

So soon there will be more little Kallista babies playing in the house.
Tomorrow the tile man will be here and hopefully the floors will be done in just a few days.  Jerry got the run in shed done today, the important part.  He will line it tomorrow with wood so that horses have a little more wind protection.  I'll try and get a photo of it to share with you all.
In the meantime, everyone say a prayer for Tabi, her babies and me.....

Just a couple of pretty pictures!

This is another lovely Kentucky sunrise with some fog, etc, and Misty was standing out in the field.  I just love how these photos came out!

Dang I wish the back yard fence, etc wasn't there, looks like she is in a terrible pasture!  It's very secure and very nice.  But love the light!

And the floors look like crap.....

(I wrote this some time back, the front room floor is mostly in now.)
Well, they do.  And they have for a long time.  I mean, I will bet the carpets are 19 years old, just as the house is.  Rose, the former owner, wanted to do something with the floors but didn't get around to it.
Grey/taupe carpet and black and white linoleum in the kitchen. The kitchen really wasn't too bad.  The same carpet in the three bedrooms and blue carpet in one bathroom. The big bathroom has some kind of stick down tile that also isn't half bad.  But it's all going.
When Jerry got down here in late August, we tore up the carpet in all three bedrooms and put down Allure.  It wasn't hard to do but is hard to cut and Jerry was in charge of that.  I actually laid this stuff down and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to try this themselves.  There is a knack to it but once you get it after ruining a few pieces, you will be fine.  It's a floating floor, a vinyl plank kind of floor and you get it at Home Depot, which has a huge variety of colors in it.  There are two sides of the plank that have sticky stuff sticking up and two sides have it sticking down.  So the planks basically are "glued" together by putting the up/down pieces together like a piece of velcro.  Lowe's has something similar except that the sticky part is really narrow, like 1/8th of an inch.  Not enough!  The Allure is about an inch wide on the glue strip parts.  
So far, the Allure has withstood several accidents by Hayley, who is 15 1/2 years old.  No one has puked on it, yet, but I'm sure that will happen.  After all, it's a household in which dogs outnumber humans.  And the #1 rule of dogs is....someone must puke at least once a week.  In any case, the floor has cleaned up beautifully.  Stay tuned and in 10 years I will give a report on the condition of the floor.

We started this in one of the smaller bedrooms.  The carpet was torn out and the staples pulled up.  Pulling up the staples was the worst thing about the job, I think.  Little buggers took quite a bit to get up.  Then we put down tarpaper as a vapor barrier and stapled that down.  Then the wood below the actual flooring, called Luan, and 1/4 of an inch thick, was put down.  Finally we started to lay the planks down. The grey/blue part is the "up" part that is sticky, on two sides.  On the opposite sides, the sticky part is down.  It reminds me of velcro, when it sticks together, it really sticks!  I had to pull it apart a time or two because I'd let just a very tiny "crack" inbetween and wanted it to be totally tight.  Man was that hard to do!

Of course, Hayley had to come in and "help".  She is 15 1/2 and once she paces about a little while, seems to find a good spot and so long as she is close to us, she is happy and goes to sleep.  We just kind of slide her around while she is asleep if she is in the way:

Here are some closeups of how it all looks:

We chose the same heat registers to go throughout the whole house.  While we were laying the flooring down, Hayley had a gift for walking around and "falling" into the vent holes.   We were bad and laughed at her... :) 
(Also written a while back while I tried to figure out how to load the pictures!)

Tomorrow is the big day, though!  Last month there was a sale on 13 x 13 inch cream colored ceramic tile at Lowe's and so I went and got something like 1,000 pieces.  That will do the main part of the house, the front/dining rooms and the kitchen and dinette (currently where the dog crates are) area.  And the little hall leading to the little bathroom.  I bought enough extra to do the baths, but they need some updating badly before we lay down tile in there.  We chose a darker grout, called chamois, and some decorative tile to put in the kitchen, just a bit, for emphasis.  We also got some tile the same size only in a lighter coffee color, to put in front of the fireplace to give the illusion of a sort of hearth, and the decorative stuff will go around the edge of that.
We will put down a vapor barrier, then the hardy board which will be screwed into the floor, then glue the tile down after cutting it and placing it.  It has to sit for 24 hours to dry, then the grouting goes on.  We hope to get the subflooring and glueing process done tomorrow, the grouting on Thursday.  And the sealing of the grouting done on Friday.  This will be for the front and dining rooms.  (This actually took quite a bit longer than we anticipated....but it is done now and looks fabulous!)
And here's the really pathetic part...our bedroom opens off of the front room. With no outside door.  We basically were looking at living in half of the house at once, one side has the bedroom/bath and front/dining rooms.  The other half has the kitchen, dinette area, tiny bath and two extra bedrooms.  Hmmmmmm....So one way we have a great bathroom and comfortable bedroom but no fridge.  The other way we have a fridge and a tiny little barely double bed.  And of course, the dogs' crates have to be moved from one side to the other.  And all the furniture goes...somewhere.  A lot probably in the front yard and please, God, don't let it rain!
So Jerry came up with a solution.  I don't know if it will work but it at least could make things easier.  We can climb thru the bathroom window at bed time.  Yeah, I know, it sounded stupid to me, too, until I thought about sleeping in my own bed at night.  And using the better bathroom.  And having a tv because the front room will be unavailable and no internet, either.  (sigh)  So I really think this could work.  I won't have to move my work clothes to the other side of the house, etc.  I don't think the dogs will be too happy, but Hayley can still sleep with us.  And she won't be too much to lift in and out of the window.
I hope I don't break my neck!
(Well, it ended up that we were able to go with a Plan B, thankfully.  The tile was laid up to half of the bedroom door so no climbing in and out of the window.)  And here are the photos:

This is the floor after the subflooring was all put down. Piles of tile over to the right hand side of the room, just some of it.  That's Jasmine lying on the couch.  And the little temporary computer table I was using.  It will be used as my sewing machine table when I get that far.

Wow, just a little bit different, huh? Wow, wow, wow!  Here is in front of the sliding glass door into the back yard:

Looking back across the room towards the kitchen.  The floor was about half done at this point.

How do you like the fireplace area?  Close ups to follow:

There is still scuzzy stuff on the tile, that needed to be mopped but I couldn't wait to take the photo!  And we have gas logs in the fireplace and I LOVE THEM!

We added a corgi to the picture for authenticity:

The only thing that is lacking is the baseboard.  Jerry has treated the grout with a sealer.  The baseboard is in part of the room so we could move the heavy furniture against the wall.  I'll send photos again when the room is done.
So this week the floor guy is back again and maybe in another few days we will have a completed kitchen!  Wheee!