Christmas 2011

 Scott's parents were nice enough to make the trip down to visit us this Christmas and we had a great time!

The obligatory Alamo shot.

The River Walk Christmas Eve.

Valero tour. 

The beagles helping open their present from Eric and Kate Christmas morning. They were VERY excited!

Scooter and the deer putting aside their differences to share breakfast Christmas morning.

 The beagles ready to go on their first walk in their bright shiny new harnesses in McAllister Park Christmas afternoon.

Walking the dogs.

Tim "The Cat Whisperer" Sorensen.

 By and large Scooter is a huge jerk, but he seemed to take a liking to Tim.

Old Tunnel State Park in the hill country.

As always the time went too fast, too fast!

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and blessed New Year!

The Beagles

We decided to get back up on the beagle horse a week ago and got two beagle puppies. The older one is about 4 months (Zoe) and the younger one is about 2 months (Bailey). It's hard to get pictures of them because they are never just sitting there nobly looking into the distance (I don't know how they get those pictures for beagle calendars, they must sedate them). They are constantly running, wrestling, biting each other, or chewing on something. It's easiest to get a picture when they're sleeping. We picked these two because they seemed the calmest, but as it turns out they were just carsick. They're both crazy. Bridget must have been bred for docility because these two are nuts. Something we didn't know about beagles is as they get older, all of the black on them slowly turns to brown. So in the next couple months Bailey's head will be brown too, and it explains why Bridget's back slowly turned brown as she got older.

They each have their own bed but they like to share.

Zoe is 10 pounds and Bailey is 4. Bridget was 34, to give you some perspective. Apparently Bridget was a very big beagle. Both Zoe and Bailey will get to be about 20-25 pounds.

They don't always notice Scooter if he happens to be in the backyard, although Zoe stumbled onto him under the shed a couple days ago. He was hissing like crazy! She just kind of stared at him and then walked away. He's about twice her size (he's getting extremely fat because we feed him whenever he whines about it, which is about 3-4 times day) so she probably decided it wasn't worth it.

Before and (Mostly) After Pics

We're mostly done remodeling the house, we just have a few odds and ends left like oddly shaped ceiling registers, light switches, and a small area of moulding. We also need to finish getting some furniture and decorations, but we've made a ton of progress in 3 months...

Living room before. Living room after.


Kitchen before.

Kitchen during. We had to paint everything in the house including all cabinet doors in the kitchen and bathrooms, all of the interior doors, all of the trim, all of the ceilings, and all of the walls because of the smoke smell. The previous owner had smoked inside for the past 7 years and everything was yellow tinted. So not only did we have to paint everything we had to Killz a lot of it first. The house needed updating anyway, but I don't think we would have done as much as we did as fast as we did if it weren't for the smoke smell. Which is completely gone now, there's nothing original left!

Kitchen after. We did everything on the house ourselves, which was a lot for two people, except for the kitchen countertops and backsplash.

The two by four isn't holding up the bar, it's helping to brace it in case someone leans on it before we have a chance to put up some moulding underneath it.

Half bath before.

Half bath after.

Master bath during.

Master bath after.

Foyer before.

Foyer after.

Dining room before.

Dining room after (although we haven't had a chance to clean it out yet, it was the base of operations for all of the projects. It's emptied out a lot, you'll have to trust us.)

Painting the interior doors. Notice how yellow they are, which is how yellow everything was. We painted them white.

Front/Porch.   Front yard, a deer moving in to see what the cat food situation is.

We have to physically stand over Scooter while he eats so the deer don't kick him out and take his food. And even then they get about 10 feet away and just stand there waiting for you to go in. We got him some tuna yesterday, which he seemed to like very much.

No, it's not a dead raccoon. Just Scooter napping in the front yard on his back with his foot up in the air.

I've never seen a cat that loves to sleep on his back so much.

Allie the dog. Not our dog, we're dog-sitting this weekend. The best part about Allie is she doesn't like Scott. She growls and barks at him and hides from him. Won't have anything to do with him. Well Scott invested some time last night and they became friends and he was wrestling with her and playing fetch and she'd curl up next to him on the couch while he read. Well this morning, he had to start all over because she didn't remember him. So he spent some time coaxing her out from under the couch, we went for a walk, and they became friends again, everything was cool. Well then he took a shower and in the meantime she forgot him again and freaked out when he came back in the room, she was growling and barking and went and hid again. Now they're fine again tonight but tomorrow's a new day!

It really is a small world...

Scott has spent so much time this summer flight instructing, between that and the house we really haven't had time to do anything. Renee went out to Boerne while Scott had a lesson to watch and try and get in his world a little bit. The student that night, Hyun Ju Shin, asked if she wanted to come along while he practiced landings. It's a small world because as it turns out, he's from South Korea and works for the South Korean company in Louisiana that bought Taylor Energy. So he now works in the exact same downtown office in New Orleans where the Taylor corporate department was located. Anyway, he's an attorney in South Korea and his company is sending him to school at UTSA to learn US law. He said it's like a vacation for him and he wants to learn to fly in his free time because he can't in South Korea. He's only here temporarily on a work visa so he said he's really enjoying everything and soaking it up because he'll eventually have to go back. His wife and baby were able to come with him too. Pretty cool.

Coming in to land.

In the pattern at Boerne. Banking after taking off again after a touch and go.

More Animals...

Maybe if the cat wasn't so worthless we wouldn't have such small animal problem... We can't decide if all of this activity surrounding the cat food is cool or alarming. The possum was at least a little skittish when he saw us but the raccoon didn't really care. Scott was changing the locks on the garage door and the raccoon walked right by him within 4 feet, looked at him as if to say "what's up?" and went on his way. At least if he gets his fill of cat food he'll stay out of garbage. Assumedly.

It's all fun and games until the baby skunk gets freaked out by the raccoon and decides to spray. At some point we should probably just take up the food and water at night when Scooter's done, but for now it's cool to check up periodically and see if we have any visitors!

Busted!