Animal House

We bought a house a couple of weeks ago, and as a bonus it came with a cat! His name is Scooter, and he has been hanging around for the past several years, according to the lady who used to live next door and who had been driving all the way across town to feed him while the house sat vacant a couple months. He is very lazy and sleeps all day, lying around waiting to be fed. He doesn't hunt, if he is not fed he will probably die of starvation he is that lazy. The one day we didn't feed him because we didn't go by the house, we pulled in the driveway the next day and instead of sleeping on the porch he was gnawing on a patch of grass by his food bowl all crazy eyed, so we have made a point of feeding him daily since. The problem with the cat food bowl, though, is it attracts many different animals, all of which seem very familiar with the location of the bowl and dinner time. The deer especially love cat food, but we have also seen a baby skunk, a raccoon, and doves helping themselves. There's also a tan cat that sometimes comes around that the lady said used to be really fat and who she called "Big Fat Orange Cat" but is now really skinny and looks like he might have some kind of mangey disease. He will sit back and wait for Scooter to be done eating before he eats, so it must be Scooter's territory. We feed him off to the side though, and they hang out on the porch together all day.

Here Scott's feeding the deer down the driveway so Scooter can eat, they used to just take the food over from him but now they're kind of scared of us because we shoo them away while he eats. We're going to get a bucket for the front yard and fill it with deer corn like a lot of the neighbors. Good thing we like animals! I can't move the pictures for some reason, so here is a picture of a lizard we found today in the living room. They're all over outside but this one must have snuck in. Scooter's typical day...
He sleeps on his back on the porch. Worthless. We also weren't sure if Scooter and the deer got along or not, turns out not. One began following him shortly after this picture was taken and when he realized it, he turned around and hunched and hissed at it. The deer just stared and didn't move, but he did quit following him. Scooter's very lucky there's no beagle to chase him because she HATED cats and that was one of her favorite things to do!

Bridget aka "The Beagle"

11/8/2004-2/26/2011

Last Saturday, we had Bridget put down. It was an extremely hard decision but she had been very sick off and on for the past couple of years or so, and sick constantly for the past month. About a month ago, after another trip to the emergency vet where she was hospitalized, we went ahead and had a bunch of different tests done to see exactly what her illness was as the special diet and medication we had her on were no longer working. She had an ultrasound, colonoscopy, endoscopy, and various biopsies of her gastrointestinal system. The findings were that she had inflammatory bowel syndrome, which we had suspected but didn't know for sure until the tests. There was no cure, all we could do was continue to try to manage her condition with a special diet and additional medication to try and keep it from progressing. At the end of last week, she had degenerated to the point where we had run out of food brands she could tolerate, and she wasn't even able to stomach boiled chicken and rice. She was constantly sick, and the side effects from the already large amount of medication she was on were making her even more uncomfortable. Last Saturday morning, she had another episode which would have required hospitalization to stabilize her. Since we were unable to effectively manage her condition anymore and it seemed like we were just prolonging her suffering, we decided the best decision was to put her down. She was hurting so much and so uncomfortable in her last minutes of life, it is a relief to know she is finally at peace. We're glad she doesn't have to suffer anymore, but we loved her very much and miss her greatly. She was a very good little beagle.

The Beagle at the Beach

Last Saturday was a beautiful day for the beach, and although we had just a very short time there because Scott had to get back Saturday evening to fly, it was a lot of fun. Bridget has had a lot of health problems lately so to help a beagle out we took her with us.

Charging a group of birds.

Refusing to get near the water.
Just a beautiful day!

Snow Day!

San Antonio got a little less than an inch of snow Thursday night/Friday morning, beginning with some freezing rain Thursday night. As a result, all of the freeways in the entire city were closed from 11pm Thursday night to noon Friday. The city doesn't have any salt trucks, gravel trucks, or snow plows, so there's really no way to deal any sort of snow or ice, you kind of just have to wait for it to melt. Which it pretty much had by noon. Renee's office was closed and Scott's commute is only two minutes so he was able to make it in. Pretty wild for so much to be shut down for so little but it was like a sheet of ice out there! Also, the pipes down here are plastic so a lot of people had frozen pipes and no water, and there were two water main breaks at our apartment complex.

8 am.

Bridget was shaking from the cold, (although it really wasn't that cold, so what she really needs to do is suck it up a little better) so Renee covered her in a little blanket. She tries to help a beagle out whenever she can. Part of Bridget's problem is her entire stomach and one leg are shaved (another story for another day), so it's probably a little drafty for her.

5pm. Everything dried up and 44 degrees.

Quick Update

We went to the Riverwalk for Christmas Eve again this year, it's becoming a nice tradition. We thought about taking the beagle for about two seconds, and were glad we didn't when we saw how many more people were there this year.

Scott's check ride for his single engine flight instructor rating was scheduled about eight times in the past six months (remember when he got his multi engine instructor rating last June? And it was only supposed to take a couple weeks after that? Yeah, right.). At one point in mid-December it was going to be at Lakeway airport near Austin, where Scott had never been, so the weekend before we flew up there so he could get used to the field and kind of get his bearings in the area. It ended up getting cancelled for weather again, but we got some cool pictures of the area and the sunset.
He finally got his check ride this past Saturday and passed no problem, so if you know anyone looking for a flight instructor in San Antonio, send them his way!

Flight to the North Pole 2010

We volunteered for "Flight to the North Pole" again this year where kids with cancer and other serious illnesses get to ride in a Continental airplane to the north pole and meet Santa. There were all kinds of activities and food for them and their families too.

Santa arrived in his personal jet! Very cool gifts under the tree. One of the Chik-Fil-A cows made an appearance.
Clown!

There were about twice as many kids this year as last year and everyone had a great time!

Thanksgiving at the Grand Canyon

We went to Arizona Thanksgiving weekend to check out the Grand Canyon and see the sights. We stayed in Flagstaff, which looks a lot more like Colorado than Arizona because it's in the mountains.

Mt. Humphreys, which is the snow-capped mountain Flagstaff is beside.

We saw Meteor Crater, which is where a meteor struck the earth. It's a lot deeper than it looks, at about 550 feet.
Near Meteor Crater on historic Route 66 is Winslow, Arizona, setting of the Eagles song "Take it Easy." They have a mural, a statue, and an old flatbed Ford set up for the tourists!

Eric and Katie joined us on Thanksgiving afternoon and we went to Walnut Canyon National Park, where there are old Native American dwellings built into the side of the canyon. It was kind of a hike down but worth it.

The homes are the holes on the middle right.

It was pretty cold out but inside they were warm, even without a fire.

Friday we took the Grand Canyon Railway to the Grand Canyon.

An old steam engine.

The train going around a curve. Very scenic!

For about 20 minutes on the way there and back they had musicians come out for entertainment. The trip one way was about 2 hours and 15 minutes.

The Grand Canyon was absolutely amazing and the pictures don't come close to doing it justice!

Saturday we saw the Hoover Dam and got a tour of the inside.

An intake vent in the middle of the dam.

The new bridge by the dam.

We were so close to Las Vegas we decided to see it as well.

The Bellagio fountain show.

Our flight out of Flagstaff got cancelled Sunday due to snow so we ended up driving to Phoenix with Eric and Katie and seeing the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert before catching an evening flight. The snow was really pretty though and it actually ended up working out perfectly and extending our vacation a little!