From New Zealand With Love

Tail wags, pups and kits!  It's me - Stormy.  I hope all of you have been enjoying the holidays!  We sure have!  What we love best is time together as a family - especially going on walks!  We've also been touched by the gifts we've received!

We received one such gift just yesterday, from new friends Josh and Jessie in New Zealand!  They are a pair of delightful Shelties; if you haven't met them yet, please stop by and say "ha roo!"  They have presented us with the Proximity Award.  You can read all about it on the post at that link!  We are honored and touched that they would share this award with us!  Thank you, Jess and Josh!

We have it displayed proudly in our sidebar with your names.  You are the kindest Shelties in all of New Zealand!

Speaking of NZ... that's where my VERY special friend Prince lives, along with his sisters and his mom.  He sent me (and the rest of my pack) some lovely gifts at Christmas.  I've thanked him privately (as we have all of our friends who sent packages!), but I wanted to show you this one incredible ornament he sent.

Isn't it gorgeous?  I think he had his mom make it!  I just love it!  Mom let me hang it from the dining room chandelier; that's a really bright room and the light catches all the facets in it and makes everything sparkle!  

Another gift we enjoyed tremendously was the snow.  Sadly, it's all gone again (though we did get about another inch two nights ago!) and Dad is getting ready to go play golf.  Sigh.  Yes, it's that bad out there!  Anyroo, we made the most of it while we could and Mom took lots of pictures.  She's playing with a 30-day free trial of Adobe PhotoShop Elements for Mac or some such thing and came up with this cool rendition of Zim and me:

Great effects, don't you think?  She doesn't know what she's doing yet, but is doing some fun stuff.  I especially like that one.

And of course, the best thing about Christmas, the most important thing, is celebrating the very first Christmas and the Gift God gave us all.  One of our neighbors always puts up a little manger scene in his front yard; it helps remind us of the true meaning of Christmas.  While we were out on our walk just this morning, Mom stopped to admire it ... when we noticed something a little "different" about it.

I'm not sure a Huffle Impostor was part of the original Christmas scene... but this one sure looks sweet all curled up in the manger, doesn't she?  It's probably nice and warm in there for her!

Keep that Christmas spirit going!

Tail wags,

Storms

PS:  Our friend Addie asked about ham yesterday after seeing Zimmie's post.  Even though one little nibble probably wouldn't hurt us, our Mom doesn't give us ham.  As with many things that are high in fat content, it can cause us to horka or to get diarrhea - or can lead to pancreatitis.  You can read more about all kinds of hazards here.  Our dear friend Tia cannot have ham due to a bout with pancreatitis, so out of solidarity with her, we are happy to forgo it.  Regardless of what Zimmie wrote yesterday!  I need to go grab that boy by the neck....