Scenic Overlook

Woo, everypuppy and everycat.  Dave here, with a report on a cool adventure I had with my mom the other day.  We decided to go check out this cool scenic overlook place we read about on the Kansas - Flint Hills site to see if there were any walking trails for us to explore.  We got to go in the car to get there, so it was like two fun things in one!

Mom parked the car and we went over to take in the view.  Well, OK, she took in the view, I started snoofing everything within snooter range!  Mom said she could see lots of the campus and the east side of town from up there.  Here's one look:

You should be able to click that to make it bigger.  See the "KS" on the hill out there?  Woo!  That's for Kansas!

We started to explore the little park up there.  We went back behind the water tower on a dirt trail - and saw this up on a rock ledge:

It's a marker honoring the guys whose founded our town.  Mom thought it was sort of sad that it was in the middle of pretty much nowhere and not many people would see it.  I thought it was great because we saw a little path up behind it, so I hopped up there and we started to explore!

This is one of the little trails we found:

Sorry the picture is a little blurry.  There were some mutterings behind me about somepuppy was pulling too hard, and someone tripping over rocks, and stumbling.  I'm not quite sure what that was all about.

We got to a little break in the trees at one point and stopped to see what we could see.

For some reason, Mom was more focused on the rocks on the trail that the view at that point.

We made our way back around to near where we'd left the car and there were some cool rock chunks I climbed on.  I struck a Rin Tin Tin pose:

Pretty good imitation don't you think?

We went back over to the lookout area ...

... and I took in all the sights and smells once more before we headed home.  What a fun adventure!

In totally other news, we got a package yesterday from our friends Rubi and Denali.  They live in Pittsburgh and sent us some cool fabric.  Mom called me over to see it, but look at who claimed it!  

Ammy!

I really thought she was backing the Cardinals.  Hmm.  Anywoo, Mom made us cool bandanas and we'll post pix of us wearing them tomorrow!  Woo!

Luv,

Dave

Fun With Photos Friday & Tagged!

Woo, everypup and everycat.  It's me - Dave.  I was tagged by our very good friends over at Team Husky in the "5th photo in your 5th folder" tag.  Thanks, Summer, Sesuk and Prince!  I always love being invited to the party!

Then I remembered we already played just a bit ago ... so the 5th photo in the 5th folder would be the same one.  Woo!  Stormy said we're Siberians, so we could just toss the rules out and do whatever we wanted to.  She's so smart!  Since it's Fun With Photos Friday, I thought I'd pick the 5th photo in the Photoshop folder!  That's where Mom stashes the photos she's "played around with" as she learns Photoshop Elements!   

By the way, Fun With Photos Friday or Photo Finish Friday ... we can't decide which title we like better.  What do you like?  We'll put a poll in the sidebar; let us hear from you!  Storm thinks we should make this a regular feature.

Anywoo, thanks again for the tag, Team Husky!  If anyone out there would like to play, consider yourselves tagged!  Here's our picture; it just happens to be of ME!

From JAN 09

Need I say more?

Luv,

Dave

Out Takes

Ha roo, pups and kit-cats!  It's me - Zim.  Last week, I told you I'd share some of the "out takes" from our trip to the Kansas Ocean.  You know... those pictures that didn't go QUITE the way Mom might have wanted them to.  Ha roo roo roo.  Sadly, she deleted what I would consider the best of them, but there are still a few worth sharing.  

Mom calls this sort of thing "trouble". 

Ammy and I call it "finding something really good!"

Mom wanted Amber to sit and pose for her on the way down the hill.  "Look at the camera, Ammy!"  Naturally, she turned her head, closed her eyes, and refused with a little "no".

No!  Hee hee hee.

Ha roo roo roo!  Storm was proud of her for that one!

Once we got down to the Kansas Ocean, we sat for all those cool pix you saw the other day.  But there comes a time when a Sibe's got to do what a Sibe's got to do.

Hey, Ams!  I think you're sitting in coyote poop!

Ha roo roo roo!  Just kidding.  Made ya get up!

Mom!  Make Zimmie stop!!!

Have a fun day, all!

Play bows,

Zim

Mom Got Tagged!

Ha roo, pups and cool-cats.  It's me - Stormy.  The Dughallmore Beagles' mom tagged our mom in this cool game going around - the 40 Things Tag.  According to the rules, Mom is supposed to write 40 things about herself and include a recent photo, then tag three others to play.  Mom is far more comfortable talking about us than herself, so I decided since I've known her longer than the rest of the Ao4, I would be the one to tell 40 things about her!  Ha roo roo roo!  She's not getting away with that one!  

40 Things About Our Mom

1.  Mom was born between moves.  Her family was going from Ft. Knox, Kentucky to Huntington, West Virginia and Mom couldn't wait until they got there.  They made a stop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where her parents had grown up.

2.  Mom is an Army brat.  That should explain #1.

3.  Mom got her first dog when she was about 6 or 7 - a Beagle named Sam.  We don't have any pix of him scanned; I need to do something about that!

4.  Mom lived in at least a dozen places before she went to college.

5.  Mom's family's second dog was also a Beagle - Rookie.  You can see pix of him on our Sunday Salute to him.

6.  Mom will always have a soft spot in her heart for Beagles.  (See numbers 3 and 5.)

7.  Mom is a graduate of Penn State University.

8.  Mom started out as a Meteorology major.  After the second semester of Calculus, she said her head was full and needed to find something else.  She has a Bachelor's in Advertising, with an emphasis (they don't do "minors") in Social Psychology.

9.  Mom met Dad at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

10.  She also got married between moves, as I think about it.  Dad was moving from Cleveland, Ohio to Fort Lee, Virginia.  He got packed up and headed to Fort Knox, KY, they got married there (that's where Mom's parents lived) and headed out to the east coast.

11.  Mom borrowed Aunt Janet's wedding dress.  Grandma made it.

12.  Mom is an Army wife.

13.  According to the US Army, Mom is fluent in French.  She got to attend the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, California with Dad.  It was a 6-month course, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day in French.  

14.  Mom lived in Soignies, Belgium for 3 years.  

15.  A couple months after Mom and Dad got to Belgium, they adopted our great sisters, Jesse and Lucky.  (That should take you to one of our many posts about them!)

16.  Jesse and Lucky taught Mom a LOT.  (Ha roo roo roo!)

17.  Mom travelled all over Europe during those three years.  

18.  Aunt Janet and her hubby lived in Franfurt, Germany the first year Mom and Dad were in Belgium, so they got to visit a few times over there!

19.  One of Mom's favorite restaurants in Soignies was a little Vietnamese place, "Le Bamboo".  Dad met the owner when he was walking Jesse and Lucky one day; he told Dad he was opening the restaurant and invited him and Mom to come.  

20.  Mom's favorite thing at the restaurant was called "nems".  They are a Vietnamese spring roll; you wrap them in mint and lettuce leaves and dip them in different sauces to eat.  You can read about one version here.  

21.  Mom can't believe we're only at the halfway point.

22.  Mom adopted great brother Booter when she lived here the first time.  (Dad was assigned to Fort Riley twice!)  

23.  Mom lived in Korea for two years.  She, Lucky and Booter lived in Seoul, on Yongsan Army Garrison; Dad lived "further north".

24.  Mom bought more fabric in those two years than she'd like to admit.  

25.  Mom loves to cook.

26.  Mom loves to bake.

27.  Mom loves to eat.  (So does Dad; not so much for him on 25 & 26.)

28.  Mom loves to clean the house.  What?  Well, you spend a lot of time at it!  OK, fine.  Mom likes for the house to be clean.

29.  Mom owns 3 vacuums.  Zim has one, too, so there are four of those things in the house.

30.  Mom and Dad lived in about a dozen different places before Dad retired from the Army.

31.  Mom really is color blind.   She's had that dot test administered by an eye doctor and everything.  

32.  Mom loves to organize things.  Seriously.  The spices are alphabetized, as are the CDs and albums.  

33.  Mom loves to quilt and make bags.

34.  Mom's had a lot of different jobs, from working on an assembly line at a print plant to running the Master's Degree programs for Boston University at SHAPE, Belgium.  Lots of other stuff in there, too.  And volunteer work.

35.  Mom is pretty much ambidextrous.  She does write much better right-handed and fences left-handed.  Not that there's much call for her to fence these days.

No, Mom, we aren't done yet.  

36.  Mom rode in an elevator with Wayne Rogers when she was in New York City for a job interview.  He was dressed for tennis.  She didn't realize it was him until he got out.

37.  Mom and Dad ran into Clint Eastwood in a drug store in Carmel, California.  He was with Sondra Locke, and their son and daughter.  Their son had picked up a bottle of mouthwash.  Mr. Eastwood asked his son, "Well.  Are you going to buy that... conehead?"  In case you "gots to know" (see this link; start at about the 3:50 mark if you want a short cut), he did indeed purchase said mouthwash.  (I never said Mom's list was going to be exciting.)

38.  Mom is currently addicted to the following iPhone Apps:  Gem Spinner, Wordle and Word Warp, and Falling Balls.

39.  Mom's favorite colors are blue and white.  I'm told this has nothing to do with #7, but I'm not certain of that.

She's also extremely relieved that we're almost finished with her list.  She wanted to count that remark as #40.  I said, "No."  We still need to do the recent photo.  Here ya go.  

AND #40.  Mom took my online "Cooperating For Photos 1" classes.  Ha roo roo roo!

Mom is tagging following bipeds!

Huffle Mawson's mum

Sitka, Tia and Cornelia Marie's mom

Angus Mhor's mom

Have fun with it!

Tail wags,

Storms

The Dark Cloud - Mystery Revealed!

Tail wags, pups and kit-cats!  Stormy here today!  If you've been reading the blog lately, you know that when Ammy and Zim went to the "Kansas Ocean", they saw a dark, mysterious cloud.  You could even see it in some of our special Sunday pictures.  Then Dave told you yesterday that it followed them back to our house and was hovering about while he was doing his Lab-in-a-Sibe-suit thing in the yard.  In fact, I looked out the window to watch him playing fetch.  I mean, it's fascinating -- Mom throws the Wubba, and he... brings it back to her!  He brings it back!  Incredible!  But I digress.  This is what I saw:

I had to get a better look at this thing, so when Mom got in, I asked her to take me out front for a little recon mission.   I looked up at it, ran it through my computer-like brain ... and realized all the fuss was over a smoke cloud!

Puh-lease!  Is that what all the excitement is over?

Oh, sure, it was cool-looking - but it was just smoke from a farm field or more likely from Fort Riley.  I have a feeling our resident Meteorologist set our brothers up on that one.  That Ammy!  What a joke-ster!

Since it was so cool, I used this opportunity to teach Mom how to create a panoramic photo using Photoshop Elements for Mac.  It basically stitches a series of pictures together.  Pretty cool.  Here's the scene out front; you can click it for a larger view!

Not bad for our first attempt!

It's currently 15 degrees Fahrenheit here, with snow flurries flying around.  I hope your day is just as wonderful!

Tail wags,

Storms

PS:  We all send very happy sweet 16 birthday wishes to our dear kitty friend Tia!  MEOW, Tia!!!

Wubba Wubba Wubba!

Woo, everypup and everycat, it's me - Dave!  Remember that day that Ammy and Zim got to go on another really long walk to the Kansas Ocean and back?  Well, Mom's really pretty good about making sure all four of us have special time with her, so when they got back, it was my turn for some fun!

Oh, yeah... a couple things before I get started!  Remember that seed pod thing that Zim said he likes to try to eat (but Mom doesn't let him)?  A very kind blogger from Flint Hills, Tall Grass stopped by and let us know that it's Sumac.  Not poison sumac... but not something you really should chow down on.  Sorry, Zim.  We've added the blog link to our sidebar (under "Learn More About Our Area") and encourage anyone who would like to know more about our area to check it out!  Thank you so much for stopping by and educating us about the Sumac!

The other thing is about that funny cloud Zim said was following them.  When the redheads and Mom were almost back at Ao4 HQs, they turned around and this is what they saw:

Sort of creepy, isn't it?  Woo!

Anywoo... Mom snapped my leash on and said, "Let's go play!"  We headed to the back yard to do one of my VERY favorite things - play with my Wubba!!!

Here I am, waiting ever so patiently for Mom to throw it.  

Come on, Mom! Throw it!

I thought she wasn't going to for a minute there!

Mom?

But she did!  And I ran and ran and brought it back!

Me and Wubba!

Then we played tuggy-tug.  I love that!

She threw it again and again and I kept bringing it back.  Oh, how I love this game!  ...even if it does make Stormy say that I'm a Lab in a Sibe suit.  Siberians do SO play fetch!

Woo!

Throw it again, Mom!

We played and played... 

...then Mom said it was time to go in the house.  She had some special things she wanted to do with Stormy, which is only fair!

When I got inside, I noticed that the strange cloud was directly over the house.

I thought I should hold on to this chair so nothing would happen to it.  Woo.

Mom and Storm went out front and took a series of pictures of the cloud.  Storm is helping Mom figure out how to do some panoramic thing on Photoshop Elements so you can get a good feel for it.  Once they get that set, we'll post it!

Happy Australia Day to all of our friends down under!

Luv,

Dave

Serene Scenery Sunday

We thought you might enjoy these photos from our walk Thursday.

From JAN 09

From JAN 09

From JAN 09

Have a serene Sunday!

Love,

Ammy

Back to the Beach!

Ha roo all you pups and cool-cats - and the occasional biped who stops by, too.  It's me, Zimmie, here with Amber to tell you about our trip back to the Kansas Ocean.  Thursday was a killer here - in the upper 60s and sunny.  Knowing that for some bizarre reason our mom prefers that sort of thing to say, today's weather (a dusting of snow on the ground and currently at 6 degrees F), Am and I let her hook us up - and we were off to the beach!

Here I am, heading across the wild prairie.

Does anyone know what these seed-pod things are?

Did anyone respond with "tasty"?  I find them irresistible.  This doesn't please Mom.  Here's a look at how plentiful they are:

So it's not like I'm trying to eat the last one or anything.  Any of the gardening bipeds out there know what those are?

On the horizon out there, you can see one of our golf courses.  Dad plays there a lot, but he was at a different one that day.  Mom took lots of "scenic" shots; we'll share some of those with you tomorrow.  Oh, yeah - and see that dark cloud just above the horizon on the right?  That thing followed us everywhere!  More shots of that in future posts!

Here's Ammy, heading down one of the hills.

Oh, I know what you're thinking, but we DO have hills here!  We're in the Flint Hills!  Turn around and see what we came down:

Pretty cool, isn't it?  The picture doesn't do the incline justice.  I don't know why Mom doesn't take us home back up that way!

We did some exploring once we got down to the ocean.  There are SO many cool smells down there!  After we did lots of snoofing around, I convinced Am to do some posing - you saw that great shot of her yesterday, remember!?!?  That was one of her poses.  I tried one like that, too.

Me - Zim - daydreaming by the Kansas Ocean

Mom took all of these with her iPhone, by the way.  She said the challenge, in addition to keeping two Siberians under control (ha roo roo roo!), was that the sun was so bright, she couldn't really see her screen to know what she was getting.  Whatever.  Here's another shot of Ammy:

Ammy, seaside

Mom wanted to get some shots of us together, and we made it really fun for her.  We're thinking Monday we might post the "out takes" - how does that sound?  Oh, or maybe Tuesday, because Dave had some excitement Thursday that he wants to share with you, too.  

We did give her a couple "nice" shots.  Here is one:

Hey, what's that over there?

And as a segue to our next post, Serene Scenery Sunday.... I'll leave you with this one:

Me and Ammy - AH, sweet serenity!

Play bows,

Zim

Photo Finish Friday

Nothing Photo-Shopped, nothing edited, just a great picture taken yesterday at the "Kansas Ocean".

From JAN 09

Love,

Ammy

Working For a Living

Ha roo, pups and cool-cats.  Zim here.  I thought I'd share a little bit of my work day with you today.  It's not all walks and play time around here, you know.

I was going to post a ton of pictures to show you that my job takes me all over the house, working every corner of it, but I thought this one pretty much summed it all up.

Yep.  If there is a nook or a cranny, I will test it out for nap-ability.

It's a tough job, but somesibe's got to do it!

Play bows,

Zim

"Wordless" Wednesday

Hi everypuppy and everykitty!  It's me - Amber!  A lot of our friends do a really fun thing called "Wordless Wednesday" and we thought we'd give it a try!  Stormy said I could do our first one, so here goes.  I hope I do OK, because this is new to me and I feel just a liiiiiiiiiittle bit of pressure and I'm just not sure.  But here goes.  Oh, I already said that.  Sorry!  :)

Umm... hang on, please.  Something seems off here.  Wait.  

Do my ears look extra-long to anyone today?  They look big from this angle.  What do you all think?

See?  Up there.  On top of my head.  They seem big to me.  Do they seem big to you?

One of my nicknames is Zichick (Ukrainian for "rabbit" or "hare"), but I thought I was past the "big ears" stage!  Maybe it's just me.  I don't know.  Does anyone else see what I'm talking about?

Note from the Supreme Commander, Ao4:  If we continue to participate in "Wordless Wednesday", assign it to somepup other than Ammy.  SZK

Sigh.

Have a happy day, everypup and everykitty!

Love,

Ammy

Let's Go!

Woo, everypup and everycat!  Dave here, ready to fill you in on the cool adventure Zim and I had the other day.  We got our leashes on and Mom said, "OK, boys, let's go!"  Woo!

We went up near the water tower at first, and took a turn down this dirt path.

Me and Zim

There are INCREDIBLE smells up there, pups!  REALLY incredible!  The scenery is cool, too, if you're into that sort of thing.  Here's a shot across the hills:

Woo!  What's that sort of bluish thing in the middle there!?!?  Zim said it was the Kansas Ocean!  We sent Mom a mind meld message to take us over there; there had to be a way to get there from up here!

She must have understood our message, 'cuz we kept walking and walking and came upon this:

The start of a sidewalk, out there in the middle of nowhere!  Isn't that cool?  We had to follow it!

We came upon this small ravine after a while.  Zim was very interested in whatever was down there; he told me that's where the coyotes live.  We hear them singing at night all the time.  They sound a lot like Zim... so he probably has the inside scoop on where they hang out.

The coyotes have their dens down there, Dave!

"Their dens are down there"?  If Ammy had been with us, I'm sure she would have asked if their kitchens were down there, too.  Ha wooooooo!

We kept walking, and sure enough, we got to the Kansas Ocean!

There it is, Davy!  The Kansas Ocean!

Woo!

Isn't it cool, Dave?!?

It was incredibly cool.  Icy cool.  Umm... cold.

It looks frozen, Zim!

Yeah... maybe that's where ice cubes come from!

What a great walk - and a great adventure!  I hope you enjoyed coming along with us.  Mom said one of the many benefits she got from the walk was that after a rousing round of zoomies with our sisters when we got home, both Zim and I did a lot of this:  

The Z-man

I'm sure Mom means that in the nicest way possible. Woo.

Luv,
Dave