Drizzly Dog Weekend

This is Nikolai watching the Catsitter DVD up in Vermont. Pretty amazingly, the cats are fascinated by the gerbils, birds and chipmunks on the disc. They bat the TV with their paws and then they look behind the TV after it has been turned off trying to figure where their prey has gone.

These are the new flowering plants we got for the patio; pretty good deal for $21 total !



For dinner, I grilled a lemon stuffed 2.5 lb red snapper, Russian fingerling potatoes and some endives on the Weber last week. It worked out pretty well but that big fish only feeds about two people, with a little leftover for fussy cats.

This is Lena enjoying doggie ice cream; this brand is called FrostyPaws. It can keep her absorbed for 20 min per cup -- no brain freeze for this lady! She's back on her Piroxicam by the way, which has made a world of difference in her mobility and mood.
Our peonies have come out in bloom and you can see them in this "Before" picture of dinner. We prepared skewers of yellow/green squash, pork loin kebabs, onions, and pineapple rum boats in the back. Shish kabobs are time consuming which explains why prepared ones seem costlier than they ought to be. Anyways we like to custom cut ours and then put our own different Penzeys spices on each item, so we make this ourselves. You can not see it here but we also had some great lemon/scallion/cilantro rice to go with this.

And this is the "After" picture on the grill. The squash skewers are a little too long.

J. made a bonfire too after I dug out the firepit from a couple of seasons worth of ashes. I put the ashes into the plowscrape scars on the front lawn, so hopefully that will help them get filled in with new grass. It started getting cold and rainy, and we lost the electrical power (which happens once a year or so) so we came back earlier than usual on Sunday. Remember you can click on the pictures to look at high resolution larger versions of them.

Extra bonus - our friends Mike & Lisa just had a new baby !

And as previously mentioned - I am thinking strongly about this good deal from the Vail network of resorts. It really makes skiing/riding their system much more cost effective. They will probably be more crowded as a result, but this pass looks good. If you are interested, or end up getting one, let me know so maybe we can work our 09 group trips around that.