Puppy Update!

So Lucky has been with us for several months now.  Here is a picture of soon after got him, so he's gained quite a bit of weight since then.

He is less of a little puppy and more of a teenager doggie member of our household now.  We are happy to say that he is mostly potty trained and only rarely has accidents indoors.

The kids love playing with him.  And also accessorizing him.  Karina made a bandana for him, and put it on him.  Whether he appreciated that or not, we're not sure.  But overall he is a pretty laid back dog and tolerates things like this pretty well.  

Gabe likes to pick him up and cuddle him like a stuffed animal and Lucky seems to tolerate it ok.

He likes to lounge around...a lot.  He spends most of the day lying around, napping.  We have other friends who have gotten COVID puppies and they talk about how their dogs can't stay still.  Lucky, on the other hand, has staying still down to a science.  

And sometimes he feels snuggly and will lay next or on top of you.

But he does like to go to stretch his legs.  We went out to the local track to ride bicycles and he enjoyed running along.

Here is his meal.  He gets a couple of scoops of kibble in the morning and a couple more at night.  He is not too crazy about it and will only eat it if he's starving.  To make it a little more enticing, Elvin saved some chicken liver and heart that came with the whole chicken from the store, then fried up the organs and mixed them in there.  He loved it!

We signed Lucky up for a manners class.  In the first class, he was VERY distracted by the other five dogs in the room and couldn't do anything but whine because he couldn't go play with the other canines. 

By the second week, he calmed down and was able to learn some stuff.  Amongst other things, he learned how to sit and lay down.  He also was taught to "wait" which is useful so that he doesn't rush out from inside the house to the outside.  And we're working on leash walking, but it's still a work in progress.

On the last day of the six week class, here was a mini-graduation ceremony for him.  They put a little graduation cap on him, which he found very distracting.

He also wanted to eat his graduation certificate.  (He likes to tear up paper.)

Since we've had him, we've given him haircuts twice.  It was sort of a trial, but he ended up not being too weirded out by the clippers and complied well if we kept him distracted with treats.

It took a while and he got bored and did what he does best....lounge on the ground.

We also give him baths weekly.  He used to hate it and go absolutely berserk and try to jump out of the bathtub.  Now he's gotten used to it and is willing to sit there quietly if we feed him little pieces of chicken.  You realize how fluffy his fur is after we get him wet--then he turns into a skinny chihuahua.

And here he is after a bath!

He does do some naughty things, which we try to correct with varying degrees of success.  For one thing, he likes chewing on shoes.  The smellier the better.  Elvin got a new pair of shoes and left them accessible.  They were straight out of the box, with still the new shoe smell and they did not interest Lucky one bit.

Gabe's stinky old tennis though....

And Eliana's clogs are also tasty.

He also likes to get up on the couch.  He knows he's not supposed to so will jump on and then jump off if you approach him to get him off.

He also likes to lick the dishes if you're loading the dish washer.  We are really trying to wean him from this bad habit.

And like most dogs, it seems, when he smells something tantalizing he will try to get it from our dining table or the counter.  

He does like going into our backyard.  We've trained him to ring a bell (shown in the picture) when he needs to go out to go potty.  Well now, he just rings it non-stop when he wants to go outside, even if he's gone potty just five minutes ago.

Once outside, he likes to do various things, like play tug of war with the rope tied to our big apple tree.

He also likes to run around like a little crazy jack rabbit.

He also likes to search around for his favorite snack--chicken poop.  Yes, he loves chicken poop.  It's one of his favorite foods and quite disgusting.

We used to free-range the chickens all over the yard, but to keep them from pooping just anywhere, Elvin built this low fence to keep them contained.  Also, this way, the chickens can stay in the back part and not get chased by Lucky. 

This is the whiteboard in our kitchen.  Usually it lists out our menu for the week.  However when Gabe was in time out recently, he took it upon himself to write a menu out from Lucky’s point of view.  What is Lucky having for dinner on Monday?   Apparently, according to Gabe, chicken poop.  

At night we have him sleep in his crate.  It's not his favorite thing, but he tolerates it.  

The kids do like going into the crate and say they would sleep in there with him if we let them.

So that's our Lucky!  He's growing up quickly!

From Super Shaggy to Shorn

One side effect of COVID is that Gabe's hair has gotten REALLY long.  It was not by design, but it just sort of happened.  Before we knew it, it had grown so much that he started looking like a surfer dude.  And then after that...  well, it was so long in the back that you could tie a pony tail. And in the front it was down to below his mouth.  To the point where he started constantly chewing on his hair, which bothered Emily.  And then he would complain that hair would get stuck between his teeth, and he'd have to pick it out with his fingers.

At that point we decided he was going to get a haircut.

But he doesn't like going to the hair salon and would have to get his hair cut at home.  Which we decided not to fight him on especially during COVID.  So Elvin looked up some YouTube videos and started chopping away...

In in the end, because of Elvin's inexperience, it took over an hour.  The only thing that kept Gabriel willing to sit there was because he was doing one of his favorite activities, which was watching YouTube videos of people playing Minecraft.  It's quite a senseless activity, but he likes it.

In the end, he turned out looking like a totally different kid!  Emily says he looks two years younger.  What do you think?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!  Our Thanksgiving was much lower key that usual.

In the morning, after Gabe got up, he took it upon himself to make a "Happy Thanksgiving" sign out of piece of paper, Scotch tape them together, and then hang them up on the wall in our living room.

The "Happy" fit between our windows, but not the "Thanksgiving"!  So some adjustments need to be made.

Emily's sister from Seattle drove down with her kids.  They arrived in the afternoon and we hung out.  Unfortunately, we completely forgot to take a picture of the food prepared, so a picture of some raw ingredients will have to suffice.  We had roast chicken and potatoes along with baked salmon (which was the salmon that Elvin caught during his trip to Alaska earlier this year.)  We also had cheesy biscuits and broccoli as the vegetable.  

The kids had fun playing the Nintendo Wii.  Emily's brother has a Wii system that they hadn't used in years and dropped it off earlier in the week.  Xiao Yu's favorite cousin (and quite possibly his favorite person) is his big cousin Anders, who helped him play some games.

And for dessert we had two types of pumpkin pie.  Eliana prepared some fresh whipped cream in her special whipped cream dispenser powered by compressed NO2 canisters.

Here is everyone enjoying dessert.  

You may have noticed that we did not actually have any turkey.  No one except Eliana reports actually liking turkey so we never have that on Thanksgiving if Elvin is cooking.  

But on a trip to Costco later that weekend, the turkeys were on sale and Elvin could not pass it up!  He ended up buying a 17 lb. bird for only $7 because it was $10 off!  Wow!

We ended up having turkey on the Sunday after Thanksgiving...well sort of.  We did not actually have roasted turkey.  Instead Elvin roasted some pieces and made a broth out of the bones.  Then he added some meat to make a turkey soup.  He also chopped up turkey meat and we had turkey fried rice as well.  

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving!

Major Haircut!

It had been a while since Eliana had cut her hair and she'd been thinking about cutting it.  Before, she had always kept it long because of her involvement with Journey, the local theater group for kids.  The parts often needed the girls to have longer hair.

But with the pandemic, Journey has not had in-person shows and so Eliana seized at the chance at having shorter hair for a while.

She wasn't sure how much she was going to take off.  At the hair dressers, she asked how it would look like if they took 8, or 10 or 12 inches off.  In the end she decided to go for 14 inches off even though it's a little more than she was planning.  This was because there's a non-profit organization called Wigs for Kids that takes donations of hair and makes wigs for kids who need them.  She didn't want her cut hair to go to waste and so she went for it!

At home she packaged up the hair and sent it off.  We're proud of you, Eliana!  And her haircut looks great!

More of the COVID life...

Because of COVID, the kids have pretty much no outside activities.  So how did the kids fill up their time during the summer?

It was a great day when our local library re-started services.  We could put books on hold and do curbside pick up.  And when a new load of books came in, it was almost like Christmas.

A illustrated Harry Potter book came which, which both Gabe and Eliana wanted to read.  But they were in different sections of the book.  The solution?

There are also games of "chopsticks" that the kids play, which is a simple game of addition using your fingers.

And if you don't want to do any math, there's always good ol' arm wrestling.  Eliana's gotten quite strong!

And if you're not into arm wrestling, then there is plain old wrestling.

Eliana is bigger but Gabe is more....aggressive shall we say.

One day, the kids said they wanted to make dumplings, which we normally only do during Chinese New Year. 

Unfettered by tradition, they started wrapping the dumpling in lots of different ways.

Check out the various shapes.

They were yummy.  Everyone likes them fried except for Karina who likes them boiled.

Eliana got inspired and made some pickles for Xiao Yu, who loves pickles.  She included some basil which she grew herself in the garden.

And thank goodness for videos.  We have had movie nights...

Also Karina and Gabe have found some YouTube channels they really like.  They like watching videos of other people playing Minecraft (which Emily finds exasperating--why watch a video of someone else playing a game instead of playing the game yourself?!)

We've also had outdoor video watching sessions...

And the kids love to look at the Humane Society website looking at the kittens and puppies up for adoption.    They would check daily and inform Mommy and Daddy on what's available.  (This was before we got our own puppy.)

And we have had some sleepovers downstairs.  It's fun to sleep in the living room every once in a while!

We had some unseasonably sunny days in September so went to the park to burn off energy.

We overall had a good summer and hope you did too!