More Winter Wonderland

There are a few pictures of E in the blog, but I think this might be J's first appearance. This is from last winter - early March actually. Right before he took the previous picture of me.

I shouldn't complain about the heat

Summer is pretty short here, after all. Spring and Fall are really nice as well. But summer is short. But right now, it's hot and muggy. I have no idea how I lived in Virginia and Georgia so long.

So, this picture makes me feel cooler. J took it - not bad for a 5-year-old.

The background is the river behind the house. I'm actually standing right above where the dog is standing in the picture from the previous post.

In February, I will be looking for a nice picture of August, most likely.

Surprise for Henry

Henry is the dog. He's an Aussie mix and a great dog. Well, usually. He has some bad Aussie habits like being very needy. He's also a strange dog. Our house is near a small river, and the dog doesn't much like to swim. What he will do is chase rocks if you throw them into the river. He moves his paws around under the water trying to find the rock. When he thinks he's found it, he sticks his whole head under water to retrieve it. Then he takes it up into the woods and leaves it. We don't really understand, but it's entertaining.

So today it was in the nineties and we headed down to the river to cool off. While we played in the water, the dog was running all over the place, which is normal. At one point, he came up to us from a new direction. At that point, we were on a little sandbar across the river. This particular point is an "ox-bow", and we were on the inside of the loop. The current runs into a corner there and foam, wood, and assorted other items get trapped. Apparently to the dog this looked like a reasonable place to walk across the river (it's actually about 4 feet deep there).

So Henry jumps down off the bank onto what he expected was solid ground. Entertainment ensues.

The dog plunged into the water and disappeared for a couple of seconds. Poor guy. He pops up out of the water and tries to climb back up the bank, but it's steep, so he's stuck. I had to wade out and calm him down. I pulled him up onto a log to catch his breath, then moved him into the open water to swim across to the sand bar. Completely soaked through from head to toe. And not interested in swimming.

But he grabbed a few more rocks I threw into a shallow area for him.