Drive-By Blogging, Spook and My BIG God!

How are things in Bloggy-World? I really need to catch up on all my favorite haunts and see what other folks are doing. Surely I will find life more interesting elsewhere. Not more blessed...but more interesting!

Now, if you want to know what is happening on FaceBook--then I'm your girl! I've been spending WAYYYYYYYY too much time there. I know now why folks are addicted...cause I'M ADDICTED!!! Don't ask me why its so cool, I couldn't really tell you. But it IS fun! It's kind of like the shortened version of blogging. I know, I know...you can't believe I would LIKE the shortened version due to my lack of brevity right here! But I do like it. You don't have to really have a topic. It's kind of like "drive-by" blogging --- or "hit and run" blogging. For those FB'ers, you know what I mean.

Over the past few weeks, (in addition to FaceBook) we've been busy "getting back to normal." Remember normal? We're starting to get there.

Nothing much out of the ordinary going on around here, but we've centered a lot of our attention on the new puppy. Remember him. He's about 5 months old now...1/2 Australian/1/2 German Shepherd. He's growing like Bahia grass! (For any of you that don't know, Bahia {say: buh-hay-a} grows FASTER than weeds!)

He is just the sweetest dog and a real attention hound. When he lays around, he just wants to be touching you...his head laid on your foot, his foot across your foot, your hand on him *anywhere*, or anywhere in the vicinity of Bex. He's absolutely greedy when it comes to attention.

He has a doghouse, but instead of going in...he'll sit right in front of the door, out in the cold and rain. What's up with that? He's so smart about everything else, we don't understand his problem with the house. We even went to the trouble of trading one house (that he wouldn't use) for another house our other dogs love. But he won't use that one either! I feel so sorry for him when its raining, but figure he must just like the water.

Over the past week we've had such cold weather he's been spoiled and allowed in the house overnight. When he's in the house--after the initial excitement--he's the perfect gentlemen and mostly sleeps beside Bex's bed. The only "accident" he's ever had was his first night here. Since then, he hasn't had any problems.

He loves the kitty. Squeaky, the kitty doesn't particularly like being 'loved' by the dog, but he doesn't make him stop. Spook's favorite thing is to lay down beside the cat and lay his front paw over the cat's back--holding him down--while he licks him and grooms him. We keep telling Squeaky to pop Spook in the face, or bow up at him, but Squeaky just lays there and takes it.

Here's a picture with Squeaky UNDER Spook. When I first walked in, all you could see was Squeaky's head poking out from underneath the dog...but when we went for the camera, he let Squeaky move away.

He's turning into a beautiful dog. His puppy "fuzz" is giving way to beautiful, shiny, wavy hair.

Yesterday, Bex was walking home from down the road with Spook. Our neighbor's gate was open and all FOUR of her nearly grown dogs came running and all jumped on Spook. Our neighbor was right there and pulled her dogs off, but not before Spook got a few gashes and BIG trauma. (Our neighbor was horrified too!) Anyway, after cleaning up the cuts and putting some medicine on them, he and Bex are pretty much "back to normal" today.

I'll also be spending time working on our 6th Annual Women's Retreat. I can't spill the beans here about all the fun, exciting, relaxing, wonderful, things we will be doing until AFTER the retreat...because some of the crazies ladies who read my blog will be going to the retreat...and we want all the fun to be a pleasant surprise. As of today, we have 92 ladies going...but I know several more turned in their registrations today... Whew! It's gonna be interesting.

Life is good at The Pine, God continues to bless us so good (yes, I know it should be "well"...) I can't praise Him enough! I'm reading a Beth Moore book, studying the life of King David. In her commentary on David facing Goliath (1 Samuel 17), she notes that we should let David remind us to

"Measure the size of your obstacles against the size of your God."

I've taken that to heart....really.

Stay tuned.