Best of Breed!

The Evil Evie goes Best of Breed!!!!! Okay, Okay, she really is not evil per say. It acutally depends on what she is doing at the time. lol Her name is Trouble in Paradise v Riata and she has picked up 2 more points today at the Baytown Kennel Club in Beaumont, Texas under judge Vincent Grosso. My 2 year old baby is going to group. She now has 8 points, 1 major. Sire: CH Been There Done That of Edan PT (A AOE Selct Ex CH Gilley son) out of our Witch Witch Witch v Riata Edan. Brian Livingston is her handler and she is owned by us and JD Baker. I will post her best of breed photo when it comes in in a couple of weeks.

Hell did not freeze over!!!!

When Ken got his "baby" aka the tractor back in October, I had asked him when was he going to teach me to drive it. I think his response was something along the lines of when Hell Freezes Over! Well this past Sunday I got to learn how to drive the "baby" and as far as I know hell is still hot! lol Ken has finally decided that he can use some help in the cleaning up of our woods. He will be cutting up some fallen trees and I will take them to the burn pile. The picture below is me taking some limbs that we trimmed from the trees on Sunday to the burn pile. I did a pretty good job!
Ken also put up some bird houses for me. This one is a cedar blue bird house that I bought at Walmart.

And this one, my dad made for me. I am hoping the blue birds like this one also. May be I can con my dad into making me another one.

Here is Ikon and Angelus supervising us while we were working. They had a great time running and chasing each other for several hours.

Last Saturday, Ken and I got together with Peggy Douglas at Red Lobster. We ate and drank and gossiped about judges, handlers and German Shepherds. ;-)

I am so glad we have tomorrow off even though it is our last Friday in April off. Starting next week we have noon dismissals on Friday. Not as good as being off but I will miss the Friday rush hour traffic, which is always a good thing. We have another busy weekend coming up. Ken and Evie are on their way to Beaumont. Evie is entered in a three day show there starting tomorrow. Since she shows at 9:30am, he decided to leave today and stay over night. Ken is going to watch her show and then head back to the house while Evie stays with her handler, Brian Livingston. I hate that we will not be there Saturday but it is a long drive from Willis to Beaumont and gas is not cheap right now. Brian will call and let us know how she did. We will drive in on Sunday to watch her and then we will bring her home, hopefully with some more points. Wish us luck!

Champion Ikon

Finally I am posting a current photo of Ikon. This is a photo of Ikon finishing her championship the day before Easter. I am still not happy with the photo because Brian Livingston (her handler) is holding her head up to high. The head should be in a more "neutral postion", in other words not strung up. But in defense of Brian, Ikon's daddy did not go away so they could take the picture. She was trying to get to Ken and Brian had to string her up so she would stay in place. Don't ever get in between Ikon and her dad. She takes the shortest route to get to him; up and over a couch, up and over a person......it does not matter to her! LOL Talk about a daddy's girl.

We are very proud of her and are looking forward to breeding her at the end of the year.

You See The Most Amazing Things.....

Since moving out to the country (best thing we ever did) I have seen some really cool things. The deer, the fox, the Luna moth, the mutant moth from hell and just when I thought I seen it all we see this.

These are Winter Wrens. I know that because my dad gave me a bird book. As a matter of fact my dad and I were kind of fascinated with these tiny little birds. They blend in so well with the ground that you don't notice them until the ground starts moving and you realize there are birds there. This is the 2nd time I have seen them roost like this. The first time was back in November. Ken was out of town at a dog show and I happened to notice what looked like a animal that had made itself into a ball on the ledge under the back porch. I could not tell what it was and it did not look like birds. The next morning the "animal was gone". But it wasn't an animal it was the Winter Wrens. I found out they will roost in parties consisting of the family or of many individuals gathered together for warmth. I never realized that any birds did that. The two photos I took show their heads, but that was because I had disturbed them. The Winter Wrens do not nest in Texas, they come in around September and leave around May heading back north to build their nests and raise their babies. The picture below shows two that huddled together under the front porch. The amazing thing is these birds sleep all night. When I left the house at 5am to go to work, these birds had not moved all night long. I never realized that birds did that also. I am having great fun with my bird book, you are never too old to learn.

This photo of the Winter Wren with the babies is from the Internet.

What A Day

Saturday was a really busy day as most Saturday can be. I ran all the errands while Ken burned a pile of wood from the pine tree that we had to cut down. While I was out I got sweet basil, lemon basil, peppermint, spearmint, thyme along with some other things to make a small herb garden. I think I will put them in the flower beds in the front of the house where I have all ready placed my Rosemary. I would like to have an herb bed where our small garden is but until Ken decides to listen and put up a fence around the garden to keep animals out, I will pass. Speaking of animals that fence might be put up sooner then later. When I got home yesterday Ken was over by the burning wood, so I walked out the back door and what did I see in the garden?????? A rabbit, yes a rabbit. They have finally found the garden. I did manage to catch a picture of it before it ran off into the woods.

As you can see the bunny was sitting on the tomato cage right by the two small tomatoes.

He is just waiting for the tomatoes to get ripe!

This is the pile of logs that Ken was burning. It had burned down a lot by the time I got home. In the background is the rest of the tree that will need to be burned also.

It has been raining all morning today (Sunday). I was hoping to work in my flower beds planting the herbs. It is suppose to stop raining this afternoon so maybe I can do some planting then. Hope everyone else had a sunny weekend!

Easter Break

Before I get into what we did on my 4 days off at Easter, we had a small hail storm last night. I was putting on my night shirt and Ken was putting Behrens in a crate for the night when it sounded like artillery was hitting the house. Ken raced to the front door and I headed to the back. There was a heavy down pour of marble size hail. Thank god, both cars were under cover. I guess Ken will have to check the roof of the garage, kennel and house this morning.



This is a Luna moth at took shelter under our porch yesterday evening. I have never seen one in person before. They sure are beautiful. It is said they have a wing span of 4 to 5 inches and the moth only lives a week in adult form since they don't have a mouth or digestive system. In that weeks time they breed and the female lays a lot of eggs. I have seen a lot of interesting things since we move onto our land in the country.

Below is a side view of the moth. The color is just beautiful.

Now back to the Easter break. Mom and Dad came up on Good Friday and stayed until Sunday afternoon when they followed my brother and his family back to their house in Sealy. We had a great time while they were with us. Friday evening after we ate spaghetti, salad and garlic bread, we went and sat out on the front porch and watch the birds and even saw some fire flys.
On Saturday Ken or course had to take Ikon and Evie to the show in Navasota, where in my previous blog I bragged that Ikon finished her championship. Mom and I went to the bookstore, Michaels, Walmart and Kroger. We got home around 2pm to find Dad had been enjoying himself on the front porch reading and snoozing. ;-) When Ken got home around 4:30pm, we grilled rib eyed steaks for supper and then it was more porch sitting!! Easter morning my brother and his wife and their 5 year old son, Tyler, came over for some Easter egg hunting. My mother had decided that my husband needed to hunt Easter eggs so she got him some along with a basket. We made the bow on Saturday and I hid his eggs on Sunday while Jimmy was hiding Tyler's. Ken being the good sport that he is went on his own Easter egg hunt and then tried to steal the ones Tyler found. I think everybody had a great time, I know I did.

This is the basket and eggs that Mom got for Ken. I think the bow turned out beautiful.

It was kind of deary Easter morning, but Tyler did not care. He loves hunting Easter eggs!

Here is the hubby hunting up the eggs that I hid.

My dad was following Ken around while he hunted for his eggs.

This is Kathy, my dad and Tyler. I think dad wanted to steal some of Tyler's eggs.

Ken is trying to talk Tyler out of some of his eggs. That was not going to happen!

Tyler is explaining to Uncle Ken that the eggs are his and his alone.

This is Mom, Kathy and Jimmy, something was going on up at the porch. Probably more egg stealing.

And still more discussion about the eggs. All though I think in this picture, Tyler was showing Uncle Ken his Sponge Bob egg.

Dad, Ken and Mom on our front porch. Mom was watching Ken open his eggs. We had put toys, candy and money in those eggs.

Another photo of Ken and mom. Don't our woods look beautiful in the background. They are so green.

Tyler is showing his Nana what kind of eggs he got

Tyler and his dad.

A game of chase! Kathy says she is raising two boys!

On Monday the weather was just beautiful and so while clothes were washing Ken and I went out to work on one of the front flower beds. Ken got a small tiller attachment for his weed eater and after we dug out some bushes, he tilled the soil so I could plant my butterfly plants, rosemary bushes and daisy bushes. Dad had suggested he get something like this.

This is what the bed is starting to look like. I still have 3 boxwood bushes to get out, but we are reusing them along one side of the garage.

Magic was very busy too. He was supervising everything that was being done.

Here Ken is moving limbs that I have been picking up. He is taking them to our burn pile.

And finally here are two of the boxwoods that I planted alongside the garage. We wanted to make sure they would survive the transplant before we dug up the rest. They seem to be doing fine, so tomorrow I will dig up 3 more and plant them.

After the work was done, we let CH Ikon and Suess come out and play while we sat watching them. They do so love playing with each other. Heck, Ikon will play with just about anyone.

Seuss (CH Oh The Places You'll Go of Edan) just enjoying the late afternoon.

Seuss, up close and personal! :-)

Hope everyone enjoyed their Easter Break, we sure did!

New Champion Brag

Yesterday in Navasota, Tx our San Jo's Ikon finished her Championship under Judge June Penta. She went Winner's Bitch and Best of Winner's for a 3 point major. Her sire is AOE Select Excellent CH Mechanical Bull of Edan RN, TC, ROM. You can see Gilley here:
http://www.edangsd.com/Gilley.html Her Dam is Dezaray's Ultimate Desire. She is now the dam of 2 Champions with another daughter of this breeding that should finish. The picture below is the best photo I have of Ikon as of yet. We are hoping the new champion photo will be something that can be put in an advertisment. Ikon is owned by me, my husband, JD Baker and her breeder Joe Henig. We are so proud of this girl.