Adventures in Puppy Rearing

We have recently been blessed with three little wiggly bundles of joy. Our girl Cinny had puppies last week on my husbands birthday, while we were away on our trip to Wildwood, NJ. We received a call from my Aunt who was watching her for us, on the day before we were to return home, to tell us she came home from work and there they were.

We knew that she was expecting, but not before all of our vacation plans had already been paid for. So we had to leave her with family, which I was so worried about because we did not know her due date, but Cinny did so well under the circumstances. Thankfully this was not her first litter, so she knew what to do. Her first litter was about this time last year. I enjoyed watching the puppies be born. I had read up on how to help her during the delivery. I was felt a little sad that I could not be there with her to help her with this litter, but she handled it like a pro, I'm so proud of her.

 In our last litter we had 3 boys and named them Blondie, Brownie and Blackie, because of their colors. This time we have 2 boys and I am excited to say a girl. They all look so similar that we are having trouble picking out names for them this time.

They are currently 10 days old today, they have been able to move around by crawling since the day they were born. They cannot see or hear yet, both their eyes and ears are sealed closed. They should begin to start seeing any time now, that typically starts to happen about 10 days in, through I think it took a full 2 weeks our last litter. Their eyes begin to open a little at a time and they do look a little blue when you first see them. Their hearing will soon follow after they are able to see. Right now they make all kids of cute little squeaks and yips.

 Two of the puppies are like twins, they are both a light brown color like their mom. One of them is a boy and the other the girl, other than that you really can only tell them apart by their size. The boy is the largest in the litter and the girl the smallest. The other boy is a beautiful white color with cream highlights. This is him yawing. He is so cute. His coloring reminds me of an Apache painted horse, so I was thinking of calling him Apache, but I just though of it this morning, so it's still up in the air.

Here he is cuddled next to his bother, you can see the color difference. All the puppies have a white blaze on their foreheads, some thing their parents do not have, I thought that was interesting.

This one is the little girl, the name Nala, comes to mind when I see her, but I don't think I want to call her that. She looks just like her big brother. She is the smallest of the 3, but we are weighing them all regularly and she is gaining weight.

I would love to get some feedback from our readers on possible name choices. If I get enough names maybe I'll do a poll and put it to a vote. I intend to post more photos of them as they grow.



Thank you for stopping by to read our blogs and as always we love to get comments and feedback from our readers.

Nicole

Talk The Talk And Walk The Walk- In Honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day

Arr me hearties, in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day on Sunday September 19th, I've pillaged and plundered Etsy to bring back this here collection of pirate booty to inspire all you sea dogs and landlubbers alike. So if ye not be faint of heart and be up fer some adventure on the high seas then grab yer cutlasses and follow me on a treasure hunt!

Wildwood, NJ and Stone Harbor NJ- Our Last Day

Today was our last day here in the Wildwood area, and I think it turned out to be my favorite of our days here. As some of you may already know, I home school one of my children and so I wanted to do something fun and educational on this trip with them. We learned of the Wetlands Institute before we left located in Stone Harbor, NJ just a short 20 min. drive away. They teach wildlife conservation and have this great animals of the wetlands educational program there.

One of the fun things they have for kids is a turtle room that gives lots of fun facts about the Terrapin Turtles found on the island. They deliver the information in a fun and hands on way.

They also had a small aquarium filled with some of the smaller ocean creatures you might see around the island. The boys really enjoyed the little octopus they had there and the touch tank which contained hermit crabs, horseshoe crabs, star fish, sea urchins, spider crabs and a flounder.

After the aquarium we took a self guided tour of the salt marsh outside the Institute. Throughout the year the tour is guided by a Dosen, an expert in the marshes, but we arrived one week to late for their last guided tour. We were however given a very detailed booklet with map and lots of helpful information to walk along the trail. Outside there were two paths you could choose to take, one was a straight dry trail, that was covered with a layer of crushed sea shells.

Or for a more submerged experience, step off the beaten path and walk a trail covered with bent reads at the waters edge. Be warned this route is muddy, but as long as you carefully plan each step, I was able to navigate with out much damage to my new sneakers. Luckily the high and dry road is just a step or two to your left so you can jump back on it at any time.

At the end of the tour we found a boardwalk that extended out over the marsh and gave you an opportunity to see dozens of small fiddler crabs.

At the very end of the trail the kids stopped to dip their feet in the cool marsh.

On the way out we stopped to enjoy their butterfly gardens.

I am so glad that we went the the Wetlands Institute, not just because it was a fun day trip, but because if we hadn't we would never have discovered Stone Harbor. I have to say I have just fallen in love with this island. Stone Harbor is just the next island over you can get to it by getting onto New Jersey Ave. towards North Wildwood. And then following the signs to Stone Harbor, there is a small toll of $1.50 one way to use one of the 2 bridges you will cross to island hop from North Wildwood to Stone Harbor.

I've discovered I love this island better than Wildwood and when we come back again, I'm going to try and stay here. They have their own beach that stretches the island, which I believe is about 7 miles long from Stone Harbor to Avalon. It is nice little beach that has a very exclusive feel to it, it was not crowded at all.

The island is filled with these beautiful homes, all ranging from charming cottages to large grand beach houses. They are all beautiful and make you feel like your on Martha's Vineyard or some other exclusive island. We picked up a few real estate magazines at a Wawa and discovered that probably all of the ones we liked the best were at least $1M., but fortunately a great deal of them are rented out so you don't have to be a millionaire to live like one for a week.

At the center of Stone Harbor is their shopping district. The streets are lined with all kinds of shops, and the best part is their not all those high end over priced designer shops either. As a matter of fact all the shops I noticed I had never heard of before, they were all new to me and that made them all the better. It made the whole place feel like a small intimate town. While walking around the square I counted 3 ice cream parlors, four Christmas shops, two of which also had handmade or vintage looking Halloween items. There were 3 miniature golf courses on the roof tops of some of the other shops.

They had small coffee shops, bookstore, a 5 & 10cent toy store, which I don't know why they call it that, there weren't any 5 or 10 cent items in there, let alone toys, it was actually filled with an assortment of home decor and other wonderful beachy items as well. There were lots of unique boutiques and jewelry stores, even a cute little pet shop filled with wonderful little things you could buy for your pet.

I can't even cover all the types of little shops they had, I am so impressed with this place it's very family friendly. They were even starting to decorate things for fall, the street lamps had corn husks and hay bails around them. Little mums and pumpkins lined the streets. Due to the amount of holiday themed stores, I imagine their over compensating for it, because it must be kind of hard to experience all the things you associate with fall, thanksgiving, or Christmas on an island. I live in PA so fall for us is all about, visiting an orchard, picking fresh apples and pumpkins to bake into apple and pumpkin pies, choosing a carving pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern, hay rides and corn maizes. I imagine living in a coastal region makes allot of these things impossible to come by, it's just not the same feeling. But when it comes to summer living here I bet you just can't beat it. 

We drove the length of the island after visiting the beach up to Avalon were we found our hands down favorite, and the largest of all the homes we saw, this beauty. I imagine this is way above $1M. This one was so beautiful, it reminds me of a castle. Ah, from now on when ever I picture my dream home, it will look just like this.

After our champagne wishes and caviar dreams, we found a great pirate themed miniature golf place in Avalon and had to stop. My kids love pirates and so do I, we had been looking for a good miniature golf spot all week. One that didn't look like it was just slapped up for the tourists. This was very nice, they really put allot of detail into the course, and they played great caribbean themed music, I felt like I was in Florida. This course was so much fun, they used every bit of space on the lot they had. 

Several of the courses were inside a grotto, where there was a pirate skeleton locked behind bars guarding his treasure.

Korbin really enjoyed all the water around the courses. He loves getting wet.

The courses then continue up on top of the caves for a really nice view.

We made our way across a rickety pirate bridge..

And down to the sunken pirate ship that was the last course.

We even got a chance to try and win a free game for next time. My husband won the free game, which we will be saving till we come back next time. Today, by the way, was my husband's birthday, so I guess it was birthday luck.

We snapped some sunset pictures of the wetlands, as we island hopped back to our condo in Wildwood. This place is so beautiful I can't wait to come back.

Thanks for stopping by. Nicole

Wildwood, NJ Day 2- Rainy Day Adventures

Today was a rainy day here at the beach, which is always a disappointment when your on any vacation. My kids were horrified this morning when they stepped out on the balcony and saw it was raining. Right away I started thinking what I was going to do with the kids for fun, so as not to waist this day. I thought we could see a movie, I heard there was a theater right on the boardwalk just a block or two away, but they weren't playing a single kid appropriate film, then I found an indoor water park at the Montego Bay Hotel, but after visiting their site, the photos showed it to be just a large swimming pool, and a spiral slide, not very impressive. Then I remembered there was a small aquarium on the boardwalk as well, but after researching, I found several reviews online that said it was nothing more then an exotic pet shop with tropical fish.

So after all my planning bubbles popped, and I thought this day was going to be a wash, the rain stopped. We decided to chance going up to the boardwalk, luckily for us it may have been cloudy and cold, but it didn't rain any more the rest of the day. We ventured down to the Morey's Pier, there are three on the boardwalk, all with the same name, we went the the center one today that held their water park. We heard there was a cool attraction down there called the Ghost Ship, it was a walk through haunted house. On the way down, we got to see a parade of motorcycles ride past us on the boardwalk. Today was the last day of bike week in Wildwood and this was kid of their farewell parade.

The rides on the pier were highly enjoyable, the kids loved them, the tickets aren't cheep though, it costs us $50 for 57 tickets, I wasn't willing to spend any more then that. Unfortunately we learned that today was the last day for their water park for the season, and it was closed, due to the rain. This was yet another disappointment added to our day. And to top it off after buying our tickets we also learned that the pier would be closing early today, at 3pm. This gave us an hour and a half to spend our tickets, I guess the ticket teller didn't feel the need to mention this. We skipped the Ghost ship though, it turned out not to be appropriate for children under 10, my kids were nervous just looking at the thing. Korbin didn't want to get near it, they were playing this loud sound track of spooky music and screams. My husband and I thought it looked like a good time, but I wasn't going to spend the 12 tickets per person to go in it.

We made our way down onto the beach where we found several tidal pools. The kids enjoyed running through these and found several exciting finds. Including seeing their first jelly fish and a few small crabs.

This was the first time we found a large amount of fully intact sea shells, the beach is mostly covered with broken up bits of them, you have to really watch that you don't step on them as not to cut your foot.

For lunch we found a place that served fresh lobster bisque and New England Clam Chowder Soup. It was so good to have a hot cup of soup on a cold day. We tried some of their jumbo peal and eat ship which was just as delicious. We finished up the day just strolling down the board walk, enjoying fudge, and salt water taffy along the way.

When we reached the end we got a ride back to our condo where we discovered a little problem. They room key to our apartment was not the same key that opened the door to let you into the apartment complex! We had to wait for a friend of the owner to come and let us in. I amused the kids by walking around the block taking photos of Domo, a little stuffed animal that Korbin won for Tyler earlier today. We called it "The Many Adventures of Domo, Part 1". We went around the block and the boys took turns finding creative or funny spots to place Domo and we would snap his picture and say what he was up to. They found this quite amusing, and after we finally got back to the room and settled inside, I showed Tyler how to use the Windows Movie Maker on my computer. He learned it very fast and put the photos in the order he wanted and chose the transitions for between them, all by him self. Putting together a photo slide is much easier then video clips. He wanted it to go up on YouTube, but I'm not to sure about that yet, so I've decided to post it here for Domo's first debut. The kids had such a good time finding spots to take his picture and putting together the slide show, that I don't doubt there will be more Adventures with Domo posted here in the future. Hope you enjoy the show.

Down at the Jersey Shore Wildwood NJ Day1

Greetings every one from Wildwood, NJ. Today is day number one of our family vacation. We made it here after driving 4 hours from Harrisburg, PA. My kids went in the ocean today for the first time. I was so happy to be able to get them here after years of planning to take them to the beach.

When Paul and I got married we took our honeymoon down in Atlantic city, worst idea ever. It was mid march, so it was windy and freezing, you couldn't go in the water, and most of the boardwalk was not yet open for the season. The only thing to do was go into the casinos, which are open all year round, but if you have kids you can't do that either. I didn't miss out on anything though, I don't gamble and it wouldn't have interested me, but it was annoying being stopped by casino security and being redirected every where we tried to go inside one. My eldest was 2 and my youngest 6mo. at the time so they didn't remember anything about it. So this trip is their first official time at the beach.

The weather down here is very cool today, but not cold. It's about 70 degrees with clear skies, and the boardwalk surprisingly is not overly crowded. It's the last day of biker week, the noise is unbelievable. One the way in there were bikers every where, I've never seen so many, or heard so many, it's like a being surrounded by pack of roaring lions. We rented this huge mini-van, a Chrysler Town and Country, it was my first time driving one, so I was afraid I would run over these guys on their bikes if I wasn't careful, but thankfully there was no incidents.

The place we are staying in is actually quite nice, we rented a condo just 1.5 blocks from the boardwalk. The walls are painted with bright colors, and I love bright colors. The dinning/living room is banana yellow and the kitchen is sherbet makes me feel like I'm in Florida instead of NJ. We even have a pool table, which the kids are taking full advantage of. Some of the down sides are that allot of the other condos are rented to bikers, which is not a bad thing, but the condo has it's own parking grauge on the first floor of the building for all the renters, and when the bikers start their rides us it shakes the whole floor like a mini earthquake. In fact that's what I though it was the first time I felt it, took me awhile to figure out what it really was.

After the kids played in the ocean, we ate at a pizza place on the boardwalk, were the slices were huge, twice the size of the ones back home, I'm not kidding. Then we played some arcade games and my sister and Tyler joined forces to complete this game where you play a thief and have to make your way through a laser maze. The object was to make it down this dark hallway of green lasers with out touching any and beat the clock, like a high security system in a museum. It wasn't really worth the $6 per person price, since it only lasted under 2 minutes to complete.

I'm missing all our pets though, we had to leave all of our Pomeranians with friend's and family. We had a mini scare this morning, when we received a phone call from a YWCA saying they had our dog Bu. Apparently he had run away from our friend whens he took him to the park, they spent the whole night looking for him. I'm glad to say he was safely returned to our friend, who was so nice enough to watch him for us. I hope he doesn't give her too much more trouble, we are glad everything worked out.

We are looking forward to the rest of our week here and I hope I'll have more to share tomorrow. And while we are away we are running a giveaway of a pair of really nice earrings for the fall. You can find the details in our previous posting, which should appear below this one. Our giveaway is being hosted by our friends at The Hand Me Down House, while we are away, so visit their blog http://thehandmedownhouse.blogspot.com/ for details on how to enter this fabous give away.

Save Me- My New SGU Video

Here's another one for you, I enjoyed making my first YouTube video so much that I made a second. It too is about one of my favorite shows Stargate Universe. This story focuses on three of the Destiny's crew members, about their life's ups and downs, their painful pasts, and how they are saved through the love they have found on board Destiny. Young is saved by T.J., Rush by Amanda and Chloe by Eli. Enjoy and comment if you like.  By Nicole

My First YouTube Video!

Hello dear friends! Today I just posted my very first YouTube video. I have long been a Stargate fan and am a huge fan of Stargate Universe. My favorite character is Doctor Nickolas Rush. I posted this video on YouTube today, but unfortunately it was only afterwards did I learn that I could not use the sound track I designed it around, so if you see it there I left instructions on how to download the soundtrack to go with it. But hopefully it should run here just fine. Here it is, I've put the storey line down below, you may want to read it first. Thanks. Nicole

Doctor Rush has an endless amount of "good advice" for Chloe on any given day aboard the Destiny. Rush has deep feelings for her, but has difficulty expressing them. So instead he advises her to stay away from Lt. Scott, telling her that he knows what is best for her and that Scott is not right for her.


Chloe has no idea about how Rush feels for her so she takes his criticism as hurtful and resents him for it. Chloe seems very meek towards Rush in the beginning, but inside she just wants to scream at him.

Meanwhile the whole ship has to put up with Rushes "King" like behavior as he lets them all know once again that he is their best hope for a return ticket home.

The pressure she has been feeling from Doctor Rush lately, has been causing Chloe to have nightmares that she is drowning. She is beginning to get fed up with Rush and his "good advice" and the way he is trying to control her. She begins to realize that it is not herself who is "lost" it is Rush, and that no matter how many plans he has for her and the way she should live her life, he is not in charge of her and never will be.

So Chloe begins to see Lt. Scott behind Rushes back. When he finds out through the ships surveillance systems, he is crushed. He feels he is loosing her.

Later jealousy drives Rush to convince Chloe's father to sacrifice himself to save the ship. Rush is the one to seal the door at the push of a button from the control room. Chloe finds out about this plot and is too late to save her father.

Afterwards Rush deeply regrets what he has done after seeing the pain it has caused Chloe. He goes to apologize to her, and tell her of his part in it, but she has already found out and is out to teach Rush a lesson.

After pulling off a really convincing prank on Rush and scaring him out of his mind. The whole ship is now laughing at Rush behind his back he is now the "King of Fools".

Rush realized that he has now lost Chloe forever and this saddens him a great deal. He has played the game and lost to Lt. Scott. But now that Chloe finally has what she wants with out Rushes interference, she begins to realize that it is not what she thought and that Rush was really who she wanted all along. So she goes to surprises him one day and confess her love for him.

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