Hiking at Flatrock Park

A couple of weeks ago Jer and I discovered a new park called "Flat Rock" so we decided to take the dogs out for a walk and check it out.

The park was huge with tons of trails It gets its name from these big flat rock formations that cover large areas on the ground; water trickles through them and they are really pretty, next time I will have to get some photos of them.

We ended up walking the beginner dirt bike trail through the woods which was about 2 miles long. The shade was nice but next time I think we will walk a different trail because we are trying to leash train Mischa and it was just to narrow and brushy for that. I did find myself thinking that they would make good horse trails.... if they were allowed.... sigh :)

We really enjoyed our walked there and have been back a couple times since, but we have been sticking to more open areas. The last time we went I slipped on the slimy rocks and landed in the water....I had to laugh at myself, especially since right before I walked acrossed the rocks I said "I am so clumsy that I am sure I will slip and fall in there" LOL. It hurt my back later that night but at the time it was pretty funny :D

New Puppy Mischa

Well I have been very delinquent on my blog here lately. School is wrapping up for the summer and we have been really busy at home. Jer works away at LTR and I have been looking for a part time job since school will be out soon.

The most recent news is that we got a new puppy. She is a boxer named Mischa and she is a real riot. She is 12 weeks old now (we got her when she was 9 wks) and at her last vet appointment she weighed 19.6 pounds; she has been gaining over a pound a week lately but she is still all joints and feet. She looks especially silly right now running around the house with a cone on her head (she had her ears cropped last week) and I cant help but laugh at her when she is being goofy. Last night she kept jumping up on the couch despite the fact that I kept telling her no.... but she was being stubborn about it, so Jer snapped his finger and said "OFF" in a loud voice and guess what she did? She ran over bouncing across the room and jumped on him instead, I couldn't help but laugh, and then I got in trouble too haha :D

Birthday Pie

Last Sunday we had a little birthday get together for Jeramie...who is now officially a quarter of a century old.... :D His brother Jayme, sister in law Adriana and their two kids cam over for a barbecue. Jer cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill (I got a boca burger), Adriana brought a cookie cake (and candles) and I made some pasta salad and apple pie for dessert. I was going to take a pic of the pie before we "broke into it" but I forgot so here it is....post nibbling :)

It was a really pretty day and the kids played outside for a while after dinner. It sure is nice to have a fenced yard so we didn't have to worry about anyone wandering off! Pekoe loves kids and had fun following them around and licking them in the face... :-0

Before they left Jayme gave Jer his little grill that we had borrowed for the occasion so now we are planning to grill again this coming Sunday :)

Mani - Pedis

Last week I talked Jer into getting a pedicure and manicure with me in Wal-mart while we waited for the tax lady to finish up. They are cheap at Wal-mart and Jer's callouses are so bad....so he said okay :) He actually discovered that the massaging chair that you sit in is pretty nice and who knows I might actually get him to go in with me again sometime....here are pics of our pretty fingers and toes .... hahaha!

Time for that rottweiler......

Jer and I have been discussing getting a larger dog; he wants jogging partner that can keep up (sadly Pekoe and I don't fit the bill), I would like to try out obedience and weight pull again and have a dog I can take roller blading, plus we have been thinking that it might be safer with the type of neighborhood that we live in. Well we were right on the latter to be sure!

Last night around 2am I was just drifting off to sleep on the living room floor (Jer was snoring away in the bed as usual) when the neighbors American Bulldog started barking incessantly. I have never really heard her bark like that before but I figured maybe it was a cat or opossum in alley so I ignored her for a few moments hoping she would settle down. Finally when it became apparent that she wasn't going to pipe down anytime soon I opened the back door and yelled for her to be quiet. Just then I looked over and noticed that both the front doors were open on our car. We had done laundry that day but surely Jeramie hadn't left the doors open when he brought the clothes in, he is very good about that kind of thing. So I went over to inspect the car and immediately noticed that the front window was busted out and the stereo was torn out of the console; we had been robbed! I went straight into the house and called the police.

Meanwhile, our neighboor (owner of the dog) came out to see what all the ruckus was about and saw the perps hiding behind the neighbors house (they must have hid when they saw my house lights come on but where unable to run until I went back into the house) he actually took his gun and a flashlight and when after them when they lit off across the traintracks but was unable to chatch them. He filled me in on what he saw and I apoligized profusly for yelling at his dog who was doing a very good job of watching out for us! I feel like I owe her a bone or something since thanks to her I was alterted and they were interupted. If they hadnt been I am sure that they would taken more items from the car such as my camera; which I am very grateful to still have in my possesion.

After talking with the neighbor for a few moments I went in and woke Jeramie to tell him what had happened. The officer arrived a few minutes later and I have to say that he was one of the worst officers I have ever met. He parked way out in front of our neighbors house no where near where the incident had occured, no flashing lights.... nothing. He wasnt even going to bother looking at the crime scene or writing a report unless we really wanted him too...those were his exact words too!! Ofcourse I insisted that he do his job. What ever happened to protect and serve? I mean seriously, he gets paid to take care of citizens in need and I got the distinct feeling that that he didn't give a flying you know what about protecting or serving us in any way.

So now we have no radio/cd player, a chewed up center console, a broken window to replace on our already tight budget right now and I don't know how I will sleep nights. I am worried that if they are willing to bust into our car then surely our home isn't off limits either! We are pretty fortunate to have nice neighbors directly on each side of us, but I guess we have been pretty naive about the crime in our neighborhood as a whole. So, we immediately talked to the landlord about dead-bolts on our doors and a flood light on the back of our house. We also have decided to definitely get a bigger dog as soon as we can afford one. Also until we can afford alarm systems on the vehicles we wont get another cd player in the car. We took everything value able out of both the rigs and are just going to park them with the doors unlocked; at least that way we don't have to pay for another window if someone else decides that they want to rummage through our vehicles.

Nap time

Just a few random pictures of my lazy family.... :)

Cooking Cuban

Jeremy and I have been talking about trying new foods and eating healthier so we went to the library and checked out a bunch of cookbooks, Cuban, Thai, Indian, Italian, Vegetarian, American etc.. We are going to try and cook a meal together once a week and so yesterday we cooked our first meal.

We decided to try a few recipes from the Cuban cookbook "Cooking the Cuban Way" for our first meal. As most of my friends know, I am a vegetarian (although I break the rules occasionally for certain types of fish), but Jer is a meat eater so I frequently include a meat dish in our meals. I am proud to announce that while he wont go completely vegi with me, Jer has given up pork and cut back on other red meats in an effort to eat healthier. So, for our recipes last night we choose: garbanzo bean salad (ensalada de garbanzos), Cuban white rice (arroz de Cubano), and garlicky shrimp (I don't know the Spanish for that one :D).

The rice was really just long grain white rice cooked w/olive oil and sauteed fresh garlic, the garbanzo bean salad was fairly simple as well: a mixture of peppers, red onions, home-made dressing and of course garbanzos. The shrimp was a little more complicated however since neither one of use had ever cooked shrimp before. We had no idea how to "peel and de-vein" shrimp, lol. At first we thought maybe they were already peeled but soon discovered that was not the case! Thankfully there was some written instructions in the cookbook and how to perform the "procedure". It is a gross process as shrimp are ugly little things and the vein that you cut out looks like a string of fish poop....I'm not making this meal sound very good am I? Haha! I was surprised that they didn't smell too bad, as I hate the smell of seafood, but we decided that the fact that they were fresh wild-caught had a lot to do with it.

After the shrimp were all prepared we sauteed them in a pan with 6 cloves of garlic, fresh lime juice and various seasonings to taste. Then we spooned them over the rice and served them with the chilled garbanzo salad on the side; and it was time to eat. I did nibble a little bite of the shrimp but found it to be just as awful as I remembered seafood being (the last time I hate seafood was over 10 years ago), but I thought the rice was pretty good and I loved the garbanzo bean salad. Being the opposites that we are, Jeramie of course liked the shrimp and rice but didn't care for the salad. All in all we thought the meal was okay, but I don't think we will be adding it to our recipe box.

Note to self: the whole house did end up stinking like rotten seafood for hours after we cooked.....no more cooking of seafood indoors!!