Bruce and Cristy's niece with a nervous Starburst on her lap.

They say there isn’t anything cuter than kids and puppies and put the two together and that’s definitely true. Starburst and Skittles had kid visitors this weekend and since they haven’t seen them before, they were terrified of them! Ugh, I told the kid that we need to rent them out every weekend in the summer to socialize our puppies.

Living in Duluth we had neighbor girls that would call us up and ask if they could come play with the puppies. Our answer was “yes” as long as we were home! It’s great for the puppies. I guess we’ll take what we can get, and I was able to get a couple of cute pictures. Thanks for coming over gang!

Sorry for not posting for a couple of days. On Saturday morning our internet was down. After calling Hughesnet and speaking to “Nancy” (yea right, she was making small talk while I was waiting for the modem to reboot and talked about monsoon season…don’t think she was in the US!) for over an hour, then one of the IT guys from work and they “Jim” from Hughesnet (at least I could understand his English), we finally got on the internet around 10:00 a.m. Yesterday morning with the thermometer reading 30 degrees at 6:00 a.m., we put on our “dog clothes” and headed out to hitch dogs up for their first run. Here is a quick video of Mark taking off with the Varsity Team:

We were able to get the second team out before it got too warm, do the feeding chores and have breakfast before the Brown family came out to pick up Athena. They have had a “dog yard” for years, but up until now, it consisted of Walker Coon Hounds! Mr. Brown decided to retire from hunting and wants to fill his dog yard with some sled dogs! So, as what usually happens when you are just starting out in the sport, they came to buy one dog and left with three! Along with Athena, brothers Wally and Brown are currently heading down the highway and moving to the “Banana Belt”…Illinois! We had a great time chatting with them before they had to make the long trek back south…something tells me, they are going to be well-taken care of. Have a great time in corn country gang!

I swear our little Star(burst) gets cuter by the day!

While the 80-degree temps were too hot for Mark, I thought the weather this weekend was PERFECT for August. Not too humid, not in the 90′s, sun shining with barely a cloud in the sky. I was able to spend two whole days getting things done in the cabin and around the yard, got a little more color on the skin and was able to hang out and play with the puppies. Awesome if you ask me!

Now that Star and Skittles are getting bigger and mobile, we’ve been taking them on walks. Of course Uncle Takum and Great Uncle Ophir come along and I don’t know who has more fun on the walks, us or the dogs. The girls think it’s a great time to chase, takle and bite at each other, while Takum runs off in the woods at every leaf rustle and Ophir, he’s happy getting around like he does at the old age of 13. It’s great to get out in the fresh, cooler air, we changed from sweating in shorts and tank tops to having to wear jeans, t-shirts and/or sweatshirts in a matter of a week. This keeps up, the family walk is going to turning into the dog team hook-up!

While a good portion of the state was getting rain and/or severe weather last night, we up here in the north were just hoping for rain. Mark said  it did rain off-and-on yesterday but we could use a good 24 hour soaker as the forest is getting pretty dry. Although since we didn’t have overcast skies, we (and the dogs) were blessed with an awesome sunset. Well, I guess I should say, what we can see of the sunset as our trees are growing in the way of them. We’ll take what we can get and I’ve come up with a new saying; Pink sky at night, dog’s delight!