All the Cousins (and One Aunt)
Tyler, Meg, Alana, Markus, Patti, Carson (trying his best to smile), Benton

Markus Has a Snack

Markus and Patti

Paul Shows Carson Some Super Hero Moves

Benton and Tyler Skip Rocks for Fia

Meg Entertains Markus

Meg Props Up Markus

Meg Props Up Alana

But, wait. I don’t want to give the impression that Meg is 100% nurturing and snuggly!

Meg and Tyler with Their First Deer (Brett Got One, Too) and a Proud, Proud Grandpa

Chess Was the Indoor Game of Choice

Although iPod Touch Time Was Pretty Popular, Too

Alana, Fia, Markus, and Aunt Patti Head for the Fire

Markus and Alana Pretend to Drive the Tractor

Patti DRIVES the Tractor
(imagine a thought cloud over Bob’s head: “If I can get her back this summer and hook up the brush hog, I do believe she could mow the north 40!”)

The opening quote is the best part of the video (this was drive number 2, and the video was shot by the passenger, who was the husband of the mother who decided this whole thing was a good idea): “Mom said that even if you did tell the government that they wouldn’t care because you’re on private property.”

If the video doesn’t load, you can also view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6ZD02oY9mI

She chased balls:

She chased her boy (Benton):

She goaded Molly into wrestling matches:

Contrast that with Holly and Molly — the elder pooches — who had each others’ backs when it came to wearily surveying the chaos (this was NOT a posed photo — Holly was sitting off by herself surveying the scene, and Molly just wandered over and took a seat next to her):

Well…we were.

And then Julie’s Uncle Ray called from West Virginia this morning to report that a lab mix had been hanging out on Bob’s farm all weekend, she had a collar (but no tags), and she was exceedingly pleasant. Seeing as how his farm is pretty remotely located, the belief is that she was dumped on the side of the road. She is in good health — a little skinny and with fleas, but seems to have been reasonably well cared for otherwise.

The quandary that Ray and Bob had was that they were heading back to Ohio and didn’t know what to do with the dog.

Below are the pictures of “Char-Char” (interim name, proposed by Alana, as an homage to…who else? Alana’s first crush: Charlie Robison!).

We’ll be making an effort to get the word out in the community where she was found, and, in theory, we’ll be exploring lab rescue organizations locally. But, no one in the ‘hood is betting that her stay at our house will be temporary.

Holly and Sophie, though, are still spry enough to roam around.

Holly

Sophie

She was successful — once — during our visit, convincing him to take a break for a family walk:

Pam vacillates between pushing Bob to slow down…and enabling him. She has been brainwashed, we can only assume, to buy into Bob’s belief that it’s inhumane to actually cut grass with the mower — much better to mow early and often so that the grass is simply terrified by the blade passing loudly overhead, thus stunting it’s actual growth. While Pam was mowing the yard, Benton commented: “It’s a good thing that some leaves have started to fall, or she wouldn’t have any way to tell what had already been mowed.”

Julie quipped that it looked like her dad had decided to build a fence on one edge of the property…by stacking up wood that he’d split!

Carson actually found this fella’ on an apple tree near The High Point:

Some Flowers

The View

The River

The Woods

The Grass

Looking up from the pond to the red cabin:

…and down from the hill to the farmhouse and barn:

The Pond

Carson

Carson actually got to go solo on the 4-wheeler (with an adult following and with strict rules), which made the weekend all on its own for him. He loved driving over to The High Point (which he’s making the final ascent to below):

We don’t actually require that he wear a helmet while walking around the farm…but we were glad he had it on as he went running down the road to the river — a descent that’s chock full of trip-inducing sticks, holes, and bumps (he made it down without stumbling):

Benton

Benton and I went on some rides, too. He’s getting to where he knows most of the trails pretty well, and is heading through a field here to take one of the more interesting routes to get up to The High Point (this is actually the field where I “broke” the tractor while mowing a couple of years ago):

He spreads corn in the yard in front of the farmhouse — a task that Alana gets quite upset about if she finds out that he has tackled it without her:

Bob took me along with him on Saturday as he went to spread corn in a few other places on the property:

He tossed out some corn, then sat back down on his 4-wheeler, and, within 30 seconds, there were deer converging on the spot:

And, that was just the beginning. Those deers hung out as long as we did:

As we headed over to another spot, a young buck passed us on a lower trail going in the opposite direction. We stopped…and so did he!

At another spot, we found a doe and a spike who were starting to fill in their winter coats (I assume):

On Sunday, I went for a quick ride to do some exploring and stopped to take some pictures of the woods. I heard a rustling and turned around to find this guy watching me from behind a tree:

This post covered maybe half of the good shots I got of deer on the trip. I didn’t pull off any shots of the whole herd eating the corn in the front yard (that Alana is spreading in the first picture above), but I will at some point!