Chloe photos and other stuff

I managed to get a couple of decent photos of Chloe recently. We were playing with her in the living room and I also got some video of her running around like a crazy manic doing that Pug scuttling thing they do, but she's moving so fast you can't really see her in the video. So here she is resting on her bed catching her breath.



Chloe is doing great and settling in nicely. She's a great little dog. We've only had a few accidents in the house recently which is great. She prefers to go out WITH us so if we just let her out she doesn't always do anything so we have to walk outside with her and coax her. Every afternoon Chloe and I go on a 20-30 minute walk ending up at Emma's bus stop on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursday Emma goes right to ballet so Chloe and I can have a longer walk if we want. Last week we ran into another Pug owner and ended up hanging out and talking for a bit while her kids played with Chloe. It's always fun for me to see other peoples reactions to Pugs. Even people driving by in cars often can be seen with a sort of "Aww..." look on their face. I also love having company on my walks and end up taking them much more often now.



In other projects I finally cleaned out the linen closet and the bathroom closet. Here's the finished product, and yes I did use my label maker -- I love my label maker even if Emma does tease me about it -- I don't know why because she borrowed it to label her bookshelves! I was so thrilled this weekend because I put out the two broken lawnmowers the former owners of our house left here and my old wheelbarrow and Emma's old bike with broken brakes and all four of them were gone in less than two hours. Our neighbors down the street were having a yard sale so I knew there would be traffic at our end of the road. I also took five bags of stuff over to a Yard sale a local church was having. Slowly but surely I will get ride of all the stuff we don't need or use.



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Emma's First Pointe Shoes

Well, here they are -- Emma's first pointe shoes. We got them yesterday -- after trying on 4+ pairs with a professional fitter. This is quite a momentous occassion in the life of a ballet dancer (and her Mom!!). She still has to learn how to sew on her ribbons and elastics etc... but she can't do that until her teacher approves these shoes as fitting correctly. They have to keep them at the studio for at least the first 12 weeks of classes so they don't mess around on them at home I assume.

The Cooking Ballerina

Emma asked if she could cook dinner from her kids cookbook -- a present from last year. She choose what they called creamy spaghetti which was really spaghetti carbonara. We bought the ingredients at the store together and then she really did most of the cooking, measuring, getting out ingredients, mixing, etc... I only helped drain the pasta. She even plated it onto three plates one for each of us and included a garnish. Either cooking with Papa has worn off on her, or we have been watching too much food channel TV -- or she likes cooking?! Or she was inspired by the movie "Julie and Julia" we saw last weekend? She declared the dish delicious as did we and she ate it all -- not insignificant for a picky eater. I look forward to more yummy meals cooked by Emma as I am happy to relinquish the cooking to her. We were calling her the cooking ballerina because she was wearing her ballet clothes. She put them on to go and try on pointe shoes this morning -- her very first pair!! Then we managed to squeeze in a trip to Trader Joe's as well. All in all an eventful day.



Ingredients assembled and cookbook open to the page we need. It's a great DK kids cookbook with really good photos and step-by-step instructions.


The finished product -- plated and on the table.


Cooking the panceta.

First Day of Fourth Grade and Chloe the Pug etc...

Emma started 4th grade last week. Here she is waiting for the bus with her friend Ally and our down the street neighbor Tommy. They were great about having their photo taken multiple times, but I wonder how much longer they'll put up with it -- in public at least.


Our new pug puppy came how to live with us on the 28th of August and she is wonderful. She's 18 weeks old and pretty much potty trained already which is terrific. She's smart and playful and fun. Here she is with Jim -- that's her serious, impish look.


This past weekend we took some friends from Connecticut to Bristol. We toured the house and garden at Blithewold. It was a lovely sunny warm, but not too hot day. Afterwards we walked around town in Bristol and by the harbor and had a delicious dinner outside at Quito's seafood restaurant. Here's Emma sitting on a branch of -- I think a cedar tree -- at Blithewold. She was being a good sport considering she was the only kid out with four adults talking about plants and trees!!

Jim took this shot of me while we were eating dinner and I rather like it. You can see a fishing boat and the Bristol Harbor behind me. Good times.