Belated Thursday Weekend Update

1. We initially didn't plan on being festive this year for Halloween. In the past few years we've determined that the least stressful Halloween involves trapping the dogs in our bedroom with us to watch scary movies with all of the house lights out. Unfortunately, b/c the puppies go crazy when the doorbell rings, and insist on pushing through your legs when the door is opened, and because their size scares most children, 'trick or treaters' simply aren't much fun for our situation. Consequently, carving pumpkins just seems pointless.

Now with that in mind, we received a coupon for a free pumpkin from one of the large cut it yourself pumpkin patches - and who can resist something free? So we spent an hour or so hunting for just the right pumpkins and walked out with 4 perfect pumpkins - I guess coupon promotions really do work.

2. The timing was perfect given our commitment to the annual Fondue & Pumpking Carving party that night. Always a blast, and fortunately no major injuries this year like last year (a cement face plant during a game of beer pong, a seared lip from a fondue skewer, and flaming splashing fondue gel to an eyeball to name a few).

3. Sunday was a lazy tv and dog nap kind of day. Sam snapped this shot of a very lazy Pepper dog looking for Animal Planet on TV. Note her most productive action of the day - keeping my feet warm under her rear end.

4. Later that afternoon, I noticed this guy sitting outside our bedroom window. We've seen him before on our neighbor's roofline, but I didn't realize back then just how large he is. We're lucky that our dogs are so large that they can defend themselves. We just had two small neighbor dogs picked off by a pack of coyotes right out of their backyard. We suspect this little horned guy is hunting the plentiful voles from our backyard. He was not phased by me opening the window, talking to him and snapping a few photos. Hallie on the other hand was NOT pleased that he was in the backyard. I captured a short video of her telling him off. She continued to go outside the rest of the night and look for him in the same spot (even though he'd been gone for hours).

5. Sam carved another one of his pumpkins during the week last week and left him glowing at me in the garage when I arrived home late from work. He has such an amazing talent for precision - mine will look more like a pumpkin pie when I'm done with it :)