The Untitled Title Page » Toby

Our new friend: A story with a whole lot of pictures

Emily — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:11:27 +0000

I had big plans of “getting things done” today, but I have to share this:

Our yard backs up to a wetland area, and this gives us lots of little critters (and some large) that pass through for visits. Just about every day for the past couple weeks, we’ve seen chipmunks. Here’s what happened today…

Why, hello little friend! You are welcome to relax on our back stoop.

Toby, naturally, is rather “intrigued” by these little guys. In fact, it was all the noise he was making that brought the human with the camera downstairs in the first place.

You’d better watch out, though, Toby, because when you make all that noise…

…they usually run away. Toby looks and looks, hoping he’ll get another glimpse. He has smudged up the whole door at his height by pressing his nose against the glass.

Maybe from the window? Hmm, no luck here, better run back to the door.

He whines…

…and scratches and barks…

…and sniffs and paws and generally acts completely insane, all in trying to see again what’s out there, or perhaps to get out and find it himself.

Ah ha! All that commotion is rewarded.

He tries even harder to get out, but the door refuses to give way. Chipmunk looks warily on.

Chipmunk, perhaps realizing that the crazy dog behind the glass can’t get to him, inches closer…

…and stands to say hello. This of course sends Toby into a further frenzy. He tries to attack say hello back…

…and scares Chipmunk away again.

Chipmunk, however, is the brave sort, and slowly ventures out again from the safety of his hiding place under the barbeque.

He stands perfectly still, allowing for his portrait to be taken by the perhaps equally crazy human behind the glass with the dog.

He decides to show his other side to the camera while the lady admires his lovely colors…

…then rushes off again to his little safe spot. The dog, again, runs around and barks like a lunatic.

And the lady learns she can finally decently capture the chipmunks on her camera as long as she has enough patience and takes about 60 pictures in a three minute period.

The end.

Missing Toby (Just today… don’t worry!)

Emily — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:57:00 +0000

Toby is at the vet today for one of his big checkups. It is so sad to leave your dog when of course no dog likes to be at the vet. He’s nervous the whole time while I sign him in, and then he doesn’t want to be taken away. So you have to sit and watch your poor little animal be dragged away. The nurse suggested I act like I’m walking in that direction so that he’d go, but then I felt bad tricking him. I drove home feeling really sad, and I wondered how this is going to translate to motherhood of my own children. I guess at least when you have to leave them you figure out ways that they’ll be happy–it’s not like you’re leaving them at the vet all day to sit in cages. But still. It’ll be hard to ever leave, I know.

So now I’m at home, and it’s so lonely without Toby around. Normally he follows me around the house. Actually, I came back and went back to sleep, so now I’ve also essentially wasted half my day, too. But the point is that I woke up from my “nap” thinking I’d see Toby, and there was no happy little doggy face to greet me. I had a voicemail from the vet and when I called back I’m pretty sure I could hear Toby’s bark in the background. I know it could be another dog, but I also do know Toby’s bark. How’s that for ripping out my poor little heart? (See, I AM going to be insane with children, I know it.)

And now, assuming I’m not in labor, he needs to go back in a week for his teeth cleaning. I should have scheduled it all for today, but somehow I didn’t realize he was due for it, and by napping I missed the message and it’s now too late in the day for them to give him the anesthesia. Yes, they actually have such a thing where they knock out the dogs to clean their teeth. Yes, we have doggy insurance that covers these things.

Am I a complete nut job or does anyone else feel this way about their pets? Then again, I think most everyone who reads this blog regularly doesn’t have pets, so I guess you’d all be on the “nut job” side of that question.

Playing in the Snow

Emily — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:38:00 +0000

These pictures are really old now, but I had uploaded them to the ftp site so I might as well go ahead and post them. This was from the first day of our rather large snowfall. It was still new and exciting at that point. After a week of being intermittently stuck at home it had lost its charm. Hehe.

Incidentally, who knows what’s up with the crazy weather here. The snow has now all melted, which the rain helped to accomplish in the end, but now we’re getting so much rain that some areas are flooding. If anyone saw that in the news (it was the main story on cnn.com last night), don’t be alarmed for us. We’re not in that area that’s been evacuated. Still pretty wild, though.

Toby couldn’t run fast, so we didn’t bother to leash him, but he was quite curious about this dad pulling his kids on the sled thing. Actually, it was hilarious to watch Toby because he sort of had to jump with every step.

Toby practically buried in the snow. Good thing we had that sweater for him, but honestly it didn’t do much good because so much snow got stuck in his hair. So we dried him off and left him inside while we went down the street to play.

Me, looking lovely and making a snow angel. This was in the street in front of our house. Recognize the pants, Melissa? (Melissa left them at our house when they took care of the pets, and we found them but apparently they were too big for her so she said she didn’t need them… and they fit me nicely at the time so we kept them, but not so much now. I couldn’t zip them at all, but it was better than nothing for traipsing through snow.)

Adrian wanted to make a snowman, but sadly the snow was too wet or fresh or something to compact very well. So we took this picture where you can’t really see the scale. It was small.

I love to eat freshly fallen snow. My roommate at BYU Noelle taught me to make slushies out of fresh snow, so we’d go outside with bowls and spoons and collect the fresh (i.e., not dirty) stuff.

Laying in them middle of the street… just because we could. There wasn’t a whole lot of traffic.

Somewhere in here there was supposed to be a picture of Adrian’s very nice face he drew in the snow, but I think it didn’t upload right, and I am not going to further delay posting this by messing with it.

Adrian made this snowball as we walked around the street, so it got slowly compacted and bigger.

I like trees with snow on them. I just think it’s really pretty. My first year at BYU I walked around taking so many pictures. I was fascinated.

Take that, stop sign! It was such a large snowball that it still held form after a few good throws.

Snow Day!

Emily — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:25:00 +0000

I KNOW that before we moved up here we heard from multiple people that it snows occasionally, but it doesn’t usually stick or it’s just a couple days a year… etc. Yeah, well, we’re apparently getting the winter storm of the century, then. Hehe. Actually, it seems like there is bizarre weather up the whole West coast, from snow in Vegas to crazy rain at home in Orange County.

Yesterday they cancelled school and everything expecting the snow to start, but it never really did. It was a bit of a letdown. Even when we went to bed it hadn’t started yet, so there was just a little bit still on the ground from last week. This morning we woke up and I opened the blinds to see this:
Woo snow! Adrian thought I was nuts but I went to get the camera, opened the window and took off the screen so I could get some good shots from our room. So this is looking one way down the street…
…And this is looking the other way. There were already kids outside in snow gear playing, and there were a few tire tracks. They must have all wheel drive.

Adrian’s car under a serious blanket.

The trees above the houses across the street. It’s fuzzy because the snow was still coming down pretty strongly.

I figured Toby at least needed to go out and take care of business. He was a good sport but only went as far as that tree and then came back. Notice how far it goes up his little legs.

And a shot from out the back door to the back yard.

I measured how much snow had accumulated on our patio table and we were at 5 inches. But it was still coming. Seeing as they really don’t normally get this much snow here, the systems aren’t in place to deal with it. This means the roads do not get plowed. A neighbor told us our street will not get plowed, and the main one we’re off of will get plowed in a day or two. So I guess that means we stay home. Every neighbor on the street seems to have that same idea–no one left for work. We put on our snow gear and went out to play. We’ll put up pictures of that later. When we got back from playing I measured the table again, and we were at 7 inches. But that was over an hour ago, and it hasn’t stopped yet.

Better to drive today when it’s mega powdery than tomorrow when it likely will ice over a bit, so we’ll see if we totally hole up or get out at all.

What is this White Christmas they talk about (aka. Where are my palm trees?)

Adrian — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0000

You know the old saying about not being from Kansas anymore? Well, I was born in Kansas. So I suppose that makes the comment more apropos or something. Heading into work Friday, we were on STORM WATCH 2000! It was supposed to snow, or at least get near/below freezing, and with the total absence of rain ever present (what?) here in the Northwest, that means craziness. Everybody from Southern California knows exactly what I am talking about. That first time every year when the rain storms hit, and your lawn chairs get blown over, and people drive 35mph on the 5, SHEER PANDEMONIUM!

Well, from what I heard, it was supposed to be like that starting Friday. People forget how to drive (that is assuming they knew how to in the first place), work shuts down, people scream about the apocalypse. Then it got called off.

But we live in a place called Redmond Ridge. It’s a little higher elevation than the surrounding area. You know what that means? Driving back from dinner on Friday (good ole Red Robin) with Emily, we’re in her car and right about when we turn onto our street, the rain starts looking “bigger” and I shout “I think it’s snowing!”

Yep. It sure was. But just flurries. Nothing to write home (Kansas) about. Still pretty cool nonetheless. Fast forward to Saturday…

Emily is flying out to her parent’s house in Ladera Ranch right now. Why? Babysitting. It’s her parent’s 30th anniversary tomorrow (Monday) so her mom flew her in as a surprise so that they (Ken and Pam) could go out and Emily could stay home with the kiddies (yes Sarah, you are still a kiddie, it has been decreed, ask Emily about my decrees). My car is still unmoved, I want it to accumulate as much snow as possible. I’m sure it being a SoCal car, it is crying on the inside. I take her to the airport, go out and run a few errands, and now it’s snowing more than just flurries. Still not really sticking to the road though. When I get back, I decide to take Toby for a walk. It’s been a long time since he’s been in the snow (it snowed in Las Vegas once, about 7 years ago when he was still staying with my parents), but he was never outside while it was actively snowing. It was pretty cute and sad at the same time. After our walk, he was covered in snow! Even when he shook it all didn’t come off. I couldn’t find the camera though! Emily usually leaves it in her purse, and with her being in Ladera, that really didn’t work. So by the time I could take a picture with my phone, it was melted off.

Now, it’s not like he was just a sheet of white, just some specks. Before I head off to sleep, I decide to take a picture of my car, even if it’s not a great quality, just so I have something and to text to Manuel since he gets no snow out in the 909/951.

It’s hard to see, but you can tell in the background that the roads are just wet, and not covered in snow. My car has a nice light top-coat as well, but nothing to serious.

Going into the night, I knew it was supposed to get and stay below freezing. We were also supposed to get from 1-3″ of snow, from what I was told. We had to assign a few families at Church the opportunity to head over early and lay some de-icer down and make sure the walkways were as safe as possible.

Sunday morning arrives…so Toby and I decide to take our morning walk.

Looks like a little more snow cover to me. The road has a nice icey glow that crunches under your feet. I was hoping it wouldn’t be too cold on Toby’s paws, but he didn’t seem to mind one bit.

Yep…that’s more alright. Just a very odd thing to look at when you grow up and live where I have lived. Just complete whiteness. Grass, bushes, everything. Just a nice thin icey layer of crunch.

I think Toby was having a tough time distinguishing where the sidewalk/driveway ends and where the road begins since it all looks the same now!

His ears are extra perked up because there was a father pulling his son along the sidewalk in a sled. Toby decided to walk around the previously grassly/mulchy/dirty area amongst the bushes to take a short-cut.

So no Toby, we’re not in Kansas anymore. It’s all about new experiences, right? Well, this sure is new. You know it’s Christmas in Rancho Santa Margarita when they Light the Palms. Hopefully it’ll still be around when Emily comes back Tuesday afternoon. It should be, the forecast is calling for more snow and sub-freezing temperatures all the way through.