Number 19

We celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary today!

It's hard to believe it's been 19 years.

We wouldn't trade it for anything.

Our Dear Rosie

It's sad to say but our Rosie has died.

She had a nice long doggie life.  13 years and 10 months.

Not bad for an outdoor farm dog.

She was fun and ornery.

Loved to play rough with Dwayne.

Silly and watchful.

Obviously she didn't mind cats.

She was a better mouser than any cat we've ever had.

Loved to play in the ditch.

This was not always the case.

She was afraid of water when we first got her as a pup.

The previous owners said she had an "incident" with

water and wouldn't go near it afterward.

We sort of made her overcome her fear and she never looked back.

She loved to play in the snow too.

One year she kept eating our snow blocks right off of our snow forts!

She loved to sit on our back steps just watching the world go by.

She was a great "watch" dog.

One time she alerted us with vicious barking and raised fur.

We finally got her to show us what the intruder was...

it turned out to be a plastic grocery bag tumbling through the yard.

We laughed at that for a long time.

She loved UPS trucks.

The drivers would let her go in and explore.

She never missed an opportunity for a snack... always greeting

my in-laws in the barn lot knowing something tasty might be given to her.

Hard to believe this little dog ever buried a whole chicken upside down in our back yard.

It took us three days to find the source of the terrible smell.

I wish I would have taken a picture of the feet sticking up out of the ground.

It was so funny, I couldn't stay mad at her for long.

She loved to eat ice... even in the winter!

We have old pictures of her sitting on top of her old dogloo just looking around.

She was like a dog-periscope.

She was always by our sides to help us do whatever it was we were doing.

The thumping tail.

Did I mention she was ornery?

We often had to protect our Easter egg hunts from her.

Always wanting to be "pet".

She was most definitely a people dog.

As she got older, this was her favorite past-time... holding down the porch.

She would thump her tail as you walked by as if to say, "I know you're there, come pet me!"

Rosie wasn't a full blooded Lab.

She was mostly Lab.

She had a Lab's tongue licking everyone within range. 

She had a Lab's appetite... eating almost everything that wasn't nailed down. 

She was always gentle with the kids.  

Countless times she would sit on this hill waiting for Dwayne to come home from work.

We'll miss our Rosie.

Randomness

Our first real crop of apples from our trees... OK, one tree.

The others didn't amount to much, but this one tree made up for it.

This is about 1/3 of the apples.

 The rest of our carrot crop.

This summer we've been slowly working on fencing in the yard.

Dwayne and I chuckle that 13 years ago we tore out the field fence

that surrounded this pasture... and now we're fencing it in again!

At least we have our boys to help this time ;)

We put up almost 300' of fencing today!

It went much quicker than we expected.

We still need to get one more gate and

hang it before we can do the last 200'.

Stretching it out.

This cute little dog is one of the main reasons for the fence...

even though she is very good at staying home and

not wondering off like some of our other dogs!