Birthday party with bird feeder!

Pictures are posted in NO order, I wish I could but I'm still learning how to do it on this blog.

This is a picture of my sister with the kids making bird feeders with pine cones. What a way to begin Spring!! We're anxious to hang ours tomorrow (we got home tonight after dark).


The girls beginning to ham up for the camera!
My sister drew this picture of Tigger! She's been a great artist since she was a kid!
Dinner at Flora's house which was taken few days ago, remember...I don't know how to post pictures in the proper order!!!???
My sister was taking turns taking a bite, then giving her little girl, Tara, a bite (cake). However, every time Danielle took a bite, this is what Tara does. Cute, huh?
One of our most recent spontaneous moments together. She saw a bag of potatoes and asked if I knew how to make french fries from scratch. Well, I went and looked it up and it turned out great. Not so healthy, I'm guilty!
This is a box that my sister painted and cut out holes for kids to throw balls through. They had lots of fun with this box all day long!
Aww, Abby with her little cousin who just celebrated her 2nd birthday party today.
The kids went outside for a "hike", and it was too cold for me. I almost went cuz I thought my sister was going to be the only adult out there but then her hubby and sister-in-law went outside so I was off the hook, right?

Philip with his daugther, Tara

Sophia
Kade
Tara
All the kids giving Uncle Philip a new hairdo!


Tara signing! She signed "I'm two!"

Outside!

Abby with my neighbor's dog, Rosco.

Abby blowing bubbles with Petunia.

Too cold for me, but not for Abby so I was videotaping through kitchen door window.

Abby with Petunia, our 7 months old lab.

I finally went outside to do a close up!.

Spring is here...or is it??

Spring is here finally! I have been seeing birds everywhere for the last several days! I don't have a tree in my yard, but my next door neighbor has one in her backyard. There are many birds living in that tree, and they're all black birds, the ones you usually see in a big number. On our the walks with Petunia, we are seeing those birds with orange chests. Petunia is very interested in them, always watching them and very alert!


There are 2 nests in my awning by my front door/ porch. If anyone of you have experience with this, please tell me what I should do! I don't want them there because of their droppings on my porch!! Someone told me to move them, but they are warm and "at home" in those nests, I don't want to disrupt them. Anybody have advice?????


I need to learn the names of the birds because I'm going to be teaching Abby about classifications of insects, rocks, plants, birds, and etc in home school soon!

Today, it has been very sunny and beautiful all day. I let Petunia out several times, on a leash-line that is 20 feet long. That will work for now till I get a fence installed sometimes before the summer.


All of the windows in my house are covered with curtains because of my Chiari Malformation which causes hypersensitivity to bright light. The only window that has nothing on it happens to be my door in the kitchen. I can handle it because the sun rises and sets from the front of my house to the back of my house, but the kitchen door is on the side.


Anyway, I am not 100% comfortable with leaving Petunia outside by herself on the leash-line in fear that she could wiggle out of her collar or something so I'm always watching her through that window. More than two times today I saw this....

Flurries!

(Originally, I tried to post a video clip of Petunia playing in the snow, but this blog spot won't let me post it for some reason. When I showed the clip to Abby, she said "What are those white spots on Petunia?") Snow! They're not staying on the ground or anything, just flurries flying along with the wind.

Since I can't post the video, I am showing you the picture of my neighbor's backyard with the tree. You can see her Basset Hound, Rosco. He's so sweet and likes Petunia even though she's overly hyper! I'm hoping that Petunia will calm down pretty soon so that the two of them can play together when the weather gets warmer. Petunia is bigger than Rosco, so I worry about her smothering him or something, ha. She likes him too, she gets excited to see him!

Let's hope the warm weather comes SOON!

Good Morning America and Marlee Matlin, KDES, MSSD

http://blog.deafread.com/mishkazena/2008/03/24/good-morning-america-today-marlee-matlin-and-mssd-performing-arts-company/

I found this blog from deafread and it has a link where you can see today's clip of Good Morning America with Marlee Matlin about Dancing with Stars. They also showed some clips of deaf children from KDES dancing on stage, and high school deaf kids from MSSD dancing too.

I missed the show this morning, it starts at 7am! Impossible for me!

So I was glad that someone found the clip and posted it on deafread, now I can see it. Only problem is that it's not closed captioned, but you can at least see some people signing so I was able to follow the show somehow.

When I lived at Gallaudet, I lived at the KDES apartment complex which is on the 4th floor but right below us was the KDES elementary school. I went there many times for my education major courses to observe classes, teachers, and etc. I also went there to pick up kids for my friends who were either stuck at work or in class. Most important of all, some of these kids used to hang out with Abby. It was really great to see some of these kids on the show!

Check out the link and watch the show!

Survey

I got an e-mail with a survey from my sister. I thought, why not post it on my blog. I used to do that kind of stuff all the time on www.myspace.com but I don't visit that site as much anymore.


name- Tiffany
1. Name someone who made you smile today? Abby, she was excitedly telling me all about why we should make a smoothie on our own versus following a recipe. A creative gal!

2. What were you doing at 8:00 this morning? Turning over in my bed to avoid the sunlight from my window so I could go back to sleep!

3. What were you doing 30 minutes ago? I was at my neighbor's house and realized I forgot something so I ran back home and saw another neighbor at my front door. She had an huge Easter basket for Abby! That was very sweet of her, so we exchanged phone numbers and chatted some more. Then I ran back to my next door's house and saw their cute little boy with a big smile!

4. Name something that happened to you in 2000? Abby and I flew to Texas to be in my best friend's wedding! Abby was 12 months old at that time.

5. When is your birthday? June 21st, officially the first day of Summer!

6. Four words to explain why you last threw up? flu after a date

7. What color is your hairbrush? Navy blue

8. What was the last thing you bought? dinner at McDonald's with my sister and her kids, Tues.

9. Where do you keep your money? in my wallet

10. What was the weather like today? sunny but chilly : (

11. Where did your last hug take place? in the kitchen

12. What are you excited about? The warmer weather

13. Do you want to cut your hair? yes, but not yet

14. Are you over the age of 25? yup

15. Do you talk a lot? too much

16. Do you watch The O.C.? no interest whatsoever.

17. Does your screen name have an "x" in it? no

18. Do you know anyone named Kelsey? no

19. Do you make up your own words? yes, to make Abby laugh

20. Are you ticklish? Yes, but Abby can't seem to find the ticklish spots so I pretend to be : )

21. Are you typically a jealous person? Sometimes if I see other moms make their kids obey with ease!

22. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter "C": Cindy

23. Who's the last person to call you? unknown, he/she hung up

24. Do you chew on your straws? sometimes

25. Do you have curly hair? never have, my sister and Abby both had curls as toddlers, but they grew out.

26. What is the next concert you're going to? None

27.Where did you go today? No car, so I went to my next door by foot.

28. What is something you say a lot? "Abby come here!"

29. Have you seen the movie I am Legend? Not yet, will wait for Netflix for the subtitles.

30. Do you have to work tomorrow? Taking care of the Abby, Petunia and homeschooling

31. Who was the last person you said "I love you" to? Abby

32. What should you be doing right now? DECLUTTERING

33. Do you have a nickname? Tiff / mommy / Aunt Tiffany

34. Are you a heavy sleeper? Yes

35. What are you listening to? Literally nothing.

36. What is the best movie you've seen in the past two weeks? Evan Almighty, it was funny

37. What are you reading? Harry Potter, the first book, with Abby

38. When was the last time you did the dishes? Last night, started the dishwasher

39. Did you cry today? Nope

Marlee Matlin did a great job tonight! She came in 3rd place with a score of 22 out of 30! Kristi came in first, and then Priscilla came in 2nd. I personally think that Kristi did awesome and it is probably from all the years of figure skating. She said that it doesn't even compare because she isn't used to dancing with pointing toes from wearing high heels, and keeping her legs straight. Priscilla came out in the public eye after many years of hiding for privacy. Some people thought that the judges should have not said anything about her age, but they did. She did pretty good, and did a sprial on the floor which was a great way to earn better scores. I really enjoyed watching all the 6 stars dancing!

Now the audience have a chance to vote and then next week on Monday, we will see who got the most votes.

All 12 stars will be dancing on Monday night, and then at the end, two stars with the lowest scores/ votes will be sent home. I hope that Marlee stays!

Ladies' Turn Tonight!

Last night I watched the "Dancing with the Stars", and they said that the men stars dances on Monday and the women stars dances on Tuesday. So, that means tonight is the night that we will get to see Marlee Matlin dance. It will be on ABC at 9pm tonight.

The men stars all came from different backgrounds, a NFL football player, a magician, a radio show host, a matchmaker, an actor, and a R & B singer. I enjoyed watching the show, learning about the stars, and seeing how the judges rated them. The R & B singer is the youngest person on this show, 21 years old. I personally liked his dancing the best of all the men, he had an advantage because he already knew some moves. The other 5 men never danced before! They did their best and got some tips from the judges for their next dance, next week.

There was also some clips of the women stars talking about their dances, and about the competition, etc. Marlee said, "Read my hips!", then did some moves with her hips. I thought that was funny because people are always asking the deaf people, "Can you read lips?" I'm looking forward to watching all the ladies dance tonight including Marlee Matlin, (an actress) and I recognize only a couple other ladies who will be dancing...Priscilla Presley (you all know her, right?) and Kristi Yamaguchi (a figure skater). The rest of them: a tennis player, a TV actress, and a Broadway star.

Let's enjoy the show!

Dancing with the Stars - tonight

Marlee Matlin, who is a deaf actress, will be on this show as one of the dancers. I've never seen this show before, but I'm going to watch it tonight because of Matlin. I'm interested to see how it goes. I love to watch people dance so I'm surprised that I've never watched this show!? Well, probably because it's on TV, but I prefer movies. It's gonna be at 8pm on ABC, so check it out!

http://usatoday.com/life/television/news/2008-02-18-dancing-with-the-stars_N.htm?imw=Y

Updates

I still haven't recieved the collar from Cesar Millan's website yet. I'm hoping that it'll arrive tomorrow! Since Thursday, it snowed for 3 days on and off, so there's snow on the ground once again. On Friday, everything was ICY including the mailbox! I couldn't open it, and couldn't lift the flag at all because there was like 1 inch of ice all around it. It was all frozen, and there were alot of icicles hanging off my front door's awning that I bumped my head into cuz they were like 20 inches long! All the phone lines, cable lines, and etc were all hanging low from the ice.



Then on Saturday, the sun came out and melted most of the ice off except for the snow on the ground. Every step I made, it would crack into blocks which was cool cuz I liked the way it felt (crunch crunch).



Of course, Petunia was so happy to be outside in this cold weather! Pulling me like crazy as usual. I almost slipped but didn't fall down, whew. It was very cold, I forgot my scarf and my ears hurt! I walked with Petunia for 15 minutes which is an improvement from 10 minutes. I truly hope that with the new collar, I can start walking for half hour like Cesar suggested!

Today, Petunia made a breakthrough! She did NOT jump on my sister or on her kids at all. Yay! I'm so proud of her!

Abby and I are both trying to train her to "stay" and to "give" whatever she has in her mouth. She's still a puppy, so she's chewing EVERYTHING she finds. If she knows that she have something in her mouth that shouldn't be there, she will NOT come to me when I call her name. Just like a toddler sometimes, if they found something "forbidden" and then will run away from mommy. That's exactly what Petunia does when I see her chewing something!

Let's see if the collars arrives tomorrow!! Please, please do!!!

Cesar's Way

I read the book, "Cesar's Way" by Cesar Millan and I really liked it. He started the book by explaining where he grew up, how he learned about dogs, and how he got where he is now. Then he started to explain about dogs' psychology, and about how dogs function in a pack with one pack leader. We, the owners, should be the pack leader but often the problems that Americans have with their dogs is because they're not being the leader but letting their dogs do whatever they wanted!

First, I have never heard of him till last October, when I went to visit a good friend of mine in Maryland. She bought his book, and his DVD and asked me to watch the the DVD with her. I was pretty impressed with what I saw because Cesar was able to fix the problems within the hour!

His most important advice for the owners was to exercise the dogs by taking them out for a long walk, preferably 30-45 minutes. He said that it's very calming for them, however some people substitute exercise with playing fetch, tug-a-war, or whatever but it doesn't work because playing is excitement. Also during those walks, the dog must be either behind or besides the owner because that shows his/her position as the pack follower while the owner is the pack leader.

Now with that said, Petunia is still hyper as ever. She still jumps on me, and she gets all excited when she sees other dogs or people on our walks. We haven't mastered the proper way to walk yet, as she's still pulling me and always in front of me. It drives me crazy! I have already tried 4 different kinds of collars, but they all fall on the base of the shoulders and bottom of the neck. According to Cesar, that's their strongest point which is why it's so easy for them to pull their owners!

On the days that it snows, Petunia is even more hyper because she LOVES the snow. She pulled me across my backyard for like 5 feet when I fell down. She is able to pull my weight! I have a scab on my knee from several weeks ago and it's still hurts when I kneel down to do something.

Today, there was NO snow, no ice on the streets or sidewalks, nothing that could cause me to slip or fall. I thought that it would be a good day to train her to walk properly but again, she pulled me like crazy. It was not enjoyable at all, I was fed up!

I decided to go back on the website of Cesar Millan's and order his collar, because if that 5Th collar doesn't work then I'll have to hire a personal trainer or something! I truly hope that this special collar will work!!!!!!!!

When it arrives, I'll let you know if it really works.

http://www.cesarmillaninc.com/products/i-collar.php

Barely online!

The previous owners sent me some pictures of Petunia when she was such a little puppy, so cute! I have no idea when these pix were taken, or how old she was in those pix. She's 7 mo. now, and we got her on Feb. 1st. Her birthday is in July. She is not that small anymore, she's already 5o lbs now.

I can barely stay online for more than five minutes because of Petunia! She is still a puppy, but according to the several books that I've been reading, she's now starting her teenager years.

For example, I just typed the first 2 sentences above and before I was able to type the word, "teenager", I was interuppted by Petunia. She came to me and nudged her nose under my arm. That's a big improvement, she usually jumps on me and scratch my arm! I'm trying to teach her that jumping on people is not acceptable, ever. I wasn't sure what she wanted but then at the same time Abby asked me for lunch. I decided to just toast bread instead of grilling them to make grilled cheese sandwich for her. While I was in the kitchen, I turned on my camera to see if it's working. At the exact same time I said to Petunia to sit so I could take a picture of her, the toaster popped up. She was startled. Now she is nervous every time I say "sit"! Poor thing.

I'll give her few minutes and try "sit" again and hopefully she'll be ok with it.

I was able to take few pictures of Petunia, the first time ever since Feb. 1st! My camera is acting up and will turn on only if it wants to. Now it won't turn on for me to upload those pix for this blog. However, you still got to see some pix from the previous owner. I got a few more from her and I'll add them in the next blog or so.

I gotta go -