Again, I'll preface this with an apology. I realize that is is now nearly summer...blah blah blah. I'm just going to stop apologizing for the delays that have now become chronic on this website. I have a busy life, this website has delays, the end.

On with the update!

First up, Christmas mischief! As you can see above, Murphy's scampy-ness doesn't take a holiday for Christmas (ha! It's a pun!). Below, from another angle:

Here's the story. I'd bought Allie all sorts of Canadian things for Christmas: a hooded sweater from Roots, a calender featuring a different province every month, and so forth. Allie was having her own Christmas tree for the first time, and had only a few ornaments, so my mother and I thought it would be fun to send her down a box of Christmas ornaments. While shopping one day I found a hockey player ornament, and it struck me that I ought to collect a whole bunch of Canadian themed ornaments for her. So while I was in Victoria, which has several huge Christmas stores, Jason and I went on an ornament buying spree. We bought ornaments featuring Mounties, curling, the BC Parliament buildings and so on.

Well, I packed them up in a box made for packing wine bottles, individually wrapped to protect them. I'd set the box down on a chair, so it was at my arm's height, so I could stuff each ornament down into the bottom of the box. Well, stupid as I am, it seemed to me that even if the top of the box wasn't out of Murphy's reach, he certainly couldn't reach down to the bottom of the box. I was very wrong:

Murphy, if he got onto his hind legs, was able to reach down to the bottom of each cell with his very loooong nose. He had jumped up and taken each one out individually, then set it down, chewed up the wrapping, gnawed on the ornament, then gone back for more.

I came back into the room to find several ornaments pulled out and chewed, but only 2 of them with visible damage - a mountie nutcracker and a starfish. I certainly couldn't just pop over to Victoria, which is a 90 minute ferry ride away to replace them. So I just added to the notes that I'd attached to each ornament previously, explaining that Murphy had "personalized" them just for Allie!

As I'd hoped, when Allie got them, she was very excited to see that Murphy had taken the time to personalize 2 ornaments just for her. Then she got a laugh when she saw just how Murphy had gone about the personalization.

On to Christmas itself!

Murphy was especially happy this Christmas, as his favourite guy was there to spend it with us. To your right we have the two of them caught under the mistletoe. Murphy was sporting his Christmas collar again this year - his very own Christmas tradition!

Since my parents went away to St Louis this Christmas to be with Allie and her Jason, we had 2 Christmases here - one with my parents on the 22nd, and one on the 25th with my Jason. First up, the early Christmas.

Above we have Murphy sniffing the ridiculous pile of presents. These are presents for 4 people and 1 dog! I think I know who I get the spoil-the-cute-babies-in-the-family gene from. Note that I'm now 29...and they're still spoiling me at Christmas...not that I'm complaining.

Murphy got several presents this year, as I'm sure you'd guess from the above pile. First, the pheasant:

   

Murphy took quite a liking to this little guy. I love the picture at the bottom right - Murph is in the air in that one. This is cousin to the mallard duck he was given previously.

My mother also insisted on giving Murphy a Santa suit all his own:

I was on the phone to my sister, and look how good he's being while I put this on him! Jason was sitting to my right, thinking;"Oh God, the one thing I ask is that she doesn't dress him up!".

Another gift from my parents was this coat hook that they found at Pier 1:

My mother couldn't resist this. Note that the dog looks just as happy "Good" (on the left) as "Bad" (on the right). How could this *not* have caught her eye? Also note, in the picture to your left, that Jason naturally pointed at "Bad" when asked to pose with Murphy to display the hook. The hook has now been attached to the door to his crate. I use it to designate why he's in the crate. If he's in there for a nap, or at his own volition, a little red bell hangs on the "Good" hook. If he's been put in there for a time out, after, say, spreading lettuce all over the kitchen floor, the bell is hung on the "Bad" hook.

I don't think Murphy gets the charm of this present, though it certainly isn't wasted on me. He seems to prefer the stuffed animals and food for presents - and to him stuffed animals are food.

Presents not pictured here include dog walker gift certificates (from my sister and parents) and a place mat that I bought for him. The gift certificates weren't used until just a few days ago. Murphy loves his walks with Jenn and Alicia, so these were awesome gifts for him (I did put a bug in my family's ear about this gift, without letting Murphy in on his gift, of course).

Two very special gifts Murphy got this year were custom made objects. The first is a custom faux leather spiked collar that Jason had made:

How cool is that? A very fancy little English Cocker wearing a shiny spiked collar! That is perhaps the silliest thing I've ever seen in my life! Jason knew that I wanted a fancy collar for Murphy, and that I thought that a spiked collar would be awesome, just for the sheer ridiculousness, so he commissioned a friend from his family's boot making business to make a collar exactly to his specifications. Jason knew that I wouldn't want leather, so he gave the maker a synthetic material that they were trialling for boots.

The second custom made gift Murphy received was a green and yellow gingham crate cover made by my Mom (I've posted a couple pictures here, as I felt that neither really showed off the cover properly. I hope you can make out its greatness from the two photos):

We went shopping to try to find material that I'd like. I wanted something masculine yet sophisticated yet neutral. I was thinking some sort of taupe, or dark denim. We searched several fabric stores, but came out empty handed. Then my Mom and Dad were at Walmart and came across tablecloths that seemed to fit the bill perfectly. My mom brought them home for me to approve, and she was off! She sewed it up in all of 24 hours. As to my specifications the sides all lift up so Murphy can be completely enclosed or completely revealed, and as to Jason's suggestion, the top is quilted so Murphy can take advantage of his "bunk bed".

Now on to Christmas morning, December 25th! This was the first Christmas morning I had alone, for which my mother seemed quite concerned. I could have gone to St Louis with them, but didn't feel like Christmas with Murphy in a kennel or at a stranger's home would be much of a Christmas at all. Besides, I was 28 years old, plenty old enough to face Christmas morning on my own. And I wasn't really alone, as I had Murphy to spoil.To your right we have Murphy waiting, very impatiently, to go in to the living room to check out his stocking. He'd been trying to get in there since Christmas Eve, as he knew I'd filled some sort of fabric bag with treats. So he was very excited Christmas morning. In fact, by placing a stocking full of treats beyond a gate fencing off the tree and gifts, I was able to, quite by accident, simulate what Christmas morning is with most families - the kids can't wait to get up, race downstairs, and rip into their stockings. I laughed as Murphy acted out this sequence perfectly.

Below we have him digging into his stocking:

I had filled the stocking with fish based treats. One bunch of them came from a doggie bakery in Victoria called "Ruff Creations". They make all sorts of cookies, all without wheat., which is an ingredient I haven't been able to rule out as a source of Murphy's allergies. They use kamut flour, chick pea flour, and so on, plus organic fruits, veggies, peanut butter, wild salmon...you get the idea. I filled his stocking with salmon cookies, in the shape of fish, or course, peanut butter cookies, in the shape of peanuts and paws, and fruit cookies, in various shapes. The other treats came from a company called The Gulf Island Dog Biscuit Company. They are also a Canadian company, so the treats are good for Murphy, while giving me a little national pride! They also don't use wheat in their cookies, so they've become favourites around here. Murph got their Sea Treats in his stocking, again made with chickpea flour and wild salmon. Since Christmas he's also enjoyed their peanut butter cookies. In fact, they also have a cookie made out of yams, so if Murphy ever were to long for the good old days of his pork and yam diet, we have the perfect treat to quench that desire.

This isn't Murphy related, but I thought I ought to include what we did for the rest of Christmas Day. That evening Jason and I went over to my aunt and uncle's for Christmas dinner. My aunt had offered to host the two of us, and I thought that Jason really ought to meet some of my family, so off we went. My uncle had been diagnosed with colon cancer oh, must be like 7 years ago now, but had fought it off with surgery and other treatments. The cancer returned about 3 years ago in his liver, and every Christmas had been sort of his "last" Christmas for 3 years! One of those Christmases he'd been so sick that he wasn't able to eat with us, and my aunt and father had had to rush him to the hospital Christmas night. But this year he was looking pretty good, considering. To your right we have Uncle Jim sitting in his new chair that the family had bought him. He was very proud to show us how it goes up and down, bringing him to a complete standing position, without anyone's help. Now to understand how cute this was you have to understand Uncle Jim - he's always been, to me at least, very...cantankerous. Jason and I oohed and ahhed over the chair, which to us, who are used to having to help move people in hospitals all the time, very cool. At any rate, we had Christmas dinner with my aunt, uncle and two cousins, who you might remember from last year's Christmas dinner.

Above we have Jason helping Aaron carve the turkey while my aunt finishes up the final preparations for the meal. Neither Aaron nor Jason had any idea how to carve the turkey, which they freely admitted, but Uncle Jim insisted that one of them get off their butt and carve it, so they attacked it together. I have no idea how they did, even though I was right there watching them. I have no idea how you properly carve any sort of meat!

Uncle Jim got quite tired, very quickly, so he paused for a nap after the meal:

That's one of their cats, Prussik (I'm not sure of the spelling) on his chest. I don't know how many of our international readers wear paper crowns at Christmas dinner, but that's what's on Uncle Jim's head. My family insists that it's some sort of British tradition, so all of us have to wear them every year. Aaron and Kyle always manage to tear their's on the very first time they put them on their heads.

After our meal we had a dessert. My aunt always makes either a rum torte or a grasshopper pie sort of thing (that's a minty pie, for those of you who are thinking this creations might actually have some sort of insect in it). Below we have Uncle Jim sharing his dessert with Prussik:

Again, I got quite the kick out of this, as Jim has always thought I was insane with my fawning over our dogs and refusing to eat meat due to the ethics of killing animals. And here he is spoon feeding his cat dessert!

Uncle Jim talked at length with Jason about all the meds he was on, pharmacology being one of Jason's strong suits, but I was really doubtful when Uncle Jim said that he might not make it to see Allie's wedding in June. But in February he got pneumonia and within 36 hours he had died. My aunt told me afterwards that this Christmas that Jason and I spent with them meant a lot to Jim, that he really wanted to have extended family around.

Next updates, April in Vancouver and Victoria!

Email me!

Meghan

Here's the link to the next update: April 21, 2004
Here's the link to the previous update: December 4, 2003

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