It’s still “Big Day Eve”, but I thought I’d quickly post before bed since I may not have internet yet set up tomorrow.  It’s supposed to be ready to go, but we shall see.

Just a couple of things.  First, whenever Davey and I are in the store lately, he is always telling me to “Scroll” back.   For example, we were in Target today.   He was in the cart, and I went by something he wanted to look at.

“Scroll back!  Mommy!”

I guess this is the language of a child who is already expert at wielding a mouse.

Then the other thing.  It’s totally non-related.  I’ve been reading some knitting blogs tonight.  I always notice this, but I always forget to mention it to anyone.  Everyone is asleep so I am mentioning it in my blog now.  Whenever I see pictures of people knitting, they always look like they are holding these dainty delicate needles and working with this small piece of string.  The knitting always looks so small in their hands.

But when I hold the yarn and needles in my hand, I don’t see it that way at all.  They feel very substantial and large to me.

I don’t know.  Maybe that’s just my perception.  Just thought I’d share.

Now I better go sleep.  Big Day is almost here!

Tomorrow is the big day.  All our boxes are packed – we’re ready to go.  One thing about having moved 8 million times over the last 20 years is that we’ve become adept movers.  This really has just finally happened for us in the last couple of moves though.

Everything is packed.   It took me probably 18 moves to realize that “the few things I am leaving until last” really really add up quickly.   So everything is packed.  Even most of my knitting.  David was kind enough to draw a big huge star on that box and label it “knitting” in nice big letters.  He knows I’ll panic quickly if I can’t locate the box.  I do have my sock out to work on though.  Gotta have something.

Davey and I went to buy a bed today.  The testing of bed comfort was great fun for little Davey.  “This bed is too jiggly.”  “This bed is too shaky.”  “This bed is too hard.”  Finally we settled on one that was just right.  We needed a guest room bed for all the guests we hope will be visiting!  We also needed an extra bed for the off chance that I might occasionally possibly rarely snore.  Sometimes Davey might have crawled in with us in the middle of the night, and I think we both might snore and drive David the light sleeper away.

It was only in the last move that I was not scrambling for paper with which to wrap.  Big $8.00 box of white wrapping paper from U-Haul is the only way to go.  Just for future reference!

I just watched Koko walk to the back bedroom bathroom in search of water.  No, she doesn’t drink out of the toilet.  I am afraid that the boxes have the poor girl so befuddled that she can’t find her water bowl in the kitchen.  She did finally locate it.  She’s going to be ready for a nice sunny nap in our backyard.

Moving.   Ugh.  But we can’t wait!

We are in the final stages of packing this little apartment.  We’ve worked on it a little each day so it’s not been that bad.  There’s just not a ton of room in here, so it’s quickly become maze-like.

Davey is not thrilled about the process.  At least this time he knows where we are going, but he doesn’t like seeing his toys going into a box.  We’ve left a lot out, but we’ve done some packing in his room.  He eyes the boxes warily.  He is not 100% convinced, I don’t think, that he is going to see them again for awhile, although we keep reassuring him that everything will be unpacked in his new room in just a few days.

Davey is not the only wary one.  Koko is not thrilled about this either.  First she loses her furry best friend, and now she has to make her way around this maze of boxes.   I’ve tried to avoid it, but the boxes interfere with some of her favorite sleeping places. To top it all off, she has me trying to take her picture.

Trying.  Attempt 1:

No Koko.  For an old girl, she can scoot away pretty fast when she wants to.

This was the best I could do for today.  It’s terrible, but I figure I shouldn’t chase around a 15 year old dog and traumatize her further.

Davey wasn’t much more receptive to having his picture taken.

He kinda allowed me one.

And that was the end of that. He scrambled under his “slide-fort”.

So the packing is nearing completion.  Just a few more days here.

And now I thought I’d write a little about Timber.  (I had to kind of work into this by beginning with some packing discussion.)

First, here are some things that Timber ate over his lifetime.

1.  Grapes galore.  He loved to catch them in the air. One night he ate an entire bunch.  We woke up in the morning and there was a pile of stems on the floor.  We later learned (years later) that grapes are supposed to be very bad for dogs.

2.  An entire plate of poppyseed muffins.  We woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a plate crashing to the floor.  He could eat a muffin per gulp.

3.  An entire plate of chocolate cupcakes.  (See #2 for details.  #1 also applies in that chocolate = also not good for dogs.)

4.  A box of ant traps.  These were the little ones you set out for the ants to crawl into.  He threw them back up into a nice pile in the middle of the living room.  I rushed him to the vet.  He was fine.

5.  An entire bottle of Koko’s beef-flavored antibiotics.  Somehow he got the lid off.  We again rushed him to the vet although he looked fine.  He was.  The doctor just recommended we give him yogurt.

6.  Update to post –   David reminded me of the time that he ate an entire roasted chicken carcass from our trashbag.  He consumed it one big gulping swallow.  Again – chicken bones also very bad for dogs.  It’s amazing he lived as long as he did.

Timber loved being a dog.  He reveled in “dogness”.  For example, let me compare him to Koko the chow. She’s not a dog.  As a chow, She’s actually slightly higher in the pecking order than human.

Timber though was not just all dog. He was all goofy dog.  He went into what we called “psycho puppy” to some degree his entire life.  (This is where dogs just run around as fast as they can in a crazy dog joy. The word psycho doesn’t seem quite right actually.)  This picture is the best example I have of “psycho puppy”.

If Timber smelled something nice and dead and stinky, he collapsed into a happy heap to roll in whatever it was.  Timber was a connoisseur of all things poop.   He didn’t like dog poop, but instead preferred a nice horse or lately Canada goose poop.

Timber had a very endearing personality.  My dad gave him his name. Everyone had a nickname for him.  My brother-in-law, Kev, called him T-man.  We called him “The Woo”.  (“woo-woo” was one of the very first words my niece Mikayla learned.)  We called him Senor Woo.  We called him Woo-cious (like precious).  He was my little “mooshi mooshi”.  (I have a silly language for them.)

Timber was so gentle with Davey.  Davey and I had a game called  “the bear and the wolf”.  “Mommy,  the bear and the wolf are coming!  Let’s hide!”   So they’d walk into the room and wonder why we were squealing under a quilt.

Here’s Timber with his best friend Koko.  (So hard to get a picture of that dark brown Koko puff.)

Friends have said so many kind things to me about the loss of Timber.  One of my favorites was, “If love could have saved you, you would have lived forever!”

We are lucky to have so many happy memories of our happy woo.

I haven’t posted in a couple of days.  It’s really bugging me, but then I haven’t felt like writing either.

Timber, our Siberian Husky, died on Thursday afternoon.  He was 14 and 1/2 years old.  We found out on Thursday that he had a mass in his lungs which was making it very hard for him to breathe.  He had masses on his liver too, and he was unable to eat.

He became part of our family when he was 7 and 1/2 weeks old.  He and Koko (our now 15 year old Chow) were our first attempts at some type of “parental responsibility”.  We didn’t quite plan that our “first attempt” would last for 11 years until Davey was finally born!

Timber was the most loving, gentle and goofy dog you could imagine.  If you’ve known Siberian Huskies, they have many similar traits, so you  have an idea of what he was like.

So I thought that today, I would write about Timber’s life and some of the fun goofy things he did.  There were a lot of them because Timber acted like a puppy until he was nearly 12.

But then this morning I woke up, and I thought to myself – “ok that’s enough.  I’m ready for Timber to come home now!”

So since he is not, I think I will try writing about him again tomorrow.

I’ve been looking at early pictures of Davey.  I wanted to see what he looked like 3 years ago –  in March of 2008.

He was a little booger having a great time.  He was learning how to eat solid food.  This was around the time of his first Easter.

As 4 month old,  he wanted to try to eat paper.

Today he says things like, “Mommy!  They are approaching!”

Here he is in March of 2009.  Such a sweet grin.

And now just today, Davey was listening to the radio with me.  I’ll listen to some songs that I think are ok for him to hear.  But then he listens and says, “Mommy, what are the feelings in this song?”  So together we try to figure out what is happening in the song.  He always has very interesting condensed ideas of what’s going on.

And then I look back to just one year ago.

The kid who continues to be fascinated by all things poop. 🙂

I took several pictures of Davey yesterday and today.  We went to the Denver Botanical Gardens yesterday and then this evening, we just went for a little “follow the leader” stroll over to the playground.

Davey is curious.

He enjoys smelling flowers.

He loves looking at maps.

He’s a little bashful right now.  Note how he is hugging the edge as this little girl runs by him.

He likes to build things.

He likes to closely examine “fossils”.

He likes to crawl through things.  Ok that’s kind of a stretch.  I confess – I just really like this photo.

He has taken a great interest in letters and numbers.  He can identify most numbers under 10 now, and he loves to pretend to read.  He’s very interested in the sounds letters make.

He loves to pretend.

He sits in the gravel and sprinkles it in his hair.   I don’t know why.  It’s all part of whatever imagining thing is going on at the moment.  “Mommy, I don’t want to tell you!”, he often says.  Or, “Mommy!  I am busy pretending!”

He’s animated.

And so busy!

We have begun packing again.  It’s kind of hard to believe that I am once again filling up boxes.  However, we are very very glad to be moving into our new house.  We will be moving in less than 2 weeks.

Davey is very excited about the whole process.  “Let’s pack Mommy!”

He started bringing his toys into the living room one at a time.  “Here Mommy.  Pack this one!”

Then he enjoyed handing me dishes to wrap.

He carefully labeled the boxes.

We packed quite abit in the morning, and then  Davey and I went to the little beaver lake.  We hoped we might see a beaver.  We didn’t.  Of course we threw rocks into the little lake as usual, so that probably didn’t help our sighting odds.

It was really windy, so Davey and I found a small slope which protected us somewhat.  Davey had his juice box and we shared a snack.

I love the winter colors although I guess they should soon be turning into spring colors.

When we got up, I noticed that our shoes had lots of rocks and sand in them.  This might have been partially due to Davey’s game.  He found a stick with some leaves and called it an umbrella.  Next thing I know he is cascading sand down on us.  This was rain.  Davey had lots of rain in his hair. (Apparently, the “umbrella” he was holding over our heads did not provide adequate protection.)

We decided to walk a little further up the trail.  We looked at logs.  We looked at some poop and tried to decide if it was coyote poop or not.  Several people on horses also came by, and Davey liked seeing them.

We’ll miss this beaver lake and surrounding open space, but we’ll find new places to explore, and we can always come back for an afternoon excursion.

Yesterday, Davey and I decided to sit out on the balcony for awhile.  We were watching for the auto glass repair person.  He came to install a new front windshield on our car.  So we were keeping an eye out for him.

I was reading my book and Davey was playing.  Unfortunately, I failed to note that he was playing with the sliding glass door.  I looked up to see it being shut very firmly.

I looked at Davey.   I tried to open the door.  Locked.

“Mommy!  Lucy locked us out!  It was Lucy.”  He was very insistent that his imaginary friend Lucy was the culprit.

I asked Davey to keep an eye out for the maintenance guys who zoom around in their golf carts.  We see them all the time.  Except for yesterday, when we saw exactly zero.  Davey kept yelling, “Mr. Maintenance Worker!”

Luckily it was a beautiful afternoon, and so Davey, me  – oh yes and Koko, just made the best of it.  I read a little more.  He played, and Koko was a little confused.  She likes free rein and does not like being hindered in any way.  So she was pacing and staring at the door. (Timber was staring at us from inside.  It was all very confusing for them.)

About 45 minutes later,  Daddy got home.  As soon as Davey saw David approaching in his Jeep, Davey started yelling, “Daddy!  Come rescue us!  Daddy, come Save us!”

And Daddy rescued us.

So that was a little exciting.

Davey and I’d gone for a walk earlier in the day.  We’d walked to a pie shop and had ice cream.  On the way back, Davey found a “sunflower” and presented it to me. (Try not to be too distracted by the shirt covered in icing and ice cream. Davey expects his clothes to work hard for him, and they do!)