Oh Christmas Tree!

So earlier this week I got my Christmas Tree and I decorated it yesterday.  Each year when I decorate my tree I think of the many family and friends that I have spent time with over the holidays.  

Each of my dogs has an ornament on the tree. This year, Beckett has an angel on the tree too. A surprise gift from a friend after Beckett had passed. I can tell you I cried when I opened it. It was the first ornament that I put on the tree this year. 

I put my other fur angel ornament up in behind the Beckett angel. If you can't read it; it says "My angel has four legs and fur". 

I had to add two ornaments for the new additions to the pack, Teddy and Liam. I also decided to get one for me, too. I think they'd say it was true, even if I have to say so myself. 

Teddy

Liam

As I said there are many memories on the tree but especially of my mum and dad. There are ornaments that they gave me and ones that I had given to them that now adorn my tree. These two birds were stocking stuffers I gave them one year. Funnily, the red cardinal is the one for Mother with Love and the other bird's tag says to a Special Dad. You'd would have thought that they would have made the male cardinal an ornament to a dad. 

There are many ornaments that are ones my parents gave to me. The little squirrel in the acorn they gave to me after I bought my second house. The Air Force Academy one, they brought back for me from their trip to Western US, including Colorado.  I had drawn a picture of the Academy Chapel shown in the ornament in Grade 7 as part of an assignment in math class. The glass ornament is from a set of four. They bought them for me at the World's Largest Christmas store in Frankenmuth, Michigan. It's getting harder to find nice glass ornaments like them any more. 

New Home

Air Force Acadmeny

Bronner's, Frankenmuth, Mich

I did get one other new ornament this year. This one I bought from Etsy, supporting a local crafter here in Ontario. I think it's very appropriate for 2020. Hope you can read it!

2020 Ornament. 

After all the ornaments are put on the tree, I use Victorian tinsel to fill up bare spaces and add a little bit of glitter to the tree. The final touch is to place my snowmen at the base of the tree. And there you have it, my Christmas tree for 2020 with all it's Christmas Tree treasures and memories! It's beautiful, even in this pandemic year.

Six!

Hey there, it be me Liam. I be six already, six months that is. I has growed a lot. Mums says she hopes I don't growed too much more. She maded dis picture of me so youse can see how much I growed.

Liam - 10 weeks to 6 months

Mums told me about my brudder-before Beckett and said I gots big shoes to fill but I gots big feet so I think I can fill da shoes, if'n I have to wear shoes. 

Mums tooked me to a store for my half birdday. I had ta get my nails trimmed but dat wasn't too bad. I gots a new wubba toy and some Scooby snacks to share with Keltic man and Teddy buddy. 

She also maded us some cookies but we didn't gets many as Mums says dat there for Crispmas. I don't know who Crispmas is but I sure hopes he shares his cookies.

Mint Carob-dipped dog cookies

Today Mums also maded some cookies for the peoples too. She says we doggies can't have any of those cookies, dat they is too rich for us.

Christmas Shortbread

Mums says we is going to get a tree soon so she putted away my x-pen as she says it would be in da way.  I gets to eat in the kitchen with Keltic and Teddy now. She says da tree is for Crispmas too, I don't know why he gets a tree. We already has trees outside in our yard.

Mums says if I be a good boy dat Santa Paws will bring me pressies.  I sure want to meet dis Santa Paws guy.  I think I been purdy good. I hasn't chewed up to many things, mostly just toilet paper. Well dats all I got to say for now. I promise I'll be back. See youse all, Liam. 

Tasty Travel

Inspired by friends who over Thanksgiving weekend planned menus from restaurants in Paris, I decided to travel to London for a nice dinner. Since we can't physically travel, I selected a restaurant in London called The Ivy and used their menu for the inspiration for the dinner.  I invited my sister and brother-in-law to join me for this Taste of London travel dinner.  

Except for the Parmesan Zucchini, I hadn't ever made any of these recipes so it was quite an experiment, but it all turned out quite well. Timing the courses of meal is the hardest thing to do. I did most of the preparation throughout the day so I wasn't all doing it in the last couple hours.  I made the filling for the bacon and leek tarts on Saturday as the recipe I used says it could be made up to three days before. I made the English toffee cakes the day before the dinner, then all that had to be made on the day of the dinner was the toffee sauce. 

Since the Ivy is quite a formal restaurant, I decided that we should dress for dinner. The dress code was "outrageous" as you can see we were quite outrageous but still classy.

The boys even dressed up too. They were our "wait staff"; but all they did was wait. They didn't even get any leftovers.

"Wait" staff

So onto the dinner, the appetizer was a Bacon Leek tart made with goat cheese. These were really good, definitely worth making again. 

Bacon Leek Tart

We had a little bit of a pause before the main course as the cod fillets were still a little frozen so they took longer to cook.  The main course was Crab crusted cod fillets plated on a white bean, lemon and clam stew. The Ivy menu uses cockles but those are hard to find here. It was served with Citrus steamed Broccoli and the Parmesan Courgettes. (Brit speak for Zucchini.)  Everything turned out quite well.  The white bean stew actually surprised me, it was quite flavourful. 

Crab-crusted Cod

Lastly there was dessert, English Sticky Toffee Pudding with French Vanilla ice cream. We only needed a short pause here as all that needed to be done was to bring the sauce to a boil for a couple minutes and warm up the cakes.  

English Toffee Pudding

I had three white wines ready and chilled for our dinner. My sister selected the Pinot Grigio, I hadn't noticed the name when I purchased it but it was rather appropriate.

Corona wine?

We had a good time with this Outrageous Taste of London dinner.  I have made a promise to myself that I will go back to London someday so that I can eat at The Ivy wearing the same dinner jacket I had on for this pandemic dinner.

Long Overdue

Liam's introduction to the blog world is long overdue. The saying "every cloud has a silver lining" certainly fits this blog post.  During a worldwide pandemic when all the travel I had planned for this first full year of retirement was cancelled, I had to find that "silver lining" so I got a puppy.  In August, I added Divine's Locharran Liam to the pack. I've been looking for a bi black puppy for over a year now and if it hadn't been for the pandemic I wouldn't have gotten Liam as right now I'd be on a Mediterranean cruise; I wouldn't have gotten a puppy just to leave them with someone else for nearly a month.

Liam - Six weeks

Liam came home at nine weeks old; that first day was very hard, every time he napped I was in tears because he wasn't Beckett.  He'll be five months old on 4 Nov.  He's fit in quite well.  At first Teddy was a little rough but he was never aggressive, now Teddy is very patient with a little brat who's always pulling his hair and nipping him. Keltic doesn't like Liam much and is usually the fun police but lately Keltic has been trying to get Liam to tug on a toy with him. 

Liam - 10 weeks

Liam is going to be a big Sheltie. He's not quite five months and he's already as tall or taller than Keltic who is 15 1/2 inches. 

Liam - 12 weeks

Liam - 14 weeks

He's been a good puppy. We've had very few accidents and usually because I've ignored him. He always whined when he needed to go out, unlike other young puppies who just stopped and peed right where they were.  At night, I first had him in a kennel on my bed but then he was asking to get out two or three times a night so I decided to try him out on the bed with me, once I did that he would sleep through the night. Well mostly, he would usually have to go out between 3 and 4 am, then I would put him in the kennel for the rest of the night.  He's been sleeping through the night for over a month now, getting up between 6:30  and 7:30 am.  He's also sleeping on the dog beds rather than with me in bed. He's the first puppy I've had that took himself off to bed upstairs.

Liam - 4 months

Even during a pandemic I've tried to expose him to many things. He's been to a garden centre,  went shopping with me to Canadian Tire, been camping and hiking and has visited with family and friends.  He's been sharing Teddy's agility classes, doing tugging games and impulse control games soon we'll be able to do some basic agility training.  He's not been phased by anything too much; although this week, a bunny that came out from under the cedar hedge while he was taking care of business, which did startle him a bit. The next bunny he saw though, he stood his ground and then started to chase it; that bunny escaped under the fence.

Liam out shopping

Met Beckett's litter sister, Hannah while camping

At home

Hiking

Playing with Teddy

Meeting Border Collie friends

I still miss Beckett but now Liam has found his own place in my heart.  I'm sure we'll have many wonderful adventures together. Hopefully, it won't be another four months before there's another post about Liam, or Teddy, or Keltic for that matter.

Counter Surfer?

I can almost reach.

Mini Walktober Walks

 Well, it's Walktober, one thing we can do in a pandemic is go for a nice walk. I planned three walks, none of which turned out as planned but it was still nice to get out.

Facebook reminded me of past walks by the Ottawa river ahead of our Thanksgiving weekend so I decided to do that again. Since adding Liam to the pack, I can no longer take all three dogs to the federal government owned lands administered by the National Capital Commission. NCC regulations only allow each person to walk a maximum of two dogs so I decided to go to a boat launch that has a trail by the river.  There's a an old boat on the shoreline, I'm sure it's located on private property. I thought it would be a good place for some pictures; but since this really isn't a public trail, I found it had been overgrown and I decided I wasn't going to try and wrangle three dogs through the brush to get there so we turned back. Even had we made it to the boat, we would have had to turn around as the trail just follows the river's edge.

On the Ottawa river.

The boys leading the way.

The trail

Looking down to the boat launch.

Our next walk was on Thanksgiving Monday, we went to do the Wilsondale trails. They are trails maintained by the city of Ottawa and are in behind the Cumberland Heritage Village Museum. We started out to do some of those trails but even though it was a bright sunny day, the trail was wet and muddy.  I don't think we had even gone halfway and it was just too muddy so again I headed back.  We did walk the museum property instead. The museum doesn't permit dogs when it's open but once it's closed they don't seem to mind. I've walked the dogs there a number of times even in the winter as the roads are kept plowed. 

On the Wilsondale trail

Heritage Village Museum

Barn in the Heritage Village

Tractor and fall colours

Another barn

Old gas station

My last Walktober walk was just yesterday. I had thought to go downtown Ottawa to take a picture of the statue of the Famous Five statue as today is Persons Day in Canada. I took just Keltic and Liam with me. We walked all around the Parliament buildings, down to the canal, over to the War Memorial and down the Sparks street mall but we didn't see the statues. Turns out because the restoration work has started on the Parliament buildings that many of the statues have been moved. The restoration work will take the next ten years.  The Famous Five statue has been moved to the front of the building being used as the temporary Senate, it will be a government conference centre once all the renovations are done. 

Statue to the War of 1812

View of the Ottawa River and Gatineau from behind Parliament

Eternal Flame and the Peace Tower

Keltic and Liam on the Rideau Canal

Rideau Canal Locks

Keltic at the War Memorial

Liam - downtown Ottawa

So while none of walks turned out as planned, they got us out of the house to enjoy some beautiful fall days.  Hopefully, there will be more nice days ahead as I have leaves to rake.