Collecting for the Lions

Twice a year the Lions Club solicit funds for their charities, Leader Dog for the Blind, Bear Lake Camp for the Visually handicapped, Michigan Eye Band, and the Penrickton school for the blind.  The last two weekends we were standing in front of the Kroger store with Mindy.  The wind was icy cold. Mindy is getting better at not jumping at everyone who walks by unless they talk to her in a high pitched voice and tell her how cute she is. Almost everyone who has a dog comes up to show us pictures of their dog and tell us all about him or her.

Winter is not Gone Yet

Well the snow this morning caused Detroit to go over the record for seasonal snow.  Now that the record is broken, here is hoping we are done with this winter.  We finally got Mindy used to going to the bathroom on grass (she kept looking for snow). It isn't just the snow, tonight is going down to 24 degrees.  We are going to a Master Gardener meeting tonight at Telly's greenhouse.  The topic is spring flowers.

Lion Convention

Last weekend was the Lions District A2 Convention in Grand Rapids.  We decided to take Mindy with us.  She was pretty good.  She didn't bark at all and stayed under the table during meals and meetings.  Walking through a crowd is still very difficult for Mindy as she feels it is necessary to personally greet anyone she sees. The convention was very informative.  I especially enjoyed the business meeting.  That was where all the charities reported how they were doing and the number of people served. It really made you feel good about being a Lion.  At the banquet Saturday night I carried the banner in for the Lathrup Village Lions Club.

An Update on Mindy

Mindy, the puppy we are raising for Leader Dogs, is almost 5 months old now. What a delightful dog. This one is really going to be hard to part with.  She is very food motivated and learns quickly. The only difficulty we have with her, is that she is very friendly and gets so excited when she meets anyone. We have taken her many times to Café Clare for lunch and she is really good once we get her to the table but on the way she wants to greet everyone she passes. This weekend we will take her to Ohio to visit my daughter and next weekend we will take her to the Lions convention in Grand Rapids so we are doing our best to expose her to people.

Back to the Cold North

We are back from our Panama cruise.  It was wonderful.  Every day the temperature was in the 80's and the sea was as smooth as glass. I spent my time on the veranda doing cross stitch and enjoying the warmth. Tomorrow I weigh in at Weight Watchers, so that will be the moment of truth.  I am going on another quilting retreat tomorrow.  Life is hard.

A New Furnace

We have a maintenance contract with Consumers Power. They will come and repair any of your gas appliances. We called them last October, the exhaust fan on the furnace died. A week ago the furnace didn't go on but Hubby cycled the power to the furnace and it started up again.  He called Consumers to check it out. The man came and before looking at the furnace said, "This is an old furnace we don't want to put any more money into it." (28years) He then went to the basement and condemned our furnace (which was working at the time), shut off the power and turned off the gas.  Hubby complained that it was zero degrees outside.  He said "Have a nice day." Today we are having a new furnace installed. Sort of an unexpected expense.  We don't recommend the maintenance contract with the energy company.

A Quilt Retreat

Carole and I spent the weekend in Holly, Michigan at the Create A Memory Inn on a quilt retreat.  It was wonderful. There were 8 other women there and they were all delightful.  The place is decorated so feminine with the kinds of decorations which would cause a husband to have a stroke. The food was out of this world, Bananas Foster French toast for breakfast, and coconut cream pie for dinner dessert. I got a lot done on my quilts too. I will share pictures when I finish them.
  The new Blog My Leader Dogs is written by Penny's new owners.