He is not here for He has risen!

We have a friend, an aspiring writer, who has a wonderful blog Headquarters: Army of Northern Virginia.

I was reading her blog and the title of our post today "He is not here for He has risen!" was a reminder from her. I will take the liberty to quote her here. "For someone who desires to be a writer, I will confess, that no greater words can be written than these words -- for they contain the hope of mankind and the revelation of God that He has gathered us unto Himself."

It reminds us that we are nothing save for what we celebrate today. Without Christ's sacrifice on the Cross we would have no hope. This bears remembering especially in the world we live in today.

We should remember to stop and consider God in our daily lives and to continually give thanks for His Grace.

Happy Easter everyone. There is still hope. Amen and Amen!

Wishing Dogs Could Talk

Poor Sarge had to go to the vet today. He starting having some kind of trouble Sunday with not being able to open his mouth without pain. He was also very tired and we could tell he didn't feel good. We called the "on call" vet and once he ruled out snake bite he had me check a few other things, determined it wasn't life threatening and suggested we watch him closely and bring him in Monday morning at 8 a.m. The vet said we could leave him there for the day and they would examine him as soon as they could since we didn't have an appointment lined up.

When I called to see if there was any news later in the day the gal at the office just said, "Sarge is okay but the doctor wants to talk to you about what he may think is going on when you get here". That scared me.

Sarge has written about his adventure on our other blog "It's a Dog's Life" if you want to hear his side of the story.

Suffice it to say the vet says the symptoms are similar to having a "pus ball" behind the eye and showed us how the skeletal system of a dog works and why that would prevent him from opening his mouth.

The vet said the dog "cried" when he tried to force it open but showed no sign of infection in his white blood cell count and was able to press on his eye and not have any pain so the doctor was confused.

To be on the safe side he gave Sarge a shot of antibiotic with pills to follow up with and some pain medication. I suggested maybe we caught it early enough and the vet said he hoped so, otherwise he wasn't sure what was wrong.

We are hoping and praying he gets well. For a dog that loves to eat this is really sad to see him this way. We are glad that so far it doesn't seem to be anything major and hope with the antibiotics and time it will pass. The vet said sometimes they have to go in and drain it from behind the last tooth up toward the eyeball, ugh!

All that was enough to cause a stressful day for us. If dogs and babies could talk and tell us what's wrong we'd all be a little better off. Oh, and cats and other animals. :-)

We'll keep you posted. Don't forget to take a look at Sarge's blog, he has such a sense of humor in all this.

Raining like Hail!

We were hunkered down in the only interior room we have, the laundry room. We knew a tornado was down and headed our way and Praise God it passed by us. We had lots of hail and for a few minutes I thought the garage door was going to come off but we had no damage and only quarter size hail and lots of rain.

Sam said it best while looking at the back yard, "It looks like the tide came in" and of course went back out and took our sand out to the woods with it. It was neat to see the fog rise from the warm ground with the ice on it.



We got one more heavy rain after that and it's now calm. The backyard is flooded in little pools and the storm washed some sand away from the side fence that Sam will have to work on tomorrow when we get some daylight.

The dogs didn't like being in the laundry room but we only had to be in there about 15 minutes.

All clear and tomorrow is supposed to be warm and sunny.

Spring Ahead!

This weekend we spring ahead and sure enough real spring weather will be close behind the forwarding of the clocks. Spring begins on March 20th and down here in the South I expect it to arrive on time.

Flowers are something we are lacking here at the Foxhole. We really haven't had time to plant and aren't really sure of the seasonal shifts yet. Already we have been surprise at the cooler temperatures here and the duration of this "Southern" winter season. Since we arrived in the fall to sweltering temperatures and humidity it will take a year before we've been through all the seasons.

The first thing we'd like to do once we can afford it is get some kind of lawn going in the backyard. We are thinking the least expensive way to do it is have it sprayed on. We could buy a few wire fence posts, some wire and cordon off an area with a path for the dogs to get to the woods and keep them from trampling the grass as it grows. Once the grass has taken hold we can remove the fencing and buy a few squares of sod to cover the path made for the dogs. We really need to do it so we can curb the sand traffic that comes in this house.

So here comes spring, we'll lose an hour of sleep but gain some sunshine at the end of the day which will be enjoyed.

The Foxhole Gets Company

FReeper U S Army EOD Flies In for a Visit

Today we were fortunate enough to have our first fly-in visitor to our place in South Carolina. U S Army EOD (aka Major York) flew his Quicksilver GT 400 in to a private field a few miles from our home. Of course we had advance notice he would be in around 12:30 or shortly thereafter.

We mapped the field out on Google but had no address thinking we would be able to see the field from the road or something indicating the private field. We were wrong. We knew we were in the right area so after much discussion we finally park alongside a small rural road and looked to the sky.

Waiting.

We watched about 30 goats go through a barbwire fence to the other side of the road. Sam with his quick wit commented, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the road". LOL. No sign of our FRiend in the skies yet.

We began another discussion on where the field might be. My cell phone rings at about 12:45 and I answered, "Where are you"? Well, U S Army EOD was in a field somewhere but he didn't know the address either, he knew he was west of one highway and 3 miles south of a nearby town but didn't know for sure as he looked at his aerial map.

We headed toward the town and then turned around to head south 3 miles, basically back to where we were. Meanwhile Major York made it to the field owner's house but no one was home so he headed for the road. It was at that time that he gave us some description of the place and Sam recognized it and we picked up the Major about 2 minutes later. We had been at the South End of where we determined the field would be, we just couldn't see it from the roads.

All is well so we headed back to the runway and picked up EOD's supplies and headed to our Foxhole. Sarge and Scarlett behaved themselves with the Major much to our surprise and we were able to have a very nice visit. We sat out on the porch while Sam grilled up some steaks, made mashed potatoes, corn and rolls for a nice afternoon dinner. After dinner we sat out and talked some more.

I had my camera hoping to catch the landing but we missed that. I nearly forgot it when we were leaving but didn't so I have a few shots of the departure. Wheels up at about 5:18.

We had a nice visit and as we have always said, Foxhole FReepers are the best. We really enjoy getting to meet FReepers. Now if we could just all plan the same vacation from work we could have a really good "get together".

It is 6:23 and US Army EOD just called to say he was wheels down and putting her in the barn! He had a good flight home and it only took about an hour.

Thank you Major York for taking the time and expense of flying in to visit us. We hope you come back real soon.