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The Coyote

// June 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // Bella, Brad's Life, Uncategorized

Today, after tons of yardwork, Jen and I decided to take Bella for a walk. I was going to take my camera, but decided to take The Flip instead so I could get some video of her howling and chasing rabbits near a field about 150 yards from our house. She loves it.

As we approach the area the rabbits usually are, we look out into the field. There is a large flooded area from all of the recent rain, and geese and ducks swimming in it. And on the edge, a scraggly looking creature. Too tall to be a fox, too weird looking to be a dog. Definitely a coyote.

Here is the minimal footage we got. Unfortunately the Flip doesn’t have much zoom, and I wasn’t about to get much closer. If I would only have had my camera…. *kicks self*.

So it heads back to that wooded area. The end.

Yeah, right. Of course, now I’m in stalker mode, constantly watching the field for my photo op. But this is where it gets interesting. We just had a new neighbor move in, 2 houses down. We went to introduce ourselves while on our walk with Bella. She says “Yeah, it seems like everyone around here has a dog. I see a lot of people walking them.” I mention Chloe, the black lab across the road who just roams the neighborhood (and who also scared the crap out of me while I was mowing today…). And our neighbor says, “Oh I haven’t seen her. I’ve only seen that dog with the red-looking spots and the mangy looking body.”

Whoa.

Fast-forward 3 hours to about 10 minutes ago. I look out in the field and see a few creatures. I grab my camera and head across the road. I get close enough to see that it is just 2 deer grazing around the field, so I head back to the house. On my way back I run into 2 neighbors that we haven’t met yet, so I introduced myself. I mention that we thought we had seen a coyote because I didn’t want to be random guy walking with a huge camera. And one of the neighbors says…

“You live in that house right there? I was mowing last weekend and it walked right through your front yard.”

Holy crap. If you thought we keep a close eye on Bella in the backyard, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Freaky.

The Weekend of Fun

// May 5th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Bella, Brad's Life, DIY, House, Photography, Uncategorized

We got a ton of stuff done around the house this weekend, which felt pretty good. Next weekend Jen’s whole family and grandparents are coming for Bethany’s graduation from Anderson U. + Mother’s Day, so we tried to clean the place up a bit and hope it stays that way until next weekend.

(more…)

March Madness

// March 26th, 2008 // No Comments » // Bella, Brad's Life, Small Group, Travel, YouTube

Wait, March is almost over? Time sure is flying. I knew this weekend would be extra busy, thus the precap in my last post. Looking back, it was an awesome weekend full of basketball, friends, and buzzer beaters.

Here are the 7 great buzzer beaters I witnessed over the weekend. The first one we saw in person, as Gordon Hayward (a Butler recruit) made the shot to take Brownsburg over Marion in the 4A State Finals. The game before that was all Tyler Zellers (a North Carolina recruit), who dropped 43 points in his final high school game. The other 6 videos are from the NCAA tournament.

The IHSAA games were even better because there was a TV in our suite(image and image), so we could watch all of the NCAA games at the same time.

After a great Easter Sunday (very relaxing too, which was needed after the previous 2 days), we hosted a 80’s Murder Mystery with our Small Group on Monday night and it was a blast. There are some pictures below, or check them all out on Flickr.

Well that’s about it for now. My next post will come from somewhere much sunnier and warmer.

And if you didn’t hear, Matt and Heather got their Visa and will be flying to Myanmar on Saturday. Pretty bittersweet. Glad the paperwork has gotten through for them!

Life moves fast.

// March 10th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Bella, Brad's Life, Photography, Small Group

Every week goes by quicker and quicker, it seems. This weekend was nice and relaxing, but pretty busy.

We had a fondue party (pictures here) on Friday night with our small group, which was a blast. The guys ended up playing Madden ‘08 for a good 3-4 hours, and the girls chatted downstairs.

In preparation for the fondue party we had been looking for a white 42″ kitchen table with 2 chairs and flip down sides… not that we are ever specific. The cheapest we could find around town was $600, and the fastest it could get here was 4 weeks. No good. Instead, we went to Meijer and picked up a table and 2 chairs and sanded/painted them. We need to put another coat on the table, but it turned out good enough just in time for the party. (Pictures of the table here)

Yesterday was the beginning of the church league basketball tournament. We were the 9 seed out of 10 teams (2-6 baby!), so we had to play a buy-in game to actually get into the tournament. We were down as many as 16 with 6 minutes left, but fought back and won the game by 1. I played my worst game of the year, but hit a 3 down the stretch to tie it up, then proceeded to miss 4 straight free throws (what the heck?). We were up 51-50 and they had the ball with 19 seconds left. They brought it down, a guy drove to the hole, I slipped in behind him and blocked his layup, then proceeded to ROLL the ball down to the other end of the court so the clock would expire and I wouldn’t have to go to the free throw line again. Pretty heads up play, eh? SO, since we won at 2pm we had the extreme honor to come back and play the #1 seed at 6pm. We played our best half of the season and were only down 4 going into the last minute of the first half, but we just ran out of juice. With only 6 guys on the team, 4 quarters of ball is tough. I think we ended up losing by 35. Oh well, it was a good season and I don’t think many of us expected to pull off the upset.

To end the weekend, Jen’s glasses broke.. again. Since she’s getting new ones for her birthday on Wednesday (how exciting, huh?), we did what any smart person would do. We recycled them to a good cause….. Bella.

Sure they are missing 1 lens, and the other one makes her dizzy, but she really likes them. I need to fashion some sort of Croakies out of a rubber band for her. (More pictures here).

Have a good week, folks. Enjoy the weather and extra hour of sun!

Bella has some competition

// March 5th, 2008 // No Comments » // Bella

Sorry I haven’t posted much lately.  A lot of new projects going on at work.  Let’s just say Bella isn’t the only Dogcaster out there anymore.

Click to check out Blue2TV 

Bella’s new love

// February 9th, 2008 // No Comments » // Bella, House

Bella has a new boyfriend, and his name is Sampson. He’s a big boy, that’s for sure. She always wants to go out back whenever he’s out, and when she’s inside she gets up on the windows to look for him.

Here’s the cuteness, followed by the closeup. I personally think the dog just wants to eat her. It’s a freakin’ beast.

Mid-day bonus photo, take 2

// January 8th, 2008 // 14 Comments » // Bella, Photography

Gotshoo? just posted a Mid-day bonus photo. I just uploaded pics from Florida to Flickr so I wanted to post a dog pic too, which I just changed my Facebook pic to a few hours ago. He’s definitely got me beat in the YADP category (heck, he invented the category), but I bet I could beat him. I challenge you to a duo.

Bella + Beach = All smiles.

*addition*

Call me crazy… (no really, you will)…. but sometimes I think my dog resembles Ron Paul. Could my dog be the Canine Revolutionary Leader? I think it’s the eyes/wrinkles.

Weekend 1: Remodeling

// January 8th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Bella, DIY, House

Remodeling has begun in the Ward Household, and we’re making fairly decent process. The bedroom accent wall is painted, and we’ll finish painting tonight when we get the pearlescent stripes in the dining room complete (What a pain in the butt! imagine taping straight lines floor to ceiling every 7 inches all the way around a room.)

The bathroom is going fairly well. We’re going to replace the board around the toilet and tub because it was a little damp when we pulled up the carpet (reason #1023 why you shouldn’t have had carpet in the bathroom in the first place!), so that put the cementboard laying back a little.

Bella loves the backyard and can finally get some energy out. By the time she’s done playing, she’s all worn out and comes back in to sleep on the floor while we finish up work for the night. All in all, things are going great. And we finally got our gas hooked up yesterday, so no more working in a 45-50 degree house.

Shooting for a Jan. 21 move-in and have the house ready to go by February 22nd (just in time for you, Kyle!). Here are some pictures, or check out the set on Flickr. (You also get captions on Flickr, which might explain what the heck is going on in our house better!)

Bella on LOLSECRETZ.

// October 17th, 2007 // No Comments » // Bella, Brad's Life

It’s a known fact that I’m a huge fan of PostSecret.  Kyle got me a few of the books last year, and I love every page of them.  It’s just an awesome site.

So it’s no surprise that when I heard about LolSecretz, a mashup of PostSecret and LOLCats (or dogs?), I fell in love again. So I made some lolcats and loldogs and sent them in a few days back and 2 of them made the site today.  Bella in the Scion and a picture I found on Facebook while looking through Cj’s pictures.

Crank Dat Soulja Bella

// October 16th, 2007 // No Comments » // Bella, YouTube

Sorry, I had to do it. She’s just too cute.