I'm such a wuss for puppy eyes

I've mentioned before how fond I am of my wee pup (yeah he's a fully grown dog now but he still acts like a pup): I've made him Doggie Treats and Birthday Cake. And spoiled him with other treats like bones, pigs ears and toys and even little bits of bacon buttie. He gets great big long walks and lots of mad fetch. He is a spoilt wee boy who has taken over our sofa, well not only the sofa but the whole house and garden, and often takes over ownership of my lap.

I've become such a sucker for big puppy dog eyes and it turns out it's not only Stewie's eyes I fall for. In the past I've fallen for dogs who've been lost and followed me like "Mustard" and Digger who I couldn't help but try to get back to their owner. In fact I did the same once about 12 years ago when I first had a dog (a cute and chubby little Jack Russell called Mutt) and an old english sheepdog pup followed us home one day - my sister and I loved this wee dog but couldn't help but try and get them back to their owner again.

Today I was driving home from the holiday Bible club and almost ran over a little Jack Russell. I had to pull over and see if I had and if he was ok. As soon as I got out of my car this little dog came running over to say hello. I didn't see anyone around and I couldn't find a tag for a name or number on him so I decided to take him to the vet to see if he was chipped or anything. He was so cute and tiny and kept trying to sit on my lap (I don't think he liked the smell of Stewie on the passenger seat).



It turned out he wasn't chipped, the vet couldn't take him in and the dog warden wasn't answering the phone so I decided I'd bring him home and call the warden later after lunch time, but I ended up driving past where I had found the dog again and found someone who knew where the dog was from. I couldn't help but like this wee dog, he was so friendly and sweet and I admit I did ponder how Stewie and Rob would react to this new dog, but then I remembered how spoilt Stewie is and I'm not sure he would cope with the competition.

Digger

I've posted before about having a random dog start to follow me round the park but it has happened again, and with a labrador again too!!!!

Stewie and I were enjoying a walk round Lurgan Park this week and loving the short heatwave we've had here the past few days when a labrador started walking along with us. To start I just ignored it thinking it's owner was somewhere near by, but after a while I looked around and saw no one. He started lifting sticks and trying to play with me, I tried to look at his tags to see his name or get a number but he kept growling at me so I left it.



Eventually though he stopped the growling when he didn't have a stick in his mouth so I got the number and called the owner, who told me that "Digger" just likes to take off sometimes for a wander round the park by himself and once he's done he makes his own way home.

How cool is that?!?!?!? I'd love it if Stewie was able to take himself for a walk when I've got really busy days but then again we do have great fun on our walks together.

Sun shiny shine

It's May and the sun is splitting out of the skies and forced us to have a mini BBQ last night which was fantastic. I also had Stewie out for a longer walk yesterday as well as him wanting to keep playing fetch with the ball. He was having so much fun playing fetch and his eyes were all sparkly watching the ball anytime I lifted it:



But there came a point when he kept coming back with the ball and collapsing on the ground like this:



That didn't stop him jumping up again ready to go everytime I lifted the ball again. but we headed home for fear he'd die of thirst, heat or exhaustion. He ended up trying to find nice cool spots to lie down round the house for most of the rest of the evening.

I love the sunnier weather too because it marks a big change in wardrobe -


I read a few blogs recently from California saying it was in the 60s (fahrenheit) and they were freezing! Well it's about the 60s here at the minute and we're loving it!!!!! I am at least anyways!

Bacon buttie time!

I love having a bacon buttie! It's just fab, cooking the bacon, buttering the bread, mixing it all together.... so simple yet so delicious!

I was getting the bacon ready for one today and wee Stewie was being the cute pup that he is paying close attention to what was happening!



And this is him watching me eating.... it's so hard saying no to that cute face!


He loves sitting and watching me cook, think it's so he can work out whether or not it's worth his while eating his own food or trying to blag a bit of our food!

Recent wanderings

Our wee Stewie still gets his regular walks, not always in Hillsborough like he used to but still quite often in Hillsborough Forest. Recently I decided to start walking among the trees more and discovered some little trails that go through the forest that are obviously used by some but not too many. The 2 of us have had fun exploring these "secret paths" and coming across new areas of the forest.



Being in the middle of the forest with no idea of where exactly I am led me to thinking all theologically about a journey through life, but also about Lost, that great and very weird TV show about a group of plane crash survivors on a bizarre island. There are some random buildings in parts of the park that just remind me of a scene in Lost, especially seeing them after being in the middle of the trees for about an hour!







It's really rather bizzarre and slightly spooky, but more than that, I discovered some bamboo growing near all these buildings!


When we do eventually make it back to the regular paths he loves to try bugging the swans and ducks again:


And after all that excitement, it's home for Stewie's nap.

I really am mad

Just to explain what I meant earlier when I said "it'll get weirder when I post about him later today" have a look at my latest post on my cooking blog.

Happy birthday Stewie!

What should have taken 10 minutes....

.... ended up taking 2 hours 45 minutes.

The journey from my house to Banbridge (aka work) usually takes about 10 minutes, but yesterday took 2 hours and 45 minutes. All because of the snow!!!!!!

Earlier in he day i had been quite light and Stewie had enjoyed playing in it for the first time on his walk:


After that i went and did some work while Stewie followed me round the church, then I dropped something into someone, the popped into Tesco. At which point the snow was starting to come down again. I was in and out of Tesco in about 5 minutes but it was enough time for the snow to go crazy and leave a good thick layer as seen on my wing mirror from the safety of my car:

I drove out onto the main road but as soon as I got onto it I was faced with traffic crawling. I was on that road for about half an hour crawling the length of a car every 2 or 3 minutes. I gradually got onto the next road and the next road was when it really got bad.

Shortly after getting onto that road there is a bit of a hill and this was causing the slow traffic, cars were having trouble getting up it, and even getting down it. Eventually everything came to a stand still at about 1 hour 15 minutes into my journey home. I got out of the car with Stewie and waited for a bit watching a lorry trying to get up.



After 1 hour 45 minutes a police man came and told everyone to either park their car at the side of the road or to turn and go another way. I needed to get up that road to leave something into my boss before heading out home on that road. So I called someone from church who lived up the hill a little bit asking if they could give me a lift home from their house and I would ditch the car there. They agreed, so Stewie and I headed off trekking, well I was trekking through the snow but Stewie was skipping and jumping and skidding through the snow. We arrived at my friend's house and we drove the final 4 and a half miles through the snow at about 10 mph. I eventually got home at 8.45pm and was never more glad to be home. Stewie had fun investigating his garden while I started getting dinner ready.

Then Rob left work at 10pm, I had suggested the idea of him staying with someone in Belfast for the night seeing as the roads were so bad, but he wanted to come home. His journey home usually takes 35/40mins, last night it took 3 hours 15 mins.

As much as I love the snow, it really frustrated me yesterday. It was still sitting this morning and from inside the house looking out was rather nice. Even Stewie had fun looking out the window at it all.



Meanwhile my car is still sitting down in Banbridge. The rain is starting to get rid of some of the snow so Rob might take me down shortly to get it. Just hope the rain isn't freezing.

2007 Review

Many blogs have done a review of 2007, mostly using the format of "highlights" or the "best blog posts" or "my tops tens of x, y and z for 2007" etc. However I was reading fellow April 07  bride Chris Cool's blog and loved how she reviewed the year by what happened month by month and have decided to do the same seeing as the last year has been very eventful for me too!

January
We spent New Year's Eve in 2006 with some of Rob's classmates and their significant others by having dinner at our new house. We had just got the keys to our house a few days before Christmas and I had insisted on having a tree put up, my first ever Christmas tree and it was a real tree. Mum and Dad have always had artificial trees so this was a real treat, but soon after the turn of the new year we had to remove the decorations and say goodbye to our first tree.
On the 2nd and 3rd of the month I starred in a play put on by the church called, "Don't Tell the Wife", where I played Hilda, a girlfriend of Cyril who was a little odd.

And a lot of wedding planning took place, as well as Rob and I going to a marriage preparation course run by Christian Guidelines

February
Wedding invites were sent out, replies started coming in as well as some wedding presents!
I went go karting with the BB as the only girl!
Tried my wedding dress on for the first time, it was rather big and was taken to the seamstress for alterations.

March
Had my first wedding - in a play, not a real wedding - a short sequel to "Don't tell the wife" was written where my character got married and was performed exactly a month before my own wedding at the church annual review. Like my dress?

I also went for hair and make up trials for the actual wedding - it was so much fun being pampered - and did lots more wedding prep.
And more wedding presents came!

April
The first Bannside Youth Retreat in my time being there was held in the first week of the month. There were about a dozen of us altogether and we had a great time.
A few days later I had my hen night at Fat Buddha which was great! Gorgeous food! Fantastic company! And great craic!

I had wedding dress finally altered and picked up just 3 days before the wedding!!!!
And on the 20th Rob and I became Mr and Mrs Ruth! lol We had an amazing day, it was so much more fun than I had ever imagined it would be! I'm a very forunate girl to have married the love of my life.

After the wedding we had our "minimoon" as I called it. We weren't able to go away on our honeymoon straight away seeing as Rob had his final exams to do for his degree, so we spent a few nights in the bridal suite of the Malone Lodge Hotel which was fantastic! Recommend it if you can afford it!
We came home and I started living with my new hubby.
About a week later I turned 24!!! and I got birthday presents!!!!!
And we had lots more wedding presents!!!!

May
Rob took part in the Megaw Memorial Lectures and came second. In my humble (and unbiased lol) opinion I think he should have won, but I was so proud of him!

We got our wedding photos, and i added loads on flickr and bebo. I was so happy with how they all turned out. Our photographer, Michael Taylor was amazing and did so much for us, he really understood what we wanted. We would recommend him to anyone! And he doesn't just do weddings, so if you're after a good photographer check him out.
On the 10th we got our wee puppy Stewie. And here he is the first day we got him:

He was so scared and still is a little scared of things but he's come out of his shell now and become a cheeky spoilt pup lol. But we love him lots.

June
The first 3 days of the month saw a huge fundraising event for the church that had took the best part of 2 years to plan. The Bannside flower festival where we served over 2000 meals as well as serve a huge amount of tea, coffee and scones. We had thousands of people come to see the beautiful flower arrangements. But the biggest success was having members of the church all working together, getting to know each other, involving new people and having fun together!


This year was the first ever Kid's Praise Party held by PCI. It was a fantastic event, I can't wait to see what happens at this year's party.
On the same day, straight after the Kid's Praise Party was Youth night, another great year, however as usual it ran over time a little.
The last few days of the month were spent at Summer Madness which was known as SBSUSM07 (meaning "stand by or stand up, summer madness 07) for the year and was the last year of the StreetReach outreach project, with over 2000 (if memory serves me right) people (mostly teenagers) hitting the streets, to clean up, serve, play with kids and much more.

July
The first few days of the month saw the second half of Summer Madness with Rob's Graduation in the middle

Another day where I was all proud of him!
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out at the cinema. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released.

August
August saw the start of this blog. which has been going very well if I say so myself.
And soon after that I started "Just add eggs" which is now "ruth's kitchen experiments"
We booked our honeymoon.
And I went to the second PCI Youth Ministry Summer School

September
We cut the grass for the first time
Rob and I headed down to Kilkenny to see his mum and brother.

October
We went on our Honeymoon in Menorca and while away got to finish reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Then about a week later I took a crowd of 16 to the MAD weekend and we had a great time

November
November was a challenge for my blogging because I signed up to do NaBloPoMo and decided to post about things I learnt everyday.
I also had my annual review this month and was offered permanent contract which was rather exciting!
My lovely hubby bought me an iPhone
I had also made my 100th post

December
December was it's usual self - extremely busy but lots of fun. Especially seeing as this was our first Christmas together married and New Years was celebrated in style, just the 3 of us on the sofa watching TV.


What a fantastic year!!! I'm looking forward to the next one! Happy new year everyone!

Christmas catch up

I've been bad and neglected my blog the past few days, however I did post 4 times on Christmas Eve! Well I'm back on this blog now, however I did post the following on ruth's kitchen experiments:

This year, Rob and I celebrated our first Christmas as a married couple and had fun cooking our own Christmas dinner.


For starters we had crispy duck with Chinese pancakes, hoi sin sauce and spring onions.


And for our main course we made Turkey, Ginger Glazed Gammon, Stuffing and roast potatoes, carrots and parsnips and had cocktail sausages and Yorkshire pudding along with it all.



I even made doggie treats for Stewie
What a fantastic feed! We had a great day!

We also spent Christmas evening at my parent's house playing on my sister's Wii. On boxing day Rob was working and i headed up to my parent's with Stewie to have another Christmas dinner. The following day Rob and I headed up with his 2 brothers to Donegal to see his Dad and almost Step mum, while Stewie spent the night with my Mum and Dad. We had yet another Christmas dinner in Donegal, swapped more presents, played beetle and did a mini pub quiz. We stayed overnight and spent the day, went out for dinner in the evening to a local pub and headed back home, picking up Stewie on the way.

Now today has been relaxing, Rob has lit the fire, I cooked lunch from leftover turkey and ham, made some Baked Alaska and am now updating my blog while watching the West Wing with Rob. Tonight I'll be heading out to see some old school friends for Chinese and a catchup with them too!

NaBloPoMo 30

My darling dearest Stewie has a fascination with shoes, and has got his teeth into my wedding shoes thus ruining them and making them unwearable.

They were like this just before the wedding:


And are now like this:



He did all this a while ago but I loved the shoes because they could be worn everyday and went with lots of outfits, as well as the fact they were the shoes I got married in.

Recently I have been looking in the stores for these shoes and had no luck, so decided to look up the Faith website and call the headquarters and see if maybe there were some there.... it was a small chance but I thought what the heck it's only a phone call and if I don't ask I'll never know. So I called and asked and what I learned for today was that there was only one available pair of these shoes in my size left and that they were in Milton Keynes. I called the store in Milton Keynes and they told me that I would need to come into the store to buy them, they can't accept payment over the phone or transfer the shoes to a more local store. I was really bummed by this, one pair left in my size! I was thinking God was just teasing me with this! I was texting Rob about it and he suggested asking about us posting the money instead. So I called the store back and asked, even saying I'd pay double for them, the girl called her manager to speak to me who said that she would send the shoes to me for the price they were and not have to pay postage, however I couldn't send cash it would need to be vouchers bought from a local store. I bought some vouchers, as well as a box of chocolates and a thank you card to send them.

It's not often that retailers take such good care of their customers, but I'm really appreciative and recommend to any of the ladies out there to go have a shop in Faith sometime!


Well this is the end of NaBloPoMo folks, I know it's been a bumpy ride with some really really REALLY dodgy posts but it's been fun at the same time!

Now back to our regular programming.....

I love my local butcher!!!!

I was to get some stuff from the butcher today and was on my way back home from walking Stewie when I realised the time (5.15pm). I called the local butcher and asked what time they closed at and he told me 5.30pm. I said was great, hung up and thought, really in this traffic I won't make it in time. I arrived outside the butcher at 5.35pm and he was still open. I walked in and he asked if it was me who had called. It turns out he had stayed open for me!!! The meat was all packed away for the night but he was more than happy to get me all that I needed and then when it came to paying he rounded the price down to the nearest £!!!!!!

I loved the butcher before but I love him loads more now!!!! Support your local butcher!!!!!!

And check out Just add eggs tomorrow for a new recipe.

NaBloPoMo 9

A random "what I learnt today". Discovered that Stewie likes prawn crackers... they usually get forgotten and thrown out when we get chinese.

Here's a few pics of him eating all sorts of other rubbish....

His rope:

A stick:

A bone:

His quacky duck:

A coke can:

A pig's ear chew:

His food bowl: