Wordless Wednesday - Happy Halloween!

Getting Ready For The Big Day

At the time of the preparation of this post, this year's costumes have not arrived. Our paws are crossed that they will get lost in the mail. (They were expected to arrive on Monday).  In the meantime, here is a flash back to last years embarrassment. 

Mischief Monday - Weather!

We did not get the 10 cm they had been calling for, but yesterday morning we woke up to a fairly wintery world (which was mostly gone by sun down, thank goodness, we are NOT ready for it to stick). 

There is a lot to sniff because of . . . . .

The wild turkeys! They also leave a lot of yummy treats in our yard!

For days, there has been a group of about 12, the peeps call the pose, hanging around. 

Taken earlier in the week outside the Lady's office window.  They like the seed the squirrels throw. 

Even with all the good sniffs, our Phod still took some time to play with Precious, who will be hibernating once the real snow falls! 

No Tricks Just Treats

Today we join our very generous pals Rosy, Arty and Jakey in a No Tricks Just Treats blog hop. Every year, our pals pick the weekend before Halloween to raise money for shelters/rescues. They are donating $1 for every blog that joins the hop and 50 cents for every comment on their blog Friday-Sunday, so make sure you go over and comment! A few moments of your time can help animals in need.

Lady reminds us all the time that we are the luckies ones with loving homes. We would agree it isn't too bad. 

Here are some things Lady has done in the past few months to help animals in need (at shelters and other ways):

• Make monetary donations when buying food or when sadly a friend has been called to the bridge
• Give our gently used things to an organization that fosters animals for women fleeing domestic abuse
• Visit the cat cafe and play with the cats awaiting forever homes. 
• Support a local pet shop where you can adopt rescued cats (and currently they are fostering animals who have been displaced by the tornados that happened the end of September).

They aren't big things but we all know that little things add up.

Thanks to our pals for once again organizing this. 

Flowerish Friday - More Fall

Lee's individual fall photo

Travel Thursday - The Baltic Adventure - Part 10

This weeks post will end the Baltic part of our travels. Next week, we will show up in the Bonny Land visiting some our our dear Blogville friends.  Today, we end the Baltic portion in Stockholm, Sweden. 

Our ship had to dock about 1 hour outside of Stockholm and we were provided bus transportation to the city. On the drive we saw a wolf and a moose!

The long dock from ship to land! 

We did Stockholm differently then other cities. Instead of trying to see a lot of a few things, we focused on 2 things.

First stop, the royal palace. The palace had a cool 'phone' you could use to listen to the history of the building and the royal family.

My love of sculptures continues

We caught the parade into the changing of the guard. We couldn't get close enough to watch the whole ceremony, but have seen many changing of the guards before (including many in Ottawa).

After the palace we spent the rest of our time at Skansen, the oldest open air museum in the world. They have brought building from other parts of Sweden to the museum. After days of being in cities (which those of us who live in the country aren't use to), it was nice to be back to nature so to speak. 

We loved seeing peacocks all over Europe

First time I have seen a wolverine

A Sami People Home (the Sami are an indigenous people of Northern Europe)

We even found a little time to sit and enjoy a park.

While we liked the pace of only doing 2 things, we felt we really didn't get to see Stockholm and could see returning to it some day.

Thanks for joining us on this leg of our travels and return next week to see some of Scotland!

Wordless Wednesday - Ball Eating Lake

Wildlife Activity

Phod's official fall photo

Life in the house has been quieter as we get ready for winter. Life in the wild is extra active!

Recap of and additions to the wildlife from the past few weeks.

-A pack of coyotes/wolves singing unlike Lady has ever heard them before

-The screech owl

-Deer, and more deer in the yard 

-The fox has been spotted in the yard this week (maybe 2 of them)

-Lady almost hit a raccoon not far from the house driving home one night

-The wild turkeys (a group of 13) have been hanging out

-Lots of activity at the bird feeders

-The neighbour reports bears have been in the bush behind our house (we will be staying on the road!)

-Mice inside our house. The battle continues. Live trapping has been replaced with a more serious method of removal as the numbers were out of control. There is still a little activity (aka poop found in the sink and counter in the morning and mice sightings) but the number has decreased.

Here's hoping next week we can say there has been no new mice activity! 

Mischief Monday - We Have Created Beggers

The Man has embraced the Keto diet. This means he is not eating the Sunday morning pancakes he is making the Lady. Lady, who can eat her body weight of almost everything, especially pancakes, has been very kind and has been allowing one pancake from the batch to go to the pups.

Man takes the last pancake, cuts it up, puts real maple syrup on it and gives it to the dogs.

Watching the Man cut them up

The only problem with this is now every Sunday morning, the pups wait patiently for their pancake!

_________________

The Man and the Lady met 24 years ago today. That is when all their real adventures began! 

Flowerish Friday - Fall

We don't have any flowers around, but we do have the beautiful colours of autumn. Here is the pups official Autumn portrait.

Travel Thursday - The Baltic Adventure Part 9

After two full days in Russia, we would have loved a sea day. Instead, we went to our least favourite port, Helsinki Finland. 

Helsinki is a clean modern city. We think we didn't love it in part because we were so tired and in part because it just didn't have the character of some of the other cities we visited. 

While it wasn't my favourite port, it did have one of my favourite sights on the trip, the following statue. We have no idea why this is a thing, but we got on the hop on and off bus at the port and basically turned a corner and there it was, we laughed and laughed!

There was a lot of cool street art.

Here are some of the sights from the city:

The Man in the Square

No idea why this woman was doing this, but it cracked us up!

The house of estates

So there is at least one picture of me in Finland!

St. Joseph's Church

Upsenski Cathedral

One of the most unique churches was the  Temppeliaukio aka the Rock Church. The church was built into the rocks.

While everyone tried to climb on this church at the front . . . .

we walked around the back and I climbed up!

We also took a harbour cruise of the city, and even though we were living on a boat, enjoyed the time on the water.

From the boat we say the Suomenlinna - fortress. If we had more time, we would have checked this out.

A map of the sights we saw from the boat.

Looking back at the city from the water

The ice breakers

We went back to the ship a little early this day, to rest and to get ready for the 5th consecutive port day, Stockholm. Come back next week to see a taste of our 6 hours in Stockholm!