It's like back to summer!!!!

Today as we traveled 2.5 hours to Marquette for a doctor appointment we saw lots of postings for 48 degrees!!!!  Not exactly the temperature we would like but since we weren't training today it felt kind of good!  It also worked out that we weren't out in the woods today either since it is deer season and all our trails go through state land - have only seen one deer hunter so far and that was just his truck, not him in person.....

a3 days ago we got a couple of inches of snow and it would have been nice to have it stay around but it's all gone today- instead we have all the big puddles back again!!!!  Some are chest deep on the dogs!!  Thankfully all of our 18 dogs go through the water fine!  tomorrow it will be a high of 39 and pretty much colder than that going forward.  We actually changed our training schedule because of hunting season and a bit because of the weather - so we are training only one team every day - mostly it's because we are not supposed to run the 4 wheeler in the state land from 11am to 2pm - yesterday we went 19 miles so we are on good schedule to be ready for the first race, which is up the road from us about 3 miles.  Randy will enter in the 10 dog this year and will go 41 miles-  so by January 9th we want to be going about 35 miles or so - this is longer than we have ever trained but it is to be prepared for going to the Wyoming Stage Race at the end of January which is 7 races of 35 miles in 8 days!  

When we got home today the 3 pups were in a coop attached to the pole barn where we live - they had dug out of the big pen they were in = and it was for the last time!!!!  Our neighbor, Jan, who is in her 80's found them in her yard twice and coaxed them back here using a dog biscuit!!!!!  She put them in the big pen the first time but when they dug out again she put them in a small dog run by the pole barn.  

In talking to Jan after we got home today I found out that we are having Thanksgiving at the same neighbors that we have the last 3 years - at Patty and Ray Brown's - only 6 this year though - trying to keep the numbers down.  The only thing good about Whitmer's most recent lockdown is that we aren't spending any money on eating out!!!  We did go out for a "get one in before you can't" pizza dinner on Tuesday but appears like that will be it for awhile- so it's nice to have Thanksgiving with the neighbors to look forward to!  We also got in a "take your priest out to dinner" last Saturday nite - so that was good - we may not be able to do that with him another time this year....

That's about it for now - time to start pretty up Christmas decorations soon!!! (or as Randy says maybe you could start taking the Halloween decorations down!!!!!)