The little Madam is 4months today

Little Abby is 4months.. she finally seems to be growing.. and gaining. She weighed 17.5 lbs at petsmart the other day when we were in for puppy class.

4 months  17.5 lbs

                7 Weeks       4.5 lbs 

Puppies: I love shooting the pups in the evening light...

Here are a few from tonight.  We will start with Jaxx and Abby together.. I have not had a lot of luck doing duo pics with them... the treats saved the day on many of the shots tonight;>

and some of just Jaxx, my beautiful boy!

And Abby my sweet little Madam:>

I am going to get a good charge on my battery tonight and hopefully will get some good action shots of them in the  afternoon tomorrow...

Ponderings: Cooking the first meal on our new wood stove.

I have been looking forward to cooking on the new wood stove.. this weekend was a good time to give it a try... I had a ham hock in the freezer and decided to make  Split pea soup.

I started out with a good sized ham hock, an onion, a carrot, a rib of celery, a couple cloves of garlic, and a bay leaf or two  then put about a quart of water in the dutch oven covered it and set it on the stove. 

After a few hours cooking the meat on the ham hock was very tender.. I took everything out of the pot and added a 1 lb. of  dried split peas... then back on the stove it went... I had a bit of a problem at this point getting the fire hot enough to boil... and mess around with it for several hours... Finally I got the fire right and the soup finished cooking in short order. 

I added salt and pepper to taste as well as some onion and garlic powder...  A grilled cheese sandwich and dinner was ready.  

The start...

I am new to blogging... I have in the past put most of the things that interest me on FB  but I am tired of the  depressing and distressing posts that seem to find their way across my feed..   This blog will feature: Pictures (I love photography), Puppies( info about the two Springer pups we are raising and more pictures)  and Ponderings...