Today's post is an ode to Lenny. 

Oh Lenny you wonderful lizard

all yellow and spotted just like a leapoard

 When you met Joe you hit the jackpot

At 11 years old you've seen a whole lot 

New England, Virginia, North Carolina also

You've always manged to stay oh so mellow

From living all over and loosing your tail

You just keep on going you never derail

So thank you for being so constant and cool

To let you go we'd have to be fools.

So a recent post started with a statement about how uneventful things had been for a few days.  That was not some sort of challenge to the cosmos to spice things up!  But things got hot and spicy last night.  The following is a dramatic telling of the chimney cap fire of 2011.

It was a regular Wednesday night.  Put the kids to bed, go to dance class (which again was quite fun), come home relax with Joe for a bit and hit the hay.  Then quite unexpectedly at midnight the smoke detector started yelling at us.  Litterally it's the kind that says "FIRE, FIRE".  Joe and I jumped out of bed immediately and went to the living room, which contains the wood stove so would be the most likely place for a fire like incident to be happening.  And it was. The smell was awful!! 
The stove is a wood burning stove that is three seasons old and the pipe, also three seasons, is double walled.  The additional wall of the pipe causes it to be better insulated and therefore projects less heat to it's surroundings.  The stove and the stove pipe have temperature gauges on them.  Generally the pipes temperature is anywhere from 120 degrees to 220 degrees depending on how hot the stove is.  The stove on the other hand is made to absorb the heat from the fire within, retain it for a period of time and slowly radiate it into the room and stays in a temperature range of about 250 degrees to 500 degrees. 
When we looked at the gauges the pipe was reading 500 while the stove itself was only at 400.  Something wasn't adding up.  Terrible smell, fire alarm, hot pipe.  "We must have a chimney fire!" 
So, calmly, we start to rally.  Grabbed the kids, their coats, the cats and the dog.  Loaded everyone in the car and called 911.  Two Littleton police cruisers responded quickly.  They surveyed the situation and called it in to the fire department which is not a 24/7 department.  So shortly after that two firetrucks and what seemed like loads of volunteer fireman pulled up and swarmed the house.  Three on the roof, handfuls on the front lawn, more in the street.  Coming and going from the trucks to the house. 
Well luckily as it turns out it was just the chimney cap that was on fire and not the chimney or the house!  The chimney cap is older than the stove or the interior pipe but I don't know how old since it was purchased by previous homeowners.  We had had the stove and chimney inspected in mid November.  We were given the all clear on the chimney and told that it was actually very clean!  And again last nigh the fireman said to us that the chimney was very clean.  It was just the cap.  Turns out that puppy had quite a build up of creosote causing it to catch fire.  The fireman pulled the cap off, emptied the fully burning stove, pulled the chimney apart, put out all flames, ran a carbon monoxide meter and gave us the all clear. 
It was still pretty smelly and messy and cold in the house after the fireman left.  I called my friend Lisa and asked her if she would put us up for the night.  She is a SAINT!!  She and her family took us in at 2am and gave us a warm comfortable odorless place to sleep, plus coffee and biscuits in the morning among other things. 
Today I am grateful for a lot!!  An unharmed and fully intact family, a roof over us, the local fire and police departments, wonderfully selfless friends, in-home smoke and fire detectors and so much more!! 

Amazingly enough I had left my camera in my coat so I was able to get some shots of the action while we were in the street waiting. 

The firetrucks in the street and the fireman on the house.  It's hard to see but there is some smoke on the front lawn to the left of the tree.  That's from the burning logs they were pulling out of the stove and dumping into the snow. 

Here they are on the roof.

So it was eventful for sure but everything turned out as best as could ever be wished for.  Stove and pipe are back to normal minus a chimney cap which needs to be replaced.  The house is warm again and except for a few lingering boot prints from the fireman the ash and dust is managed.  The smell is diminishing more and more.  So life got a little hot and spicy there for a minute but we all need that from time to time.  Don't we?

Well it's been an uneventful few days here at the homestead.  But I've been taking some pictures anyway.  So here is the latest and oh so greatest from 9  Maplehurst.  :D

Footy finds a new friend to snuggle with for nap times. 

More fun in the snow

While I was pulling wood from the back shed to the front box I let Berkley off leash so he could frolic and be free.  He's really good at staying close when it's snowing.  He did a wonderful job sticking around and even following me from the back to the front running along side the gator as we went.  I was so proud of him!  Good Boy Berka!

Here he is waiting for me to finish stacking so we could go back and get some more wood.

He's so handsome!!!

We broke free and took a walk sown to Dawns house where we played for a while with Emma and Lily.

Eleanor preferred to be off to the side so she could more thoroughly enjoy her music.

On our walk back we found a bush with little birds in it.  I took it as a sign spring will be here soon.  A girl can dream...:D

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Edith decided she wanted her picture taken while she was holding Eleanor's arm.  Eleanor did not feel the same way.  LOL!

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This is Edith's "I have cheese all over my hands take a picture of it" pose.

This is Edith's "I'm being silly so I don't have to go to bed, take a picture of me" pose.

and again

and again.

Edith also called Holly this morning and talked to her for about 30 minutes.  I was grateful for Holly's patients with Edith.  It gave me a chance to get a few things done.  A load of laundry plus sweeping the kitchen and living room floors.  Phew!! 

What a week.  :D  The weather has been wonderful!  Higher temps and SUN! oh and snow melt too!  :D I didn't even have to have a fire today, I thought that was wonderful.  Edith and I got to walk to school two days and home one day.  I feel like a bear coming out of hibernation except instead of having slept off all those pounds I've accumulated them.  LOL  Oh well with better weather comes more physical activity so let the shedding begin.  :D 
Holly came up for a visit on Thursday and walked with me to pick Edith up from school.  I love the way Holly thinks Edith is so entertaining!  It helps me to appreciate the more interesting parts of Edith's personality. 
With the weather being so nice I decided to leave the door open for Footy to see how she would be outside.  She was so cute.  All curious and cautious.  :) Ha.  I got some pictures of her creeping out the door and sneaking under the house.  She came out from under the house on her own when she was ready. 
Here are the most recent pictures. 

Edith got some temporary tattoo's in her Valentine bag so we put one on her face.

pretty butterfly

Footy Plays with Eleanor's sock.  The excitement never stops around here

Let the outdoor adventure begin

Edith found this White Pine branch in the sidewalk and decided it was her umbrella for the rest of the walk home. 

Well it was off to Tufts to see Dr. Webster and Dr. Braun, Eleanor's physiatrist and orthopedist.  We got there got checked in and went to x-ray.  Eleanor has x-rays done of her hips and spine every few months.  While we were waiting to here the x-ray tech us the all clear on whether the films looked good, another patient caught my eye.  It was Dawn and Keith one of my bestest friends and her son.  They also live down the road and Emma, Dawn's daughter has shared a class with Eleanor.  We're all buds.  :D  It was so cool to see them there.  It made the time waiting around for the Dr.'s much more bearable!  Thank you Dawn and Keith!  :D 
Anyway as far as the visit and the info from the Dr.'s most everything was good and on the up and up.  Except for one.  Eleanor's spinal curve has gotten worse over the past four months.  It has gone from about 38 degrees to 63 degrees.  I was really surprised.   I'm so used to hearing that things are the same or mildly different but that's a pretty significant change.  So the casted (made a mold of) her in order to make a new body jacket/TLSO.  She was so patient and tolerant through the whole thing!  I was so proud that she was my kid!  Anyway, we can't increase the amount of time she wears the body jacket since she is already wearing it 23 hours a day.  So we may do an MRI to make sure there are no other complications that are causing this dramatic increase I expect to hear back from the orthopedist later this week.


Today was Valentines Day and Edith and Eleanor were dressed festively.  :D  They also got cards and My Little Pony's from their Gramis and Grampis.  Which Edith just had to tote around all day.  I got some pictures of them today while we were sitting around waiting for Dr.'s and whatnot.  You can't tell that Eleanor was wearing her Valentine best since the pics were taken between Dr.'s and I wasn't getting her undressed and redressed a bazillion times.  I regret not getting a good one of the two of them together before we headed out this morning.  Oh well this will have to do until next year.  :)

So Mr. Berkley hasn't been to the groomer in quite some time.  My favorite groomer, Jamie, is in RI and I find it hard to get him down there as often as he needs.  Well by Friday I decided I had had enough, he needed a bath!!  So I started by brushing him to try to minimize the the amount of hair that would need to be cleaned out of the tub.  This is what I got off of him before the bath.

The pile of fur was definitely at least as big as Footy.  Next I had to hoist his 90lb butt into the tub.  He was surprisingly good about that, which I attribute to Joe's need to occasionally pick him up when he gets jealous of Footy's extra attention.  Ha.

Edith was the photographer for the big event.  :D  After he was all washed up I towel dried him as much as I could before I dragged him back out of the tub.  His fur is so dense that it's like a sponge and it take a lot to get him dry!!  I blow dried him with my hair dryer for about an hour before I would let him out of the bathroom.  If I hadn't he would have left puddles wherever he plopped down.  No thank you!  And of course when I let him out of the bathroom he went straight for the couch.  He was dry enough though.

There he is all clean.  :D  Still damp but all clean.  :D

We also had fun taking some pictures of Footy and Zelda laying around and Edith with my boots on her hands.  She kept saying they were her paws.  She's so funny.  :D

And there you have it.  Another oh-so-exciting day at 9 Maplehurst.  ;)

Eleanor gets one session a week of Physical Therapy at home.  Lately Shawn, her PT, has been working on getting Eleanor to try walking down the hallway using the wall for support.  It's not easy and most days she takes a few side steps and then complains a lot.  But in doing this we are finding that Eleanor's standing balance is improving.  At least once in each session she stands independently for 3-5 seconds.  This is huge!!  So yesterday I decided I'd try to capture in in a picture.  Here is what we got. 

She was tired and we couldn't get her to stand unassisted long enough to take her picture but you can see that she is getting better.  :D  We'll try again next week.  I'm so proud of Eleanor!!