Sleep Over

After working on Saturday the following week Jason as to go to Prague.  It was a quick trip but it meant he was gone from Wednesday until Saturday end of day.  My brothers were taking a guys weekend in Maine so my sister in law, Jen, and her son Michael came up to visit.  They came up on Saturday morning and brought my mom with them.  The kids played (first only Ali and Michael since Sofia was at a birthday party until 2:30) in the basement and the ladies hung out and chatted.  Jason ended up getting home about three in the afternoon but as you can imagine he was pretty tired.  My Dad showed up around 4pm and then we all headed to dinner at six.  After dinner my parents headed home.  The kids continued to play for a little bit but then it was off to bed.  It was so nice having Jen to chat with even though Jason was there.  As I told Jen, "Jason is here but he isn't".  I always try to chat with him when he gets home from Prague and he is always falling asleep or just doesn't hear me so with Jen there I didn't bother Jason and I still had an adult to talk to.

On Sunday we all decided to take a walk along the lake.  Jason and Ali had walked down that path before but Sofia and I had never walked on the path by the lake.  It is such a nice path!  The path goes all the way around the lake but we did not take it that far.  We spent about two hours walking and stopping at the lake.  The kids were so happy to be in the woods and to through things onto the frozen lake.  the edges of the lake were not as frozen and the kids had fun putting sticks into the water.  Watson enjoyed running on the path and fetching sticks out on the ice.  We never let him go that far out though since we were not confident of the ice safety (none of  the kids or the adults went on the ice).  WE did come across two standard poodles in our walk and it was very interesting to see Watson go into protection mode.  The kids were up ahead of us and Watson always tries to herd them back to the group but when two unknown dogs came up the path from the other direction he ran in front of the kids and started protecting them from the other dogs even though the other dogs ended up being friendly.  Fortunately for us the other dog owner was a vet and she was very good about the fact that Watson was barking at her dogs and ready to take them down if needed.  She told us to not worry about it that he was doing exactly what he is suppose to be doing, protecting our kids.  She said that Watson did not know her dogs so he instinctively guarded when they came running up the path toward the children.  Once we gave Watson the OK though he started playing with her dogs.  It was quite interesting.  It was a nice walk in the woods and we found the path from the lake that comes up into our neighbors yard so the next time I see our neighbor I will ask him he he minds if we use it.