Apologies to all five of my loyal readers for the long lapse in posting.  Life just gets busy with other projects and the blog suffered.  So now that the holidays are over and it's a new year I will try to get back into the routine of regular updates.

    Stella is just over a year old now.  What a lovely little lady she has turned out to be.  I'll start with all of her good qualities and work into the challenging aspects of her personality.  In all fairness, whatever issues we have had and are having have all been a result of chinks in the Amichien Bonding process.  One thing I know,  if you are consistent and follow through with all four principles, it works.  Every time we make a wee exception, there are problems.

    My last entry was in late July last year.  As bleak mid winter surrounds us at the moment it was bittersweet to look back over the photos of hikes into the mountains and swimming in the river.  We did indeed have a glorious summer of fun.  Autumn was a wonderful season as well.  It was a beautiful one with brilliantly colored trees, crispy clear days and cold nights.  Winter arrived right on time and we have had some very good snowfall.  Stella loves the snow.  We have taken her cross country skiing, snowshoeing and just walking in the winter wonderland.  If she has a choice of  staying above the snow in our tracks or plowing neck deep through the powder, she chooses the latter.  Everything is a game and an adventure.  

     Stella thought the Christmas tree was put up just for her enjoyment.  One evening we came home to about a dozen ornaments from the bottom of the tree scattered all over the living room floor.  One ornament she ate entirely except for the chimney on the dog house.  We thought it was interesting that she chose a "dog related" ornament to eat.  Because we have four cats we usually put soft ornaments made of cloth at the bottom of the tree.  Unfortunately Stella found the few that were not indestructible.  After that she left the tree alone, I guess she had shown it who was boss so no more need to wrangle it! Kent reminded me when I came close to blowing my stack when I saw the carnage that it does no good to get mad at them after the fact.  Talk about the pupil keeping the teacher on track.  He was absolutely right.