The war on fleas!

While at the annual New Years party my dog contracted a bad case of fleas. In fact the worse case I've ever seen. Everyone at my house is allergic to fleas except me. So..... getting rid of them is a huge priority around here.
As soon as we came home New Years Day I threw the dog in the tub and scrubbed him real good with the ol' flea and tick shampoo.  About 30 fleas floated off. I don't know how so many fleas could have gotten on a dog in one night. So.... he was still itchy I figured it was from the bites. He's allergic and he gets huge whelps and they stay itchy for days. But I looked and more fleas! Ahhhh...... I grabbed him up and washed him again. This time I made him sit in the tub and let the flea shampoo have a chance to take effect. Then I rinsed him and drained the tub and then scrubbed him again just to be sure. Once again though, he was still a little itchy but by this time it was after all New Years Day and I needed to pass out.
So.... this morning I checked and he was covered in fleas. So I ran out to the pet shop to get Cap star, it's this pill you give to the dog and in 30 minutes any flea that bites him is dead, we've used it before and it really worked well. If you make the dog sit still you can see the dead fleas fall off of him. Well....It didn't work. Some fleas died but I don't know there was some kind of super flea stuck to him or something cause thirty minutes later the fleas were eating just as good.
So.... I put some of that bio spot stuff on him. It's suppose to kill fleas for up to 30 days with one application. Nope! Still scratching and now my husband is getting bit.
So....I ran out to the store again and got some different flea shampoo. You know cause we've had that other stuff for a while and maybe it's expired. I also bought some stuff called flea breeze. We've used it before and it takes a while to work but it seems to work really well to get the fleas out of the carpet and furniture. Plus then everything smells good. And now it's probably dawning on people that I didn't say I vacuumed and that IS the main thing you do to get rid of those little evil terrorist but I did that. So.... the husband gets his hands on the flea breeze and starts spraying everything in site. And it says right on the bottle not to let the dog on it until it dries and don't step on it bare footed, which of course I was, as I scoop up the dog and run out the back door.
So... Now I'm sitting around feeling a little floaty. The dog is over in the corner laying on his back with his feet sticking straight up in the air and I checked there isn't a flea on him. Ha Ha!
See my theory is that it's like antibiotics if you don't kill enough of the germs (or fleas), you know by using the right one in the right amount for the right length of time, they get stronger and come back as super germs (or fleas)  which is what my dog must have gotten infected with.

So.... kill fleas responsibly by using every kind of flea killing chemicals at your disposal. Only you can prevent supper fleas!  Hopefully I did. Oh, The dogs bedding that I washed and threw in the drier is done.

New Year's Day Reese must have been saying "I've got fleas!"

Lou's big New Years Eve party.

We arrived around 4:00. No tent to set up this year. Since we didn't have the kids with us we decided to sleep in the mini van. We removed the back seats and put in a blow up mattress. We were excited to meat Lou's new girl, Robin. She was very nice and ready to party, and even though she wasn't a very outdoorsy type I think she had a good time. Except for when this weird bug was attacking her.

Lou had the pit for the fire all dug before we showed up. It was around 8 to10 feet across. The bigger the better.

Shortly after we arrived we enjoyed some hors devours. Kim made brunshager or something like that. It's a dip made out of liverwurst. Chris really liked it. Bonnie and Charlie brought rum balls and mince meat pie. We had some chips. It was all good. The best thing was the 15lbs of smoked pulled pork that Lou cooked up for dinner. Kim also made his famous chili. And Lou had his black eye peas in the slow cooker. No one can ever wait for New Years day for them and they get sampled all night.

Soon the Christmas trees were dressed in women's underwear with beer box hats. Then with a big kaboom the fire is lit by dowsing the trees in gasoline and shooting them with roman candles.

Chris was king of the fire till he fell in. Which is a after school special about being intoxicated and making redneck hot air balloons in a fire big enough to cook a man as big as Chris in.

Don't worry. He pushed himself out right away and escaped with only a small burn in the palm of his hand. Which is a good experiment of the effects of adrenaline on intoxicated people. Everyone suddenly wasn't.

This is some of the fireworks that we had that night. They were amazing.

All in all we had a great time and survived into the year 2010. Although the next day we woke up in a van. One of my teachers way back in high school use to love to say. "Your going to end up in a van down by the river."

Happy New Year 2010!!!

Click here to see a video of the fire being started.

http://s372.photobucket.com/albums/oo165/maimom01/?action=view&current=NewYear09057.flv

Orange juice

Orange Juice

Mom's orange trees were loaded this year. She had way more oranges than she could eat. Also she was having fun with the new orange picker she got for her birthday. Any way she brought us a whole sack full. These type of oranges are real Florida oranges. They are better for juicing than eating.

We don't even have a juicer but with these oranges you don't need one all you do is cut the orange in half then pick out all the seeds, stab with a fork and twist it. The juice flows out like a faucet. Mmm... fresh squeezed Florida orange juice is the best thing ever.

Blue Berries

We got some blue berry bushes and are going to try our hand a raising blue berries. We thought to our selves, if we have to have bushes why not get ones that are either pretty or have food on them. So with luck we will be enjoying blue berries every year. We will have to wait until after New Year's to get them in the ground as we decided to go to our friend Lou's big New Years Eve party.