Okay so we're discussing what Sweet Pea (what we call the baby because Erica hasn't decided on a real name yet) will call her Gebhart grandparents. Richard's name was decided at the Junior Preview show when Merrily Shelby said he looked like Peepaw to her and that stuck like white on rice. So today Erica and I were discussing what she would call me. I don't have a problem with Grandma although I know women who don't like that name as it makes them feel old. However I can't get right with Grandma given that my Grandma was such a big part of our family up until her passing last month and not using that name is like retiring an athlete's number to me...she was a good one.

So Erica is reading me names off of a web site today like Beeps, Dukey, Gunga and Happy Pappy. My God do children really do this to their parents? I mean Gunga sounds like a fungal issue in a dark and smelly place, Happy Pappy sounds like a bait shop in BFE and Dukey reminds me of .....well do I have to tell you! Oh what a suprise - she was reading from a site called banananana.com. She continued with other bright and bubbly names till I told her to move on to another site....I'll let you know when something suitable presents itself.

Well the weather is changing again today and it's getting cooler. Our fall has been nice with spurts of fairly warm days scattered here and there. The color has been okay but not great and I fear the cold front and wind predicted for this week will blow all the leaves from the trees before they have a chance to turn pretty.

Erica went to the doctor today. The doctor says he won't be suprised to see her back there any day. Although her due date is technically the 20th, we all think she'll calve, blow up, bingo (pick your term depending on who is telling the story). Matt says calve, Rox says blow up and Richard says bingo. She's got her bag packed and everything ready at the house. The bulldog emergency deployment plan for movement of Bella and puppies to Claremore is all laid out and Mr. Boyer is educated and ready to (as Richard says) man the forward operations center at the hospital. I have a phone list made out so I don't forget to call everyone in the midst of the excitement. So now it's hurry up and wait.................

Well, we have puppies everywhere. Ginger had 7 Corgi puppies (2 females and 5 males) on October 13th. Then Bella had 8 Bulldog puppies (5 females and 3 males) on October 19th. Everyone is doing fine and both mama dogs are looking at us like, "you know it's almost time for your turn". After days of constant attention the puppies are barking, eyes opened and moving about. We're moving them from their respective quiet bedrooms to the puppy play pens in the living room. Thank heavens for portable dog pens, wood floors and layers of heavy plastic and newspaper. Experience tells me that once the pen goes up, Ginger will become a 4 time a day visitor and they're on me to feed and clean up after otherwise. Bless her heart, it looks like a scene from Gulliver's Travels everytime she gets near them - no wonder she's ready for help. They are cute though and Bella's are the same. Now the bulldog puppies are a a noisy lot - once they decide it's meal time you can hear them carrying on all over the house so I'm sure Bella has been clued in to the role of her human staff. The bulldoggies live in Rox's room during the day when they are here and it's always funny to see how long Rox can manage to sleep after they have arrived in the morning....usually not too long.

Just in time to tell you all the good stories from our fall adventures at Tulsa State Fair and The Royal !! There's lots of news and I am going to try very hard to keep up now that we have transitioned to a blog. Matt has been after me to "update the damn web site" for months so now we're making progress - I might even get him to write a little entry now an again ;-)

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