Some of the latest things going on in the Daniels' house:

Daisy:  "You wanna know how to say Happy Thanksgiving in Spanish?  Elise Doddy-da."  You may be more familiar with its cousin, 'Feliz Navidad,' who of course is referring Merry Christmas.

Zekers climbed a tree, so naturally the others wanted up there, too.  Daisy tried but got scared and quit.  When she tried again Zeke encouraged her, "That's my girl.  That's perseverance."

Elijah throws down mostly good one-liners.  "Chip.  Here."  (As he's pointing to his plate.)
[Frito] Pie.  Outside.
Daisy.  Hurt.  Ouch.  (As he's pointing to a body part.)
Shoes.  On.
Car.  Daddy.
etc.

And then there's Frito Pie.  One evening Abe gave her a bunch of left-over juice from the crock pot.  Of course she loved it.  Going down, that is.  The next evening she was up and pacing all night.  I took her out once to go pee pee (recently she peed on the rug, so I thought I was being proactive).  I walked her out on the leash because she doesn't come when you call her and she likes to run and bark at all the nocturnal animals at night.  She went potty so I thought we were good.  Nope.  When morning arrived she had the cha-cha-chas.   In 2 spots. Yeah.  Ewww.

So the next night when she was pacing around, even though it was night and there is that whole wild animal-barking thing, I stuck her out back.  Not making that mistake two nights in a row.  Around midnight she would not stop barking.  When I finally went out she had just caught an opossum.  It was playing dead.  I wasn't going to get too close to try to catch the dog, who was of course all kinds of worked up.  Thinking it was playing dead and the dog would lose interest soon, I went back to bed.  For some reason the opossum got up a minute later and the dog was going crazy again.  Once again, I didn't want to get in the middle of it, so I left her.  Around 2 a.m.  I awoke from a dream about Frito Pie barking and Dad and Crystal (my niece who goes hunting) geting ready to shoot my dog.  Turns out she was really barking ~ still.  Yes, 2 hours of non-stop barking.  Our neighbors were loving us.  At this point Abe went out.  He finally threw a big toy car at both dog and opossum to distract them.  It worked.   Dog got caught and opossum got away with its life spared.

Thank goodness no more eventful nights with the dog.  She has been in the house every night since with no cha-cha-chas.