Introducing Bryson & Bilis...

And here they are, father and son, seeing Paul interact with his son was pretty amazing. It was nice to see his sensitive side and just to watch them interact as a family. We think they are on the right path:)
Bryson Hayes Tidwell-Shepard, Yep, that is an 8 day old baby..pretty ugly!

'Uncle Shyama, i want.....'....this i believe is B. Hayes practicing on his uncle for the future:)

Auntie Amanda and Baby Bryson

This is Lynx lake where we camped in Prescott while visiting the baby. It was pretty nice with the campsites spaced out and this lake you could rent canoes and go out on it. we walked the loop and saw some pretty cool stuff.

Manzanita

i liked the view, there was a bald eagle that was roosted looking for breakfast but he was just too far to get a good picture of:(

love is in the air...or in the dirt

This heron swooped right over us and perched herself like 10 ft above our heads and started hissing, i think we were too close to her nest!

Introducing Bilis Castro-Shepard!! not sure how i feel about the hyphenated last name, maybe we will just call her Bilis Shepard. Bilis is pronounced Belize- 2 part meaning- beautiful like the country but the spelling is tagalog for 'hurry', this is appropriate seeing she is a greyhound mix, we think she is greyhound/lab mix.

She is clearly already his dog! Shyama's routine has changed some:) He takes the dog out every morning and starts doggy boot camp. She has needed to be trained to walk on a leash, not go to the bathroom in the house, and making new friends. She never spent enough time in he previous house to know that going to the bathroom inside is bad, she is learning. She is doing much better on the leash-she still gets a bit overwhelmed when we take her on a walk, too much stimuli. and, i made the mistake of inviting another dog over to the house instead of meeting up in a neutral place:( we are going to meet at the park next time! She is still learning how to not annoy/follow around the cats-Player has made sure to keep her in her place, reminding her who is in charge, esspecially when he blocks the doorway to a room and she has to dart by him only for him to slap her in the face:( She does not beg for food and is being crate trained. we hope to bring her home with us to Chicago for our road trip back to AZ! here are some photos of our new addition...

nap time

play time

This is how Player feels about the whole dog thing....his face permanently looks like this!

silly girl.

Hope your are doing well! We were looking forward to going to brewfest this weekend with Justin and his peeps but like the whole Portland thing had to call it off. We are just not in a place right now to be taking vaca's:( Hoping that will change as soon as the economy picks up and Shyam gets a job.

Keep up the blog, MF's