The New Puppy

My grandma and I went to get a puppy because she was looking for a dog and we found this puppy. So we went to go get it.
  She is a miniature australian sheperd and her name his Cassy. She loves playing, and I get to train her for the fair! I am so exited that I get to train her, and I absolutly love her.

Clothes for Girl Dogs

This summer I have been working on clothes for girl dogs because I got a donation of some girl onesies. It was hard to make my brother's onesies look good for girl dogs. I am very excited to share them. My grandma gave me some leftover dog food from her dog that died to donate to the shelter dogs in memory of Kaia. I miss Kaia. My girl dog clothes donation will be in memory of Kaia too.

I am also going to a movie premiere about puppy mills. The movie is called Dog by Dog. I can't wait!

Spring Show

I had a spring show for gymnastics and I made my round-off 5,4, and 3 backhand springs. It was fun and we did a dance and the coaches danced. My routine was beam and i upgraded my skill to a cartwheel instead of a handstand. I also got to spend time with my friends and I got to stretch with them and I watched them do their routines. I also helped them and that was the biggest part because they were higher level than me and I helped them.

This is the team dance.

This is my routine.

This is the coaches' dance.

My trip to the Animal Rescue Leage of Iowa

Today we went to the ARL to drop off my clothes. They gave me a tour, I got to see some cats and dogs. I got to pet a cat and give dogs some treats. I also got to see a chinchilla and pet a rat named Gus! My favorite part was meeting the people that worked there, like Goizane and Cicely, and going on a tour. I learned some stuff too! I learned that a chinchilla can live up to fifteen years old but the chinchilla there was eighteen years old and I thought that was amazing! I also got to see some little dogs. 

Today was a great day.  We took pictures with the clothes. I love the ARL! They had a sign that I took pictures by too. Goizane is going to use my clothes for their outreach program and I think that is a good idea. I can't wait until dogs get my clothes!

A Little Bit of Lace

This weekend my mom, my grandma, and I worked on more clothes so we can get our first shipment ready to donate. We even got my great grandma to help, because she donated a lot of lace. I need the lace because it is going to be like a signature on my doggie clothes. On the boy clothes we put a small piece on the inside of the clothes. On the girl clothes we just add lace. The lace is a reminder of how the clothes are not perfect, like the orange shirt I made where we had to add lace to cover up the holes we made. But just because they aren't perfect, doesn't mean they're not good!

Here are some of the new designs we did this weekend. We need to get some girl onesies because it is hard to make clothes for girl dogs out of my little brother's old clothes! But the green one turned out good for a girl dog with flower lace and a bow.

 

My first donation is ready to go help some dogs! Maybe we can add some treats for them with the clothes.

DJRyRy Doggie Designs 2

We designed shirts for dogs. They are not perfect. It took a lot of tries to make them, but we did it. The sewing machine kept eating the shirts and making holes, so we used pins to hold the fabric and sew it back together. We found out why it was making holes in the shirts. It's because we used a stitch that wasn't good on that fabric, so we decided not to use that stitch on that fabric. We kept getting fabric and thread stuck in the sewing machine, but we got it out a couple times, except for the last time. If it really get stuck and messes the sewing machine up, at least we know it's in a place we can get it out. Otherwise the sewing machine works pretty good, even though the fuzz and thread got stuck. We had to re-thread the sewing machine, so we used YouTube to tell us how to fix the bobbin. The shirts are not perfect. We tried the orange one on Opie, and told him, "Sorry for the lace on it!" The last time we made a shirt it was bigger, but didn't fit him as well. The orange one is smaller and fit him a little better, and I don't get that. We added the lace to the shirt to make it look pretty and to cover a hole. We're going to keep working on our designs. We need to find dogs to give these to. 

Chicago Style

We went down to Chicago for my meet. We went over a bridge to get into Illinois. We went over the Mississippi River. It was a high bridge and the river was covered in ice. On the way back mom said she was scared of bridges because one collapsed and cars fell in.

Chicago Style Meet, the biggest gymnastics meet in the world, was long. Longer than normal meets. My lowest score was bars and my highest was floor. I fell on bars, so it was low, but I had beam next and so I got on beam and was confident for the rest of the day. I still got 3 medals for floor, beam, and all around. I also got a leo. It is pink and sparkly and has CS on it for Chicago Style.


We had two pizzas on different nights. The first one was at Lou Malnatis and I didn't like that one so much (mom's note: she wasn't a fan of the peppers and onions), but the crust was better than our second pizza. But the salad I liked more than the pizza. I had 3 helpings. The second pizza at Gino's East I liked that pizza better because it was all meat pizza and I like meat pizzas, but no pizza is better than Casey's pizza!

At Rhonda and Gene's (the people who we stayed with) we played with their pugs named Ginger and Jasmine. Ginger is wild but I like playing with her. Jasmine was more calm than her, and I liked playing with her, too. The pugs were wild whenever we (mom or us) went outside. They haven't seen us in a while so they didn't recognize us.

Chicago was very, very, very fun. I would go back. Next time I would like to go to the aquarium. We didn't have time on this trip.

Squishy Circuits

We did Squishy Circuits today. First we had to cook the conductive dough. That means the electricity can go through it. I chose to make it green. It has flour and cream of tartar in it. Next we had to add flour so it wasn't sticky.  Then we made insulating dough. Aaden picked the color. He picked orange.

 Then we got to play with our dough. I made a butterfly and a bridge. But the bridge didn't work. I learned that you have to plug the long side of the lights on the red side of the wire. The short side went on the black side so the electricity can go through. I also learned that electricity is lazy. If the green is touching then it doesn't have to go through the lights. That means you can't let the green touch. There has to be orange or a space between the green.

There is a buzzer that has two cords again and you have to plug the red in with the red and the black in with the black. Then it makes a buzzing noise. Same for the siren, only it makes a high pitched screaming sound. Kaia didn't like it. Kaia is my grandma's dog. The motor had to be plugged in the same, only it had different ends than the buzzer and the siren. We put some dough on the end to show that it was spinning. Next time we could put more dough on it, but I tried that and it didn't really work.

I'm not sure why my bridge didn't work. We thought the green was touching, but that wasn't it. I couldn't figure that one out. I have a guess, but it's hard to explain. It could be that I had too much orange and then there was maybe green in the right place. We should have taken a picture.

Walking the Runway

I like designing. For Christmas I got a Crayola Design Pro fashion set. The first design (top left) I did with my brother. It is pink with purple stars. The design on the right I thought of because of watermelon. The last one is a rainbow dress. This picture is before it is done. It has stars on the back. Below you can see my designs walk on the runway with the Crayola app. I hope I can design real dresses like this some day.

DJ RyRY Doggie Designs

Two of my favorite things are fashion and animals. My mom helped me think of putting them together and making dog clothes for shelter dogs. Shelter dogs have to be shaved sometimes because they can be dirty or their fur is ruined and they will need to keep warm. For Christmas I got a sewing machine from my grandma and my other grandma taught me how to use it. We made a practice shirt for our dog Opie. Opie is a rescue dog. We made the shirt out of my brother's old onesie. We are collecting more onesies to keep making clothes.

Our friend Mindi who has a group called Bailing Out Benji helped me find a group that donates blankets to animal rescues. The group is called Wrapped In Love. I am going to learn how to make blankets and also send clothes to the animals. Mindi also helped me find a cat rescue in Stanhope, Iowa where I can volunteer to play with kitties who don't have homes yet.

I like to like to learn about and share about shelter animals. One of the places where I learn a lot about this is at school when we Skype with Jena Ball and Marty Keltz about CritterKin. CritterKin is about loving animals because they are part of our family. 

I am going to keep making clothes so I can help lots of animals. Maybe when I am older I can make clothes for other animals.