She is dog tired!!

This is what doggie day care does to our little girl. She absolutely loves going, but she is so worn out when she gets home. I guess that's why they say a tired dog is a happy dog. So sweet...

Photo a Day - Day 17 & 18

I had to work late last night so didn't get a chance to post the photo of the day, so you get two today.

Day 17 - Maggie looking out our guest bedroom window out on the golf course.

And Day 18 - In honor of our seven year anniversary....(You gotta love self portrait mode...it really flatters the fair skinned, don't you think? Wow, a double chin, even! And I still actually posted this - amazing!!)

An additional big shout out to Del's nephew, Ben. Happy Birthday, Ben! Hope you had a fabulous day!

Photo a Day - Day 13

Whenever we get back from taking her for a walk, Maggie wants to go for a car ride. So, this is her anticipating us opening the car door for her to go for a car ride. It doesn't matter how long or how short the ride is....she LOVES car rides.

Scrapbooking Sunday

Been spending more time doing what I love to do....


Did this layout a while ago, but haven't shared. It is actually from a page I did in a class at the scrapbooking convention last year - it might have even been two years ago now. Man how time flies...



It is hard to believe it has been almost a year now since we've brought our baby girl home with us. Too cute for words.

Photo a Day - Day 2

Maggie helping mom "spring" clean the dining room...




OK....not so much help....

November Photo a Day - Day 1

I thought I would try to take a photo a day in the month of November.


Day One - Maggie (and Papa) coming out of the groomers.

Friends???

Not exactly, but Chalupa has become much more tolerant of Maggie these days.


There has been a slight problem that has developed in our household lately...do you see anything wrong with this picture??

It has become quite a dilemma - so much so, we're contemplating getting a king sized bed just so there is room for all of us.

The things we do for our children....

Where have I been and why no Montana Pics?????

I'm going to blame it on my sister, Jenny's, since I'm, of course, never going to admit it is because I'm a procrastinator! Since we've been back from vacation I have been miserably sick all week. I'm blaming it on the airplane trip back home. Because of that, it has taken every ounce of energy I've had to finish my sister's wedding invitations. But I am happy to report, they are done, they have been mailed (and received) to her, and I've been told they are going in the mail this week. Here are a few pictures of the process in making them and the finished product.

And just in case anyone is going through Maggie withdrawl (like we were on vacation), here are a few pictures of her. As I was making the invitations, she was laying in the doorway of our scrapbook room.

Then Papa came to see what was going on and, without lifting her head, gave him kisses on his toes.

My next task is to catch up on personal email, work on the games for Jenny's bridal shower games, and FINALLY download our Montana pictures to share.

So until then.....

OH...one more thing....we received our final plans for the cabin from our architect this week. We just have to finalize the electrical plan and then the real fun begins (and work...and money...) I have some electronic files of that, so stay tuned for postings about that.

Hello strangers

I know it's been a while since my last post. We've been keeping very active this summer - a lot of hiking and golfing.

One major catastophry that happened since my last post is we had our first visit to the Emergency Vet with our dear child.

Have I ever mentoned that Maggie likes socks?? It seems she thought it would be a good idea to swallow a whole knee high nylon in one gulp. So not knowing how bad this really was, we decided to take her in to the 24-hour emergency vet clinic. They said we had three options (1) try to induce vomiting (2) go after it with an endoscope or (3) surgery. Notice that "letting it pass" was not an option. "Lucky" for us, we saw her do it, so we were able to get her to the vet within the hour and option #1 proved to be successful. Not before causing her Momma and Poppa (especially her Poppa!) a lot of stress and worry, however.

So Del and I have been hiking for seven weekends in a row now to try to get a little prepared for our Montana trip that is coming up in just under three weeks (WOO HOO!!) Our times for the 5 mile strenuous hike have been a little sporadic:

6/08 - 2:00:08
6/15 - 1:46:40
6/22- 1:37:10 (wow!)
6/29 - 1:41:50
7/06 - 1:42:49
7/13 - 1:50:38
7/20- 1:45:33

We are attributing the last couple of later times to us going a little later in the morning, which means hotter and a lot more humid (that's our story and we're sticking to it!!). We feel, though, that anything under 1:50 is a good hike.

I had a friend over today to scrapbook. She is trying to finish her Hawaii album from her trip back in February, which isn't really that bad, considering I worked on a layout from the girl cruise I went on back in Septermber 2005!










And just because she is so cute, a few more pictures of Maggie doing one of her favorite things - running back and forth between mom and dad in the upstairs hallway while they throw her toys back and forth.



Hope you all have been well and are having a great weekend!

Oh, I almost forgot!! Del and I received the preliminary plans back from the architect for our cabin!!! It looks way cool and is so exciting that we are another step closer. We have some revisions for him, so they aren't final yet. I will post them when they are.

Until next time....

Maggie pics

So, other than I having the pleasure (HA!) of getting what Del had last week and also somehow getting poison ivy which caused me to work from home two days this week, not much else has happened in the last week. So here are a few latest and greatest of our Maggie...

We went to check on Bella (the chocolate lab of a guy I work with) over the Memorial Day weekend. She and Maggie became fast friends, although, I think Bella has a lot more energy than Maggie and wore her out pretty quickly.

Maggie then spent some time with me in my scrapbooking room...

As did Chalupa (when Maggie wasn't there, of course!)

Maggie got another new chew toy after her bath this week, which seemed to wear her out...do you think she is spoiled (yes, that's a new bed, too!)??

And just for kicks I came across this picture of Maggie at the bottom of our stairs when we first brought her home last December....

and took a picture of her in the same place today....

Boy, our girl is growing!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

I never thought it would be this hard...

We are heading to Toledo for the weekend for my niece's wedding. So, of course, we had to find a place for Maggie to stay while we are away.

We heard about a place from a colleague that raved about it. It is called K-9 Ranch. We signed her up for two swim sessions and then a bath and brush before coming home on Monday. I know she is going to have fun and will be fine, but she was not too sure about it while I was there and looked at me with those sad, pitiful eyes. It broke my heart to leave her there and I cried all the way home.

I told Del that he has to drop her off for our next trip in August. I can't take it!!

Maggie Update

So our Maggie went from feeling like this on Friday night...


To pretty much feeling like herself and enjoying one of her favorite treats (rawhide with peanut butter) by Sunday.

And as we suspected, we are having a heck of a time trying to keep her "quiet and calm."

Maggie sends her best wishes to her favorite cousin back in Ohio. Hope you're feeling back to yourself soon, too, Lily!

In other events this weekend...while Del was on puppy duty, I went to my good friend, Lorissa, son's, first birthday party. As you can see, Jason had no reservations in digging into his very own cake...

His older sister, Rachel, even got into the action a little by getting some on her nose and cheeks.

Happy Birthday, Jason!

Our Poor, Poor Baby Girl...

Maggie went in for her surgery this morning. Del and I were so worried about her all day. Tonight she's been so, so sweet, but just not herself. We feel so badly for her, she's just not very happy tonight. But, hopefully, she will be able to sleep most of the night and feel better tomorrow - so much so that we will probably have a hard time keeping her quiet and calm like we are supposed to do for the next seven days (oy!).

Walking the dog...

Del has one more day of his extended weekend. I, on the other hand will be heading back to work tomorrow (heavy sigh!!)

It was a sunny day here, but on the cool side - not more than 45ish today. Still a nice day for the dog's walk...



For some reason, Maggie loves walking with a stick in her mouth. It seems to be a good distraction for her, but unfortunately, she does not keep it in her mouth the entire time, which means other things make it there instead - like rocks, paper, leaves - you name it, she tries to eat it.

Right now we are only able to go about 2 miles (to the end of the street and back)...

By the time we are back to within a block of our house, she starts to run out of steam and her tongue comes further and further out of her mouth.

And just as we are heading down the home stretch...

...Jed (a.k.a., Fat Dog), the neighbor dog, came out to say hello and gave Maggie her second wind.


She definately gets very excited when other creatures (human and otherwise) come into her sight.

Off to go play with some more photographs...

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone! It was a beautiful spring day here so after church I decided to take advantage of the trees in bloom and use my tripod to take our picture.


Including a family portrait - well a partial one anyway - Chalupa was missing.


Del and I took a few days off this weekend to make it a longer weekend. We had no plans, just taking some time to decompress and play with the puppy.

In other news, Chalupa has had another ailment this week. It seems she has developed an ulcer on her right eye. We're assuming that Maggie might have scratched her. We're having to put two different kinds of drops in her eyes every four hours. After two days, her eye is looking so much better!

I'm also still plugging away at my new online class at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I am sorting through all my pictures (some more than 20 years old) and finding connections between them that I may not have found otherwise. As I continue my sorting, I will be sure to post some of the connection I find. It's actually been pretty fun. More on that later...

Hope you all had a great weekend!

P.S.

What do you think of the new additions to the blog (title block picture and playlist)? I'm so impressed with myself! HA!

Your Preference?

So would you rather have this white stuff on your trees? (courtesy of Del's parents in Norwalk, OH)...

....or this white stuff (Bradford Pears in bloom in NC)?

Del's dad decided he was tired of the snow in the north and came down to NC for the weekend. It's been a little on the cool side, but still nice enough for them to golf.

Maggie is so excited to have someone here visiting her (at least she seems to think he is here just to see her!) and she has had some added benefit to this visit. You see, she normally stays overnight in her crate in the room below the guest bedroom. The first night Del's dad was here, I think she heard him moving around and started barking at 3:30 a.m. and didn't really stop until Del went down to attend to her. The next night, we decided to let her stay in our bedroom and I have to say, I was very proud of her. She slept most of the night (only getting up once) and did exceptionally well for the first night outside her crate. Well enough that we think we might allow her to do it more often. The only draw back to this plan is poor Chalupa, who usually sleeps with us every night, has been kicked out of her bed, since she doesn't want to share any space with Maggie and we have to keep the bedroom door closed to keep Maggie in, so Chalupa can't come and go as she pleases. We may have to work out a schedule.

And as a sign off...today was a nice spring-like day, a little cool, but still a perfect day for a walk with the pooch.

P.S.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

She did it!!!

Maggie graduated from Puppy Kindergarten. Today was the day she had to pass her test and she did it. We were a little worried, but she made us proud.

She had to sit (pretty easy for her)...

Lay down (also fairly easy for her, although she is not the most graceful when she lays down, it's more of a plop, really)...

And she had to stay for 10 seconds - the one we were the most worried about.

She does pretty well with stay at home, but when there are so many distractions, she doesn't do so well. Fortunately, Brett, Maggie's teacher, gave her a break and counted to ten very quickly and allowed her to graduate with her class. :o)

If graduating from puppy kindergarten was not enough to prove that our baby girl is definately getting big, there are others things that do.

She is big enough now to sit in the back seat of the car by herself (after climbing in without any help!!)

She is also tall enough now to look out the window in our bonus room.

And she can get up on our red leather chair by herself and pretty much take up the entire seat when lying down now.

It amazes me how much she has grown in just the short five months of her life! She just makes us smile each and every day! :o)