Our Dog is a Vegan

My mom would approve of this message since she is a bigtime vegan. But yeah, if you didnt know, my dog Lucy LOVES grass! She eats it all the time and will eat it like its a treat. If Matt is about to mow the yard, she eats around the edges of the fence seemingly as if to beat him before he cuts it all off. She will eat it while laying in the grass and also loves for us to feed it to her. It is weird but funny! I tried to take some pictures but she moves too fast in them so I didnt get many but I did get a video.

I dont know if grass is good for dogs to eat so much of but it is better than table food probably, she sure does love it and its free!

random picture day!

I have been meaning to post these pics for a long time because I took them forever ago but have forgotten. This is Jackie with a lot of his friends! It looks like he is giving them the stink eye for being on his back!

And this is Lucy with lots of her toy friends. It is kind of a bad picture but you get the idea!

I love my pets! They make our lives interesting!

"I love, I love, I love, I love my calendar girl"

Yet another post that is overdue. In early December, I came home for lunch and got a surprise in the mail. I was so excited/confused to see the Tulsa Boxer Rescue Foundation 2010 calendar in the mail. After a little while, I remembered that Matt and I submitted a photo of Lucy and her mini-me friend from H-town about a year earlier and I thought they had sent us a calendar. As in turns out, Matt bought it but it is tooooooo precious. All these sweet little boxers in the calendar. They are super cute when they are little puppies!

Anyway, Lucy and Sudie made the calendar for September (Matt's bday month). It is kind of weird because they spelled Sudie's name wrong and then added a middle name of "zoom" which who knows where that came from and used our last name, but oh well. Here is proud Lucy with her calendar spread:

They look like Berenstein Bears bigtime in this picture! Unfortunately, earlier this year, Sudie had a tragic accident and died :( I am glad this picture got chosen because we were able to give one to her owners as some memorabila of Sudie. If you would like to learn more about the Tulsa Boxer Rescue or the Lone Star Boxer Rescue (in Houston area) you can click on the links. The tulsa link is where we got the calendar. I know we will submit again for next year!

Oliva the Wise

When it snowed a bunch a few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of spending lots of time with some of our best buds, the Isenbergs. And while I have no pictures of us, I have lots of Olivia! Imagine that. These are the best ones:

I saw this cute buret pattern that looked cute and easy and decidided to try it out. When knitting sometimes, I just decide that I think I know what is best and kind of disregard suggestions by the pattern writer. Well this is what happens when you do that, you end up with a giganto hat instead of a baby buret. But is is super cute anyway, she just wont be able to wear it until like a year or so. But we had to take advantage of the photog moment.

She looks like a very wise mini-buddha, but obviously cuter!

She's like, "you know what i'm talkin bout Willis"
Another day they came over, Olivia was all into reaching for Lucy, and as you know, Lucy loved to lick the babies. This is her face after all the licking. Looks like she is trying to tell me to wash her hand please!

I tried to put these pics in order but blogspot is being stupid again. I say this alot, but I really feel it should be more user friendly than it is. It is always messing up and it is quite cumbersome to put pics and videos in. But anyway, you get the idea. Maybe it will be fixed sometime soon!

Winter Wonderland Part 2

Christmas Day, YEAH!!

Christmas Day was way more fun for playing in the snow. The blizzard had stopped so we just had lots of great snow to play in without the drizzle and ice hitting our faces! Lucy just loves the snow and gets so excited to play in it when we get any so she had the time of her life. This is one of those pictures where I had to trick her to look. I was holding her second BFF above the camera (her frisbee).

And here are some pics of all the snow we got although they dont really do it justice. The front porch was covered even with the planter of snow and higher in some spots with the drifts. The night before, all of the windows were all snowed on and we couldnt even see outside...but that went away when the sun came out.

Our door was snowed shut for several days as well because we never got out to scrape! Im sure the mail people loved us for that, oh well!

A few backyard pics of the drifts. Its hard to tell but it was a ton of snow!

Despite all the snow, we decided to brave the weather and roads and pack up and head out to Tulsa. We thought it was going to be decent by 1:00 or so but we were VERY wrong which we would find out later. It took about 45 minutes to make it to the Turnpike from our house. We saw well 100-150 cars abandoned on the sides of the roads between OKC and Tulsa and witnessed a few wrecks and close calls. People were driving so badly that day, they would blow by everyone and wipe-out. It was crazy! We had to pull over for one family and call 911 for them because they were injured and the other driver of the parked semi that they ran into didnt speak English!! People were driving so crazy that day I am just so happy and thankful we made it with minimal issues and no wrecks. And 3.5 hours later, we made it to Tulsa and didnt leave the house again until we came back to OKC on Sunday. This is how we spent our time there:

Lounging, watching lots of movies, playing in the snow and eating!!

While we were busy building a snow man, Lucy, Sampson and the Chihuahua's were playing in the snow.

Check out Shay's gloves...duct taped plastic bags over knitted gloves. She wanted something water proof and I guess it worked well :)

Second level completed.


Ta-Da!

The eyes were buttons, the nose and "sweater" buttons were dog bones, the mouth was licorice candy, the pipe was a dead plant and an old hat from my mom and a scarf I made last year.
By the time we left, the dog bones and licorice pieces were eaten by Lucy! Oops!

So that was the end of our traveling adventures that week and we made it back without any drama. In hindsight it was a poor decision to go to Tulsa but I am glad we made it safely and got to spend time with our family. It would have been sad to be without them this year.

Winter Wonderland Part 1

Let's back up to Christmas Eve...where the updating begins. We had been planning to leave about 1:00 pm to go to Tulsa for a long weekend, but as we all know, everyone's plans changed rapidly. Luckily Matt didnt have to go to work so he took me to work which wasnt that bad yet but was awful on the way back home. It took him 45 minutes to get to my work (4 miles) and 30 minutes back!! Since we weren't going to travel, we immediately began our snow adventures!! We thought it would be fun to go walking in the blizzard to the church with Lucy. Well it wasn't really that fun in the blizzarding sideways snow but at least we got to play some at the church.

Lucy loves pictures, cant you tell? If ever we get a good one of her, its because we tricked her or got lucky.

This is in front of the church on our way back home. It was a long walk to and from with the snow hitting our faces.

Christmas Eve night we pretty much just hung out and caught up on house stuff that I hadn't taken care of since I had some time. Also, we did Christmas with each other on Wednesday night since we thought we were going to be gone. Also, we watched my all time favorite Christmas movie and Matt's not-so-favorite movie, "White Christmas." He came up with a crazy rule this year that he is limited to one viewing per Christmas movie a year!! Sometimes Matt can be a bah-humbug about Christmas stuff :)

And also, we did a Christmas craft with our animals/kids. Last year, Deanna got me an ornament that you make in my stocking and I made it this year. See below:

After I molded the plaster stuff in the circle shape, Matt helped Lucy make her paw print.

Then I helped Jackie make his paw print. Then you just let it dry for a couple of days. I forgot to take a final picture but you get the idea. I might even decorate it more, I dont know. Anyway, I am sure they all loved it and will treasure the experience forever.

And the final fun activity of the night, we let Lucy play with her laser friend, Dottie, outside in the snow. Here is a video of all the fun:

Houston Happenings Part Two

I know it is way past Thanksgiving but I feel I should finish my post. So later Thankgiving day Matt's grandparents came over and we had a great meal and good time with them. We took this picture with them for Monica to make them a Christmas gift and we always laugh because he smiles like this in every single picture. With his mouth open. We took another one with all of us imitating him but i forgot to post it. But we pretty much spent the day watching football and consuming 10 times more calories more than we just burned off running that morning! And I guess I had been more tired than I thought from work and what not because I took a 3 hour nap late that afternoon and then turned right around and slept for 9 more hours after like a 3 hour break from sleeping!!

Aside from the race, we didnt make too many plans and events that we had to attend. We tried a couple of new restaurants, did some shopping, and hung out mostly. We tried a new pizza place that is New York style pizza that was really good. And it was funny because we ordered 3 pizzas to share but we had at least 4 different servers bring us like 7-8 pizzas and ask if they were ours. We also tried a new yogurt place like all the ones that were here and it was delicious of course. This picture below was taken at the riverwalk. We saw this purse from about 20 feet away and thought someone left it and so we were going to go see if it had an ID and got there and it turned out to be fake. It was this artistic display called "treasures from grandmas purse" or something silly like that with all kinds of things around that were part of it. I think all the people around were laughing at us!!

Oh yeah and one thing I was super excited about doing was roasting chesnuts this year. When we were in Tulsa I bought some at this whole foods store and took them to Houston and told everyone how awesome they were and how much I loved them in Vienna when I was there. Anyway, so I cooked them and when we went to try them, they were so nasty!! They tasted like a weird potato. It wasnt the worst thing I have ever eaten but it certainly wasnt the best thing by any means. We took a picture but I forgot to get it from Monica's camera.


So, as most elderly people do, Matt's grandparents have to wear depends. Monica bought some to take to them and before she did, we took some silly pics of Lucy in a pair. She looks like she is wearing the "Oops I crapped my pants" underwear from the SNL skit! She looked pretty cute but she didnt stand for it too long. After about 30 seconds she tried to tear it off!!!

And one last picture of our kiddo!

Houston Happenings Part One

So after we came back from Tulsa, we had to work for 2 days then headed out for Houston at 9:00 pm at night because we both had to work late and finish packing. We decided to stop south of Dallas and stay at a hotel so we would be past all the bad traffic. We had booked a LaQuinta ahead of time hoping that it would be nice and it was. I was a little skeptical of staying in a small town because I didnt know if the hotel would feel safe but this place was brand new I think and only charged 5 dollars extra for dogs.

Lucy enjoyed the luxurious accoutrements: down pillows and blankets, leather furniture, a big window, fridge, flatscreen TV and a queen bed all to herself!

(We put her in the bed for the pics, she didnt actually sleep in the covers)!

We rolled into Houston the next day about high noon and hung out with the fam and cooked for Thanksgiving the next day. We had to cook early because we were all participating in the "Run Through the Woodlands" bright and early Thanksgiving Day. It was great weather for running, not too cold and we all finished with great time. Matt ran the 5-mile race in 46 minutes and Deanna and I ran it in 58 minutes. We have been training for it since the Race For The Cure and I am so proud that we finished. I was just thinking the other day that we have run in four races this year!! Three 5Ks and one 5-mile race. We plan to keep running through out the winter but it has to be at least 32 degrees or warmer for us to get out in that in the mornings.

Here we are before the race...nice and clean not sweaty and disgusting yet...

And John and Monica before the race...they walked the 3 mile race that day.

And here we are crossing the finish line. Matt finished first so I dont have a picture of him :( I did just look on the website and found one pic of Matt and like 10 of me but I cant copy the proof and I am not going to buy one bc they are expensive so I guess I am out of luck. There were so many of me and Deanna because we would wave and act crazy when the camera was close and they laughed and took pictures. But there were some regular ones too.

I think I will stop here and post the other half tomorrow...same bat time, same bat channel.....

She's my best friend....

Lucy and Charlie had a sleep over weekend at our house this weekend. As always, the combo is full of shenanigans but too cute to stay mad at for long. I think Jack was glad she came over too. He thinks that Charlie is scared of him so he acts like tough stuff when she is here. We tried to get some good videos but they didnt turn out really well so I will just share some pics.

A mid morning hug :)

Jack is hanging out in Lucy's new bed for her crate which looks kind of like a raft.

Lucy's leg is on Charlie's back, looks weird.

Pooped doggies.

Jack is stalking the little birds in the bush outside the window.


And then there is Charlie looking smart! This one survived all the playing for now. Other toys were not as lucky.