When you think you want to get a puppy...

You should get a puppy if...

Decide if you like the color of your walls.  If you don't, then maybe you should get a puppy!  They love to chew the paint off and expose the ugly brown color underneath!

They also love to eat anything in sight, like the bindings of my priceless scrapbooks!

If you like a little antique/chew look to your furniture, then maybe a puppy is for you!

If you are interested in perfecting your sewing skills, I suggest you get a puppy.  They LOVE to tear apart their toys so you can stitch them back up!

If you don't mind having gigantic craters underneath all of your plants and trees, then you should for sure get a puppy!  Hey, they can serve as an outdoor water bowl if it rains hard enough :)

If you really aren't a fan of a nice looking lawn, then go get a puppy!  Ours of course loves to keep the lawn he poops on by the fence in tip top condition.  How thoughtful of him!

If you don't mind practicing your hurdling skills to get in and out of rooms, you need to get a puppy!!

Lastly, you should get a puppy if you enjoy long walks, lots of love, having someone follow you around the house everywhere you go, and having an extra something to cuddle and sleep with!!  There is no way you can resist a cute face like this...even if they do look like they might just eat your slipper rather than guard it!

The Skinner Family Comes to Visit!

We had the busiest, but best weekend ever enjoying some catch-up time with our high school friends, Shawn and Kristina Skinner and their 3 kids, Jefferson, Grant and Reagan, who live in Oregon now!

They arrived on Friday, March 26th, and since Jason had to work the whole day I met up with them after I got off of work.  We went to the Children's Museum in Everett where I had taken a group of kids during the summer once before.  The kids LOVED the museum and all that it had for them to do.  It definitely made me wish I had kids to take to places like these.  You just become a kid again yourself!

Kristina building with Grant and Jefferson in the "Construction Zone"

Reagan cruising around on the dinosaur that Kristina made

After Jason got off work and we were done at the museum, we all came back to our house to let the kids meet Coda and Rascal.  Jefferson was in cat and dog heaven!!  I would have to say that Rascal and Coda were in heaven also having so much attention and a LOT of treats from one little kid!  After a quick tour of the house and a little pet playtime, we headed off to dinner at Red Robin...yuuuuum!

Saturday we met up with the Skinners bright and early in the morning to head out for some Seattle fun.  First stop...the Fremont Troll.  The kids loved the troll and continuously wondered how he captured that car under his hand :)

Grant, Jefferson, me, Shawn, Reagan and Jason on the Fremont Troll

After a few pictures with the troll we headed to the Woodland Park Zoo.  Of course everyone loved the zoo!  Who doesn't?!  Jefferson was our tour guide for the day, and boy he did a good job using the zoo map!  We had a great time looking at the animals and playing in the Discovery Loop play area.

Jefferson, our tour guide, making sure he knows where we're headed next :)

Reagan and I at the monkies

Jason and Jefferson at the reptile exhibit

We wished the weekend didn't have to end, because it was so fun to be around kids and see everything through their little eyes.  No worries though, we will be seeing them again in less than a week for a quick little visit!

Thanks for coming to see us Skinner Family!!!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Here I am dusting away in our office and just as I look to my left I see my sneaky little puppy standing on top of the office desk!  Really?!  My first thought was how the heck he got up there (most likely by jumping onto the paper shredder first, but man is he quiet!)  and then I wonder how he learned to do this.  Obviously he sees our naughty little Rascal do this, so he thinks it's okay for him to do it too.  Animals are so silly!

Not as innocent as he looks

Meet the newest Mr. and Mrs. Oliveira!

Weddings are always a fun way to be with friends, meet new people, and remember how special it is to be married to the one person you love!

We were thankful to be apart of Matt and Tina's wedding this weekend at The Mayflower Park Hotel in Seattle.  It was a little wedding of just about 50 people and we were one of those important friends that got invited.  It was great to be able to celebrate in their joy of getting married and starting their journey together as husband and wife!  Matt and Tina are an amazing couple and we can see many happy years to come for them as they dive into the adventure we like to call MARRIAGE!  We look forward to getting to spend some of those fun times with them too!!  We can never have enough married couples to hang out with!

Matt and Tina sayng their vows

The newest Mr. and Mrs. Oliveira

Me and Nichole at the reception

Jon, Nichole, me and Jason (friends of both the bride and groom)

Me and Jason...going on 5 happy years of being married!!

CONGRATS MATT AND TINA!!! 

ENJOY THAT HONEYMOON IN TAHITI!

Dooms Day for Coda

We knew the time would come that we would have to take Coda in for the "snip snip", but what we didn't realize was how hard it would be on us.  No one likes to see their animals in pain, so it was especially hard to see such an active puppy totally out of it and in pain, whining so much.

Coda right after he came home from his neuter...very sleepy and sad

He spent his entire first day at home sleeping and whining.  He was pretty out of it.  He kept us up consistently throughout the first night with the sounds of licking and whining.  The second day he was a lot more energetic, but that also kept us on our toes because we had to watch to make sure he wasn't jumping on the bed, the couch, chasing the cat up the stairs or licking his stitches.  We had a wedding to go to the evening of his second day and that made us a little nervous to leave him at home alone.  So we bought him a cone and boy was that a sad thing to have to do.  He looked so pathetic in that cone!!  And we couldn't even take his car harness off because it wouldn't fit over his cone.

Sad puppy in his cone

He wasn't sure how to sleep with that darn cone on either

We decided he wouldn't fit in his crate with his cone on, so we left him with free reign of the entire downstairs while we were at the wedding.  That was sure a scary thing to do for my first time!  But really, what could a dog do with a cone on his head?!  It was a successful night!!  When he heard us come home he ran to the baby gate at the entry way and jumped all over it...WHILE PEEING ALL OVER THE BABY GATE, THE FLOOR, AND MY SCHOOL STUFF THROUGH THE BABY GATE!!!  It's okay, he was just excited to see us come home :)  I just wish he could tell me what he did the whole time we were gone.  I think I need to find one of the dog collars that they had in the movie "Up"...that would be amazing!!!

Oh, and day three is going a million times better for Coda.  He slept through the entire night on our bed!  He continues to chase Rascal, but we have to really watch that.  He is back to full recovery mode and on his way to normal again.  We are so sorry Coda!!!!

Wallace Falls Hike

It was another beautiful sunny day here in WA (and people say it always rains...ha!) so we decided to set out on another hiking adventure with Coda.  With daylight savings time making us lose an hour we got a little bit of a late start from being so tired.  So we decided to do a short little hike about an hour from our house in a little town called Index.  Once we got there we realized that we needed a WA Parks pass in order to park our car there and hike (apparently Jason missed that part when he was reading about this hike in his hiking book).  So we got back in the car and headed a few miles back and decided to do a hike that we have done before at Wallace Falls.  Even though we had done it before we still had a great time. 

Jason and Coda at a little river spot off the trail

Wallace Falls has 3 different falls.  There is the lower falls, the middle falls, and the upper falls (man whoever came up with those names was a smart one!). 

Coda and I at the lower falls looking at the upper falls

Since we got an even later start, we only decided to go to the middle falls instead of to the 3rd falls at the top.  Been there, done that, didn't need to see it again.

The hiking trio at the middle falls

Coda was sure a trooper hiking up all of those steep hills!  He wanted to hike much faster than we could even go, but he gradually began to slow down as we kept climbing.  He was one tired puppy on our drive home...just the way we like it!!

All hiked out!

I would call that a SUCCESSFUL day!

The new car!

Once we found out that our insurance company was going to call our old Corolla totaled from the rear ender it was in, we knew we needed to start looking for another car.  We had one whole week of having to share a car and boy was that a tough week!  I did enjoy having Jason around in the mornings when I had to take him to work, but that meant that I had to leave a little earlier myself.  All worked out and I shouldn't even be complaining.

I finally convinced Jason that we needed to start looking for a car, so we did just that in the middle of the week.  I knew I loved my old Corolla so I didn't even consisder anything else.  And Jason...well he just went along with whatever I said (that's why I love him).  We found our next car...a 2010 Red Toyota Corolla Sport WITH A SUNROOF (apparently a hard thing to find here in WA these days).  Check out our new "baby"...

The rollercoaster we like to call LIFE...

About a week ago I get a phone call around 6:30 in the morning from Jason, who was on his way to Seattle for work.  I never get phone calls from him in the morning so I thought it was a little weird.  He called to tell me he was okay, but had just gotten in a rear ending accident on I-5.  The pickup truck in front of him slammed on their breaks and started to slide a little bit.  Jason happened to just look down for a few seconds before he had to slam on his breaks as well.  Unfortunately Jason's car continued to slide forward and he ended up rear ending the truck in front of him.  Praise God that the airbags didn't deploy or that Jason was not hurt at all!!!!  The Corolla on the otherhand didn't do as well. 

Unfortunately the insurance company confirmed that the car is totaled.  Too much money to repair all of this.  The car is fine besides this damage, so it makes us sad that they had to total it.

Jason and I have spent the last week living with one car, and boy did we realize how nice it was to have two cars in our life!  Since it's been a little difficult to live with just one car and two people in the house who work, we are off to find a new car.  I loved my Corolla (it gave me 5 great years of driving) so I am sure that is what we will end up with.