Adventures in Dog Sitting

Ellie scratching and clawing, trying to get the ball...
Like my protective sheets I have covering my furniture.
Ellie is sad. She wants her ball stuck under chair.

Ellie scratching chair to retrieve ball.

Ellie protecting her ball as she rests

Cute Ellie in the sunlight

First let me wish Monica a very Happy Birthday today!! I hope you and Dave are having a fabulous time at the Bed and Breakfast in Cali!! I wanted to give you an update on Ellie Belly so you can rest assured she is happy and doing well. She is a great dog!! Holy cow. She is so cute and really well behaved. She really makes me want to get a dog so bad! Ellie rarely barks which is great for Chris because he can't stand dogs that bark. She does this cute whelp that we think is adorable. She has yet to have an accident in the house. She is eating a lot. I put bacon in her dinner bowl the other night and every last bit of dog food was gone. She had chicken the first night mixed in. We did a trial the first night too with having Ellie sleep in the bed with us. She was perfect. We have since allowed her to shack up with us at night. She is so cute. She mostly stays down at the end of the bed and doesn't wake us up. When we walk around, she likes to nibble at our toes. It's actually quite cute. She reminds us of a guppy fish at feeding time. Why does she do this?? Ball time is her favorite. So we throw the ball in the house (we had rain all weekend) and every 5 minutes, the ball gets stuck under a piece of living room furniture. So throwing ball is more like retrieving ball under furniture. Here are some fun photos of her whelping for us to get the ball. She is very protective of this ball. As soon as I say, "Where is your ball", she knows immediately where it is. It is cute!

Supercross in SLC

Yesterday I attended my first Supercross event and it was pretty neat! Apparently it was a big deal that the top supercross racers were in SLC. It had been 5 years since they were here last. Chris was sooo excited for the event. He wanted to hang out all day in the rain before the race started just to be part of the hoopla. He had "pit" passes which are like backstage passes to the rest of us. By nighttime, the weather was perfect. The rain cleared up and racing conditions were good for the riders. There is a big showdown between racers Chad Reid and James Stewart. You can't be fans of both apparently because they don't like one another. Chris is a big James Stewart fan. Since they are neck in neck in the competition and James won last night, Chris got pretty excited. Here are photos of Chad winning most of the race and then James passing him at the end to win this leg. It was intense. And next weekend is the finals in Las Vegas. That will determine the overall winner and yep, we are headed down there for the big showdown.

Here is the track. I can't believe how many people are into this sport!

Chad Reid is ahead of James Stewart here. James is in blue and Chad has the yellow bike.

James just passed Chad here

Chris's friend Jake Weimer who won 2nd in the lites division.

Life's little surprises!

Meet my friend Jewels- she is wearing a white top and wearing fun boots! This is her bday photo pic.
Here is a photo of the house across the street at 7 am this morning.

Why is it that some of the best things in life are so NOT planned??? I used to be so into the Law of Attraction and how you can control your daily life and what not. And it is true, you can to a certain extent. But good hell. There is so much that you can't control too. Case in point- my neighbor leaves for 5 months out of every year to go to her second house in Montana. Fun life huh! And she normally has a family from her church (not a mormon church) stay in her house for free and be caretakers of the home. They have to do yardwork, housework and so forth. So this year, Norma (my neighbor) said to me that she didn't have anyone lined up yet. I was so surprised because who wouldn't be biting at the bit to get that deal. The next day, I thought of one of my best friends Jewels/Jules who lives in Orem which is about 45 min away. BTW I like to spell her name the first way but I think everyone else spells it the second way. In any event.... I called her up and asked her if she was interested in being my neighbor. She was so I emailed Norma in a very non-assertive way. I didn't want to put pressure on my neighbor to consider my friend. The whole time I was thinking that this was a long shot because she always has someone from her church. So Jewels got an interview scheduled and long story short.... Jewels and her son Dustin are my new neighbor for the next 5 months!! Yea!! Party on Country Avenue over the summer!! Chris and I are so excited. Sunday brunches, weekly barbeque's, lots of girl time, and the boys will have "man time". Dustin and Chris get along fabulously. So it will be such a great thing and we are so looking forward to it!! But seriously the entire time, I never thought it would actually happen (and I didn't want to get my hopes up either). Weird. I am grateful for life's little surprises!! So friends, Jewels is moving into the neighborhood and SL on May 8th- get ready!!

Springtime yardwork

Every Sunday for the past 3 weeks, Chris and I have been outside doing tons and tons of yardwork! It is never ending either. We have only tackled the first third of the yard. The grass grows insanely as do the weeds. Every week I try to get a new area of all the 7 gardens the previous owner had planted. I want to kill the previous owner. Seven flower beds is a lot especially when they fill with dead leaves and garbage. I eventually will get around to getting rid of all but 4 of them but in the meantime, I have to do what I can. Don't get me wrong, I love getting my hands dirty in the dirt. I love it. But to a certain extent. I want a yard that maybe requires 2-3 hours of yardwork a week. That to me is perfect! Not our yard. It requires 10 hours a week atleast. We really need to get another garbage can too. We have no room for our actual garbage due to all the dead grass, twigs, and bush trimmings.

So here is week 3 of our springtime cleanup. I have to hand it to Chris, he has been slaving away. He has worked a lot harder than I have. I reach my limit after hour 3. Not him, he can work for 8 hours, pouring sweat and he keeps going. I love watching him from inside. He is cute. Today he went to home depot and bought all kinds of fun guy yardwork stuff. I have no idea what they are but he spent quite a bit of money on hedgers and all sorts of attachments. He showed them to me when he got home and was so excited. I smiled and pretended to know what all the things would do.