Dogs

Elizabeth's post from yesterday has for some unknown reason inspired me to write about dogs. I am not an animal lover, or a "dog person". I think dogs are cute....in other people's homes, but they shed, smell, lick, poop, walk through their poop, vomit and then taste their vomit. GAG!

However, growing up, we had dogs. Here are some of them.

1) Petey- got him when I was 7 or 8. He was a peke-a-poo. His real name was "Oui Ebony Pierre Fido", which translated to English means "Yes Black Pierre Dog". Makes lots of sense, huh? His death/disappearance is a mystery. He escaped from the backyard never to return.

2) Boots- have no idea when we got him. I was probably 10 or so. He was a little black shaggy dog with white paws. Hence the name Boots. I think he was a peke-a-poo, too, but I don't really know (Mom, Lindsay??). My mom and sister will tell you he was the best dog we ever had. He got hit and killed by a car. However, this was not the worst thing that ever happened to him. When my sister was about four years old, she put his ears together and made a ponytail. A TIGHT ponytail and used one of those little real rubber rubber-bands.....like what the newspaper has around it, but smaller. Have you ever heard a dog scream? Put their ears in a ponytail and you'll know what I'm talking about.

3) I'm going to skip Su-Su and Gizmo......

4) Raider and Duke-got them when I was in high school. We decided to "surprise" my mom with two labs (mixed). She was surprised, but not in a good way. They were two of the prettiest dogs you have ever seen, but they were big and destructive. They ATE a hole THROUGH my parents garage door; they pulled up sprinkler heads; Duke bit a serviceman that came to our house in his manhood; etc. Duke finally went to live with some family friends that had a lot of land. There, he terrorized their cattle. I don't know what became of Duke, but I have a feeling he is resting in peace. Raider, became a great dog after Duke left. He thought he was a 133 pound "lap dog". He had quite the personality and didn't cause much problem, but he hated the vet. Trying to drag him into the vet was like trying to push the Empire State Building with your bare hands.

5) Shiner and Raider- I got Shiner when I was in college. She was a collie/rottweiler mix. Rottweiler body and hair with Collie markings. Pretty dog. She could be sweet, and she could be mean. She sometimes scared me. She would get mad and curl her lip to show her teeth. She and Raider became BFF when she lived with my parents. When I got married and took Shiner with me, Raider and Shiner both became very sad. Raider would sit on the back porch and howl for hours. Pitiful. Shiner went back. When my parents moved to Arlington, Raider and Shiner went together to go live with a nice man that wanted two big dogs.

6) Bandit-Jeff's dog from college. Blue heeler (cow dog). I had a serious love/hate relationship with this dog. More hate than love, but sometimes love. Bandit's claim to fame was that he attacked vacuum cleaners. Jeff loved to show off when we had people over how Bandit would "beat up" on the vacuum. The problem with Bandit was that he NEVER wanted to be outside; he thought he was a person and should always remain indoors. He would bark like crazy if he had to go outside, and he had THE MOST annoying bark! If we put him out and forgot to lock the sliding glass door, he would open it with his nose and let himself back in. As much as Bandit thought he was a person, he was still a cow dog by instinct. When Landry was first learning to walk, he would "corral" her by nipping at her heels into a corner. It annoyed her and frustrated me to no end. When we moved, Bandit had to go. Same story.....went to live on a guy's land in Mesquite. Last we heard, he was doing fine.

My dog days are over for a long while.......

Four....continued!!

The weekend went great! Landry's party was Saturday. Although I was worried about it being too crowded, the kids didn't seem to care; they had fun anyway! I guess the more people to jump and slide with, the merrier!!

I was somewhat bummed when I got to the party because my camera decided that it wasn't going to work for a few hours. I would turn it on and it would turn itself off. Ugh!! Wouldn't you know that when we got back in the car later that day, the camera miraculously started working again. Fortunately, my sister came prepared with her camera and took on the job well. She took 90 pictures!! Thanks, Lulu!

Yesterday, for Landry's REAL birthday Jeff and I took her to Chuck E. Cheese's to play games and then went home to play with her new birthday toys!

Here are some pics of Landry through the years. I still can't believe she's four!!

January 29, 2002!! Birthday!!


1 day old!

6 months.......

One year old.........

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to!!

18 months....

Two......

Three.....

Four!!!

FOUR!!!

Today my baby turned four! I can't believe she is already four. It has gone too fast!

Almost four years ago to this very hour, I gave birth to the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. Landry has been such a joy and we are so blessed to have her in our lives.

Happy birthday Landry!

(Pictures to come tomorrow......for some reason I'm having "technical difficulties" with my home PC.)

Get this party started.......and over with!

My baby turns four on Sunday.......

ok, I'm back now from my crying melt-down

Her party is tomorrow and I have come to realize what a rookie I am at this. This will be her first "real" birthday party. We have only had family parties before this year, so this is the first time we have invited friends. She is super excited about it and I am excited for her, but there is a chance that maybe I over-invited!

I invited 22 kids from her class (all of them) and 20 of our friends' kids. So far, only 5 kids have declined and 25 are for sure coming. I haven't heard from 13 kids, so we could possibly have 39 kids (including Landry)!!........

ok, I'm back now from having another crying melt-down

Fortunately, we are having her party at another location, so I won't have all these kids in my house, but still it's a LOT of kids! Wish us luck! I'll report more on Sunday.

Guess what I'll be doing in 68 days?

Having a baby. Yep. That's right. I went to the dr yesterday and we scheduled my c-section for April 3. It's weird. I just scheduled my second child's birthday. Like I would have scheduled a regular dr appt, or a carpet cleaning or something. I wanted to have the baby on April 5 because then her birthday would be 04-05-06 and I think that's neat, but my doctor's OB days are the 2nd and 3rd and I only want her doing my section, so the 3rd it is!

68 days to go!

I think I insulted my Friends

I suppose I rattled a few Hollywood cages from Friday's post. The powers that be are fighting for my #1 sitcom spot. Click here for the Hollywood scoop!!

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In other news, this weekend was a lot of fun. I went to Salado, TX with 5 of my college girlfriends for shopping, eating, relaxing, and visiting. We drove to Salado on Saturday morning and ate lunch at a little tearoom. Then, we shopped all day in the cute little stores in "downtown" Salado. I think we went in pretty much every store. We then checked into our comfy little rooms at a quaint B&B and ended the evening eating dinner at The Range. Yum! It was a wonderful meal! It is always fun to get together and catch up with my friends!

I'm thinking of putting my "Friends" second......

I love TV! A lot. I have a long list of "favorite" shows. But, my freshman year in college I caught the pilot episode of Friends and was immediately hooked. It became my favorite show. I never missed one episode. Ever. Seen them all. In fact, most of them I saw the moment they aired. The only one that comes to mind that had to be taped that I didn't see "live" was when I was in the hospital having Landry. I had my best friend tape it for me and I watched it when I got home.

I still love Friends. Always will. But now I'm almost tempted to say that The Office is my all-time favorite sitcom. It's the one show that I really look forward to watching in the week. It's genius. And I relate to it. I don't know if I would enjoy it so much if I was still staying at home, or if I was still teaching, but I'm not. I basically work at Dunder-Mifflin. It's a funnier version of my Mon-Fri workday. For those people that hate it, I understand why. It's a "corporate America" kind of thing.

So, since I can't decide which show should take the number one spot, I'll just say that Friends was #1 from 1994-2004 and The Office is #1 from 2005-????

Back from Florida!!

I'm officially back. Back to Texas. Back to work. Back to blogging (which is more than I can say for my sister who hasn't written a thing since 12-19!!!) We had a great trip! Some of the highlights are below.

In front of Cinderella's castle!

This was cool. This was at Downtown Disney. The dragon was made entirely of legos and it was HUGE! Very impressive!

Winnie the Pooh!

This was one of my favorite moments of the whole trip. It was toward the end of the day. We had been at DW for 6 hours and Landry was exhausted. She and I were sitting at the outdoor tables waiting on Jeff to bring us some ice cream. This man (in the striped vest) was playing really fun Disney songs. Landry asked me if she could go dance and I said yes. I had know idea where she was going to get the energy, but hey, if she wants to dance you let her dance! As soon as she went over by him, his song was finished and he was leaving b/c a parade was about to come down Main Street. Landry went up to him and said "Hey!I was about to dance. Play more!" So, he decided to play one more song...for Landry. Landry proceeded to dance the wildest jig I have ever seen. It was too cute! And on video, too!

Beach/swimming pictures.......

One, two, threeeeeeeeee!

Is there anything cuter??

Florida-Day 4

It's now day 4 of our 7 day trip in Florida. We arrived Tuesday and after a long nap went to the beach. This was Landry's first time ever to the beach. Although the water was cold, she loved playing in the sand and finding shells.

Wednesday we drove from Ft. Myers to Orlando. We went to Downtown Disney Wednesday evening to browse around and eat dinner. Landry had a lot of fun playing on the Lego playground and seeing all of the Disney stores. We then went to eat dinner at Rainforest Cafe, where we enjoyed a quiet dinner of thunderstorms and gorilla, parrot, and elephant noises. ;)

Thursday was THE DAY! The day Landry has talked non-stop about for two weeks. The day we went to "REAL Disney World". We spent all day yesterday at Magic Kingdom. We had a great time and it was a great day to go. The weather was perfect and the crowd was small. I have decided that if we ever get to go to DW in the future, we will go in mid-January. Landry was way more interested in riding rides and experiencing the thrills than she was seeing the characters.

We drove back to the house in Ft Myers last night and today we are planning on hitting the beach later. Pictures to come next week when we get home!

Christmas pictures

I know. I know. I know. Good bloggers had their Christmas pictures posted by December 27. Here it is January 9 and I'm just now getting around to it. It's just been a busy few weeks.......!!

So, here are a few pictures from our Christmas!

This is from the Gaylord Texan two days before Christmas. We went with my family for dinner and to see the decorations. We had planned on going to see the ice sculptures, but the wait was over two and a half hours!

This is one of Landry's Santa presents. She loves it!

My sister and I think she looks like Ross from Friends in this picture.........you know the episode!

Funny story.....so, on my 12-19-05 post, I posted Landry's letter to Santa. I did the dictation as she drafted the letter. I pretty much thought she was pulling stuff from the air for her letter. I put the letter on the fridge and Landry didn't really talk about it again. Then, when we were at the Gaylord Texan she wanted to go see their Santa. He asked her what she wanted for Christmas and she basically REPEATED THE LETTER VERBATIM!!

I looked at my mom and said "I don't have any of that stuff. I'm going to have to go shopping tomorrow!" (which would have been Christmas Eve). Fortunately, my mom was a major beanie baby collector a few years ago, so she had the baby elephant, kitten, and puppy like Spot covered. Now, we needed a big elephant. Strangely, (miraculously, oddly---insert your own adjective here) my sister found this big elephant in the linen closet upstairs. I don't know where it came from or why it was in my parent's house, but it saved Christmas! ;) Ok, maybe that's extreme, but it did keep me from having to fight the crowds on Christmas Eve!

Back to Blogland

Well, for all of you, my four or five readers, I am happy to report I am back in blogland. Another wonderful Christmas has come and gone as well as 2005. Since I could go on and on with boring detail after boring detail about the last 10 days, I will instead just hit on the highlights and lowlights.

Good:

• Spent lots of time with family!! It was nice to have my brother and sister in town, even if we did lose our time with Lindsay to season 4 of "24".
• Off of work for SIX WHOLE work days; that's TEN WHOLE calendar days!
• Ate a lot of good food!
• Watched many performances of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" by Landry on her new keyboard/guitar/microphone (pictures coming soon).
• I loved my Christmas decorations.
• Christmas Eve-Eve at the Gaylord Texan.
• Received great presents......Santa was very good to us this year!
• Spent a lot of quality time with Landry!
• Got to see a movie. That's right, a MOVIE....in the real theater!
• Hosted after-Christmas Christmas party with my closest college/sorority sister friends and their families. Fun!
• Cleaned out two closets!
• Went to the Cotton Bowl with Jeff and college buddies yesterday. The weather was wonderful!

Bad:

• Family went back home.
• Returned to work.
• Ate a lot of good food.
• Landry seems to only want to sing "Rudolph".
• My Christmas decorations are still up.
• Ice sculpture display line at Gaylord was too long for us to wait in.
• People behind us in movie theater brought their 8 month old with them. Seriously, Chronicles of Narnia is not for children under the age of 10.
• Cleaning up after the after-Christmas Christmas party.
• Really, I just took the stuff from one closet and moved it to the other, and vice-versa. But, hey, I tried!!
• The Red Raiders lost! :(