Halloween: Two years and counting...

Compared to our last two Halloweens, this Halloween was pretty uneventful, I mean in 2008 boy meets girl, and 2009 boy asks girl to marry him, How can we top that?

Aside from life changing events, we had a good week. Busy with work, school, church callings and Brody's interview in St. Louis, the week flew by and Halloween came before we knew what hit us.

On Tuesday, we drove to the airport and wished Brody luck as we put him on a plane to St. Louis.  Wednesday he had a full day of interviews, meet and greets, and free meals all with top management of the Nestle Corporation.  Short of delicious Nestle Crunch bars I had no idea what the company made or did. As it turns out Nestle is the largest food and beverage company in the world. They own name brands such as Digiornio, California Pizza Kitchen, Hot pockets, Healthy Choice and various bottled water names. Nestle also owns the pet brand Purina, which is the division Brody interviewed with. As he was waiting in the lobby he watched employee after employee bring their dogs into work. THIS IS THE PLACE FOR ME! You get to work with your dogs?! How awesome!  We won't find out for a few weeks if Brody got the internship but we have high hopes. There were 1500 applicants, 250 phone interviews, and 50 candidates flown to St. Louis so he's done pretty good so far. Between all the interviews Brody managed to get some cool pictures of the arch.

For Halloween we had a nice relaxing weekend.  Made some chili, painted pumpkins and even made a scary haunted gingerbread house.

I think I got the frosting a little too runny. Once we put the house together all the frosting started drooping and smearing downward. I'm going to pretend like I did that on purpose to make it more 'scary'

The scary droopy cat with his eyeballs falling out

The Picaso side of the house. It's so scary even the ghost is in pieces

Happy Halloween! Thanks Moms for all the fun festivities!

Fall Fishing

The weather here has been unseasonably warm and we've been taking advantage of it by going to the lake and hiking and fishing with our friends Kevin and Emily and all the dogs. We have a lake about 7 minutes from our house that has miles of hiking trails all around it. We regularly lace up our tennis shoes, pile into the truck and take long hikes up into the hills, trying to take in as much of the scenery as we can before the sun goes down.  It's great exercise for us and the dogs are in heaven as they chase squirrels and birds and discover all sorts of new smells, sights, and tastes (yes, Deja continually finds new rocks, chunks of dirt, and who knows what else, to put in her mouth).  The other day as we we hiking Kita and Deja took off after a poor little squirrel.. Not to worry though, an animal with a brain as large as a pea outsmarted both of our dogs. Deja was close on the chase until the squirrel went under a log and Deja smacked her head full speed into a log.  Kita was small enough to follow under the log but not smart enough to notice the  squirrel was headed straight for a branch that over hung on the lake. Splash! Kita fell a few feet to land right in the lake. Needless to say both dogs weren't as gung-ho to chase after the next squirrel who crossed their path.

"Where did that squirrel go to now??"

On the trail.  "I'm a hound dog! Woof!"

a little jog in the woods

Fishing on a fall afternoon

We went to a new private lake this Saturday and caught a few fish. Luckily it was just catch and release so we didn't have to do any of the gutting and gross stuff  :)

First one of the day

Number two!

The dogs are loving the fish!

 I tried to upload the video of Nakita attacking the fish but, alas, no luck... :( Just know that it's pretty funny watching her try to bite a fish as big as her, as it flops around uncontrollably.

Still waiting on the first bite...

Kita wouldn't leave us alone or leave the water's edge, she was obsessed with the fish!

Number 1.5 for Brody (the first one got away before he could get it out of the water)

Long day of fishing, we both needed a rest

Reeling it in!

Kevin's performing minor fish surgery to get the hook dislodged before the little guy kicks the can

Give the fishy a kiss!

Birthday Week

Brody had a full week this past week. Birthday, training camp, new patios, and taking naps!

Tuesday was Brody's birthday and we had a little celebration for him.

Some candy, a new hat, pool floats for our weekly lake visits, a new tennis racket, subscription to "The Economist", gift card for new tools, cash, Express gift card, framed paintings from Cambodia, Barnes and Noble gift card, and a night out with dinner and ice cream. Needless to say he got spoiled, and Birthday week wasn't even over yet.

Wednesday night we had some friends over and brought out a cheesecake with candles on it. Brody's getting so old his poor cake looks like it's on fire!

On Thursday one of our friends got Brody a ticket to the Bengal's Training camp.  They arrived at the field and while there were thousands of people in the stands, Brody and Kevin walked right out to the field with the players!  Brody had a front row to the comical antics of Chad Ochocinco and the newest Bengal Terrel Owens. (I'm convinced that T.O. will soon change his name to T. Ocho-uno. haha)

During the week Brody has been hard at work re-landscaping the back yard.  (I helped by drawing out the design, Brody has done all the heavy lifting) We didn't have any flower beds in the back yard, a patio fit for entertaining, and  had a taste of the woods with a plot of our backyard covered in a hot mess of bushes, weeds, trees, underbrush and just pure wilderness. Brody has cleaned up all the underbrush, just leaving clean trees, we collected large rocks to line our gardens, we bought some flat rocks for the patio, de-sodded (is that a word?) the lawn next to the house and started planting some bushes.  It's not done yet, but here's some of the work done this past week.

How the yard looked before (this picture was taken in the spring when the lawn was nice and lush)

Collecting rocks on the side of the road

Brody starting the de-sodding (the lawn has died :( but apparently people don't water their lawns here, they just rely on the rain)

A little bit of redneckness to haul away the sod

We got the garden lined and filled, with some plants already in. Brody took the challenge of fitting all the rocks together in one complex puzzle.

looking pretty good so far, we still need to get filling in between the rocks

After the long hot days outside both Brody and Deja were tuckered out. I found them napping around the house in various places.

Swimming lessons

Relaxing from a long week of yard work

Since we've been here we've found several lakes close to our house that are perfect to hang out at on Saturdays.  At Kincaid lake we rented a pontoon boat and took both the dogs out for some swimming lessons. Kita already knows she hates the water, but Deja was brand new to the hating of water.  After several (SEVERAL) swimming lessons both dogs now will enter the water of their own accord (they don't stay for very long though :) )

Captain King

All the girls enjoying the sunshine

Cooling off (note the pained look on both dog's faces)

10 weeks old and swimming like a champ

All tuckered out and taking a nap on the truck floor

 

Crazy week!

It's one of those things that you offer, but never really expect people to take you up on your offer... A co-worker of mine had bought a rotweiler puppy about a week before we bought Deja and we would frequently talk about how each of our puppies were progressing, what they had chewed that day or how big they were getting. One day he had mentioned how having a puppy makes going on vacation really difficult and I casually mentioned if he ever needed a hand when he went on vacation let me know. Well he did. Lucky for us Duke and Deja got along just fine.

These two played all day from sun up to sun down. Needless to say they slept like logs, but during the day it was pure craziness!!! Barking, chasing, wrestling, eating each others food and one day we walked down stairs for about two minutes to do some laundry and thought "hey it's awfully quiet upstairs.." When we came upstairs, the two dogs were in the middle of the kitchen, dog food as far as the eye could see, and both of them eating as fast a their little mouths could shovel it in. A quick spanking and both of them went to their kennels with swollen bellies. Double trouble at it's best!