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!