Monday, June 15, 2009

The One That Got Away


This is Mattie Cake's dog, Bolt. Maybe I should say it's Mattie's Cake's husband's dog. Remember Daddy Long Legs? The Has-To-Stop-Eating-His-Seven-Oreos-Before-Bedtime-to-Drop-a-Few-Pounds freak? Yeah, him. He's really a perfectly nice guy. I just don't like that he only has to cut out seven Oreos before bedtime to drop weight. Yes, I'm jealous. I covet his freakish metabolism. But then he's six foot a hundred, so he probably needs 18,000 calories a day just to exist.

Anyway, this post isn't about Daddy Long Legs, it's about his dog. His dog that came to stay with us for a few days while he and Mattie Cake went away for a romantic jaunt.

Bolt is a Boxer and he's still a puppy. Of course you might have guessed that by his freakishly large feet. He has a little growing to do yet, and I think he's going to be rather large. 

Bolt is a love muffin. Don't be creeped out by that statement or anything, I'm just saying that I love this dog and I want him back. He went home last night and I'm feeling a little melancholy. We bonded while he was here.

Of course I snapped a few pictures of him during his stay, and I'd like to share them with you so that you might come to appreciate his doggity sweetness as much as I.


First of all, when kids and animals come for a sleepover at Aunt Jill's house, we play dress-up as a little break the ice activity. It's just one of those ridiculous little teacher things. I hate it too, but it works. It's hard to feel awkward and shy in a lei.


As you can see, the girls love Bolt as much as I do. They did a lot of playing together. It was all run, run, run, tackle, slobber, run, run, run, pounce, growl, all week long.


Look at the scary expression on Stinkerbell. I think they were about to run over the poor dog in this picture. There's nothing to worry about though, Bolt is way faster than this dinky little Hummer.


Basically, he just ran circles around them while they giggled uncontrollably.


Interception.


King of the SUV!


Uh oh. Looks like they ran over some dog poop.


"Eeeeeeew."

This is one of the few negatives about Bolt. He poops three times a day, minimum. He's a pooping machine.


After all that playing, a kid gets tired. Bolt slept with the girls every night and it was the cutest thing. He's a major bed hog and he snores like an old man with emphysema.


"What?"


I love his lips. If you're thinking that you might like to kiss them, I implore you, don't. He likes to lick his goodies.

Dogs don't generally care about such things as class and decorum.


Again?!

One day Bolt went back to bed with the girls and slept until 10:30. What a bunch of slackers.


Look, it's Princess Leah.


Bolt munched on the herbs on my porch. He doesn't seem very apologetic, does he?


"But I didn't do it maliciously. I was only trying to freshen my breathe so that you might kiss me."


Busted. 

That's the Renaissance Woman's hand holding a doggie treat. We had to use a little trickery to get him to look at us for his portraits. He's pretty fixated on that doggie treat, isn't he?

I hope Bolt comes back to visit me. He's such a sweetie and, sadly, he behaves better than my kids. He doesn't whine either.


I tried to get him to join the Red Hat Society, but he wasn't feelin' the hat. They wouldn't let him join anyway. He has the wrinkles, but those feet give him away.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Spring/Summer Wreath


I took the PRAXIS exam yesterday, and man, am I glad it's over. I felt pretty good about the math, but I left the test feeling like I need to brush up on my history and science. I won't find out how I did for at least a month, so I'm not going to think about it in the meantime, except to keep repeating "I'm so glad it's over."

As I always do when I have a major hurdle looming, I procrastinated by making something crafty on Friday evening. My front door has been wreathless since February and I've been putting off replacing my spring wreath from last year. Remember that one? The one that melted down my front door. This time I was careful to not to buy any meltable doodads for my wreath. Here's what I started with.


A $2.99 wreath and some assorted, non meltable, flowers. Everything was on sale. Yay!


I used my hot glue gun to put it all on, and I only burned myself once. And I didn't glue the wreath to the table this time either. I'm learning.

However, I was disappointed when the Renaissance Woman arrived last night and didn't stop to admire my wreath. I had envisioned how it would go. She would gush over it and then proceed to name all of the flowers and their corresponding genus and species, followed then by each of the proper botanical names. I was so looking forward to that. Then she was going to tell me which flowers could not possibly coexist in nature due to different climates and blooming times, etc.

But she didn't. She just walked in the door, looked at my wreath and said "Pretty wreath."

Dang her.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Spring Layout


I was in the mood to do a digi layout tonight, so I sorted through some pictures and came up with this. Of course I didn't work on any of my backlog because I wanted to do something current, but every little bit counts, right?

This layout was from a little road trip we took last weekend. I'm taking the PRAXIS exam Saturday so I can convince Idaho that I'm competent enough to teach here. You know, because my California credential isn't good enough. That just burns my butt, but what can I do? Anyway, that doesn't explain the road trip, does it? I have to be at the testing center at 7:30 a.m. and I'm not the most navigationally gifted person on the planet, so we drove to the parking lot of the testing center and then stored the location in my GPS. I am a cheater. Well, except on tests. Wish me luck.