Brightly Colored Salamanders

A sign of my commitment to not only weight loss, but to be more healthy. We're getting out and moving more and we've been much more happy for it. Instead of DRIVING the dogs down to the dog park, we're taking the 10 or so minute walk down there with them.

A Christmas gift from Dan & Tami. Josh and I were talking about how lucky we feel to have each other and that we love the life that we have. That discussion made me think about this meaningful gift and the meaning of the words. Boy, do we really have a story...

I found a quote from M. Scott Peck that I thought is really relevant to our relationship and how we've gotten through some sticky situations:

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”

So I'm a little slow in posting pics and here are the pics that I took on our annual snow day trip that coincided with Valentines's Day this year. We got to Donner Lake after a four-hour drive, took two pictures, and promptly dropped my camera in the snow. I ran it back to the truck to thaw and thankfully, it's still functioning.

This is what we faced going up the hill


And this was part of the reason why. The other reason is that people were being LAME and only going 40 mph on clear roads!!


The little girl looking out the window, fogging it up, then getting frustrated because she couldn't see out of it anymore.


Abbi in the snow. I wasn't able to get any of Hayden playing in it, because of the aforementioned camera incident...., but they were having a BLAST! It was pretty fresh powder and they thought that they could walk in it but were totally surprised when they sunk down to their heads! They both learned pretty quickly that it wasn't solid and then only started walking in the trails that we'd made in the snow.


We stopped at Cabela's in Reno before heading back home. It's a pretty cool place and it's HUGE. We went to go check out the guns and dog stuff (THREE WHOLE AISLES!!) and stopped by the restaurant. We both got bison burgers and fries and this was all I could put down. Josh loves the bison meat but to me, it just tasted like high quality ground beef. Much to his disappointment...


With the storms that we've been having, we're hoping to have another snow day soon!!

View thru a dirty windshield during the FOUR HOUR drive to Donner Lake. It was so worth it though to see the dogs act like crazy animals. Wait! They are crazy animals!!

I forgot to take a picture today....

DISCLAIMER: Animal abuse, or negligance at the very least, can be seen in the following pictures!

These were pictures from last night. The cold, rainy weather has been keeping us inside more than any of us have been in a while. And whenever the dogs need to go outside, they flatten their ears and crouch down, like they're being assaulted from above. Then they scoot back inside as fast as they can!

The last picture is Hayden telling me that he's had enough of me taking his picture while he's trying to sleep. HA!

And Josh is seriously questioning his judgement in getting me a new camera...

The best, and possibly the worst, thing in the world. These are the feet of little Hayden's blankie: his Bad Cuz. He carries this around with him all of the time and thankfully, doesn't make it squeek. Anymore... He'll have it in his mouth and shake his head violently so the thing is hitting either side of his face. But watch out!! He'll lose grip of it sometimes and it'll go flying! Ask Josh about the time when he got hit in the head with a hard rubber football...

Just because we're on a "diet" doesn't mean we can't eat yummy foods!! Josh surprised me with this dinner last night. We were both nicely satisfied after peppers and rice.

A wet, sad reminder of warmer days.... Josh said he's "missing the taste of bbq" so I took this picture for him. When really, we're not using it because we ran out of propane. Where's Hank Hill???

Mom, mom, mom....we REALLY wanna go outside and plaaaaaaaay! How could you say no to a face like that?? Thinking of wet, muddy dogs with wet, muddy paws will MAKE you say no to that face!!

Lake Nute!! We're in the process of installing a boat ramp and will be charging $5 use fees since the puddle in our backyard is about as deep as Folsom Lake now...

Abbi enjoying one of her birthday treats on her bed. She's such a good girl because as soon as she gets a treat, she'll trot over to her bed to eat it. Unlike Hayden, who will chomp it right on the carpet and not care how much of a mess he makes. Abbi likes the mess though because then she can come in and clean up after him!

It's been called to my attention that I've been slacking at the picture-a-day thing. Well, to be honest, I have. My camera battery died and I was lame about putting it back in the camera once it had been charged. SO, without further ado, I am going to re-start the picture-a-day today. Well, technically four days ago because that's when I started taking pictures again.

Enjoy!

Saturday was Abbi's third birthday and we had to celebrate! We bought her a cake from a doggie boutique in Granite Bay: The Doggie Bag. According to the owners, the cake is human grade and we could even enjoy a slice with the dogs. Um, no thanks. I'll take your crazy word for it. But the dogs absolutely loved it!













After cake, we took the kids to Petsmart to pick out new collars, get new toys, and some special birthday treats. Petsmart didn't have the collars we wanted, but there was a baby boxer there that wanted to play! Hayden wasn't too keen on it but Abbi was super curious. She's such a good, patient, momma-dog and she let the baby paw all over her without batting an eye. Then off to Petco we went in search of new collars.

Abbi's birthday haul ended up being a cake, two different types of treats, some wet food that smells like FISH, a treat ball, and a pretty new collar that she picked out herself. I wanted to get her a pink one and Josh wanted a red one so we let her pick. He held a collar in each hand and called Abbi over. She nosed the red one and walked back to me. She didn't even acknowledge the pink one!! I guess it was pretty obvious which one she preferred... We initally only got one treat ball for Abbi and since Hayden can't be left out, we got him a ball to play with. Well, you can't give one dog a treat without giving something to the other... DUH!! So we had to go back out and get Hayden his very own treat ball too.

I swear, these dogs are so spoiled!!