making me smile...

looking through the point n shoot. haven't uploaded from there since i got little miss hybrid, so november!

one of the first pics of me and lil miss. nick was so hating the camera at this time. was yelling at me for not lugging the rebel everywhere!


guinness on the way back from a puppy class. those ears kill me... and don't mind the fug towel protecting my seats.


member those corn dogs a while back??? here's the pic...

my sweetie pie brought some super yummy chocolate covered strawberries to work for everyone on valentine's day...
i don't do flowers. tend to kill them and am not home during the day to look at them, so twas a perfect gift and made it even sweeter that he thought about my coworkers.
aw...

uber crappy picture, but dude that says 50 mpg! woot, woot! yes, i had just filled up the tank so it was sorta cheating. with the weather warming a bit, i'm hanging around 40 mpg!


and this one i took today. a sneakie of fantabulous goodies from bring your own memories!! loving it. ready to sit down and create!

long day.

so worth it.
found out guinnea should be a keeper. just lots of issues to work on and knowing what we need to do if we do have kidlets. scary to know that young pups who exhibit aggression are more likely to turn on their owners... eek.
wasn't as expensive as we thought and totally didn't get bad, bad news.
told us a lot of what we know, some things we were doing incorrectly, and reinforced some of our current practices with the pigmeister.
he did a great job interacting with dogs and peeps.
kinda hard to learn that the reason we have problems is because he's so smart. who knew you didn't want a smart dog? were told to get a golden or lab next time... ha! i'm so going smaller then, i think.
so lots to work on, but knowing we can keep him is awesome. stressfull. lots of work in our future. but i didn't get him to give up on him, so yay!

stepped on a pop top...

blew out my croc...
so the lyrics don't work as well as jimmy buffetts. still funny. was quite an amusing site today at work. somehow i cracked the plastic piece that holds the strap on. would randomly be walking and it would pop apart. nice. super glue wouldn't even do the trick.
found out my awesome croc lady will fix them for me. hoping to stop there tomorrow!! will try and take pics before she fixes it! love that she repairs them. must be more common that one would think. when i told nick his reply was, 'only you.' well, apparently not mister so hrmph. ;o)

redo.

so you read my woes, maybe, on the start of 29. well, the pipes.
the following day guinness went a bit nutty. not sure if it was the meds, or the puppy rest, or pent up energy... but it was a growl fest. a bit scary.
we decided to take him off the sedatives {which can kinda be like alcohol and make him less inhibited}, took him off of the tether in the room and have given him free roam of the downstairs. can you say boxes on all of our couches so he doesn't jump up on them?? also been out on a few walks and visited petsmart and pet supply plus. {needed a nail trim and a bath... who knew doing nothing could make you so stinky?!}
and he won himself a trip to the vet. another work up, this time only labs. and we also get to take a day trip to the puppy therapist. yeah, my dog is going to a behaviorist.
weren't sure what to do at first. but i want to know why. was it the meds? pent up energy? or is he just aggressive? i mean we have had some other troubles with him... so we wanna work it out. especially if we are talking about kidlets. and even for just us and our visitors.
found out today that they had an opening for wednesday. nick and i were able to take the time off and we can hopefully have some answers soon.
i've been a complete worry wart. so hope he's fixable and something bad doesn't happen.
have tried to keep occupied over the weekend to distract myself. and to make up for the bunk birthday weekend. friday we skipped the auto show. hung out with my lil bro. played wii, drank. good times. saturday we went out with nick's mom. had a great time. over four hours at dinner. might have been the best conversations we've had, ever. looking forward to doing it again. sunday was dinner with his dad's side and more wii. weee! gotta love a wiiweekend!
and the presents weren't half bad either... more rebel reading. maybe one day i'll actually crack open the darn things! ;oP

ugg-ly.

yes. my birthday was ugly in more ways than one....
the pipes freaking froze again. expletive, expletive, expletive. only the hot pipe this time.
so nick and i were stuck at home all day wondering when the darn hot water would work again... if i would be able to shower on my birthday. the answer. nope. water didn't come on until about 5:30 this morning. thank goodness, because i wouldn't have been able to hand a bird bath and then have to go to work. have to work out messing with the insulation. think our builders really skimped on the darn stuff. have to figure out how to put some above our garage as well. must be done before kidlets or we'll wake up one day with a babysicle. dude, that sound bad. but you know what i'm meaning...
the good ugg. i got some new boots.
have never been a fan of uggs. thought they were just some celebrity hyped shoe. but then i saw these uber cute ones. do i, or don't i? i've read blogs and articles. heard mixed reviews. i mean they are ugly. but i think this might qualify as cute ugly. and you so know what i mean.


can i say they are the comfiest, warmest boots ever. not waterproof. need to investigate if ugg makes some of those.... but still, my toes are toasty even in this -10 degree weather... and i'm not even wearing socks. pure boot action. nice!
and i even got them in this crazy rose/raisin color. i'm normally a brown/grey/black girl. but i thought these should be different. who knows. midlife crisis at 29? i dunno.
they were a complete pain in the arse to hunt down. sold out everywhere. and i don't see them from the website i got them from... so glad i didn't procrastinate any longer. i know my toes thank me too! ;o)

darn pioneer woman..

and her bacon wrapped cream cheese stuffed jalapenos.
so i was going to make these for a superbowl party this weekend. well, nick and i decided to be lazy and we stayed home instead. turned out to be a good thing, i didn't feel well and it decided to snow. because we were home, i decided to not make these jalapenos. figured i could make them at a later day.
rewind to yesterday. thought it would be nice to make them and then give them to my coworker who's party we did not attend on sunday. they should come with a freaking warning. i got gd jalapeno burns!!
oh my goodness, it was absolutely miserable. wasn't sure what it was at first. it's winter and that means dry, cracked, chapped hands for shan. disgusting but true. sad product of washing my hands 3984 times a day. it seems no matter how much lotion i apply, they're still dry. but i digress.
so to prep the lil suckers you have to deseed them. apparently, i should have been wearing gloves. i did use a spoon, but i think i was splashing oil on the hand that was holding them. washed the hands a few times during prep thinking that might help. but no. the darn soap, held the oils in place.
what do i do for the pain? stick my thumb in milk... nick said it works for your mouth, why not your thumb? nope. no workie. had it in there for like an hour. finally had to do some research and came up with a few options: soaked my hand in vinegar {totally lovely smelling}, poured some baking soda on it, ran the warmest water i could stand over it, washed it repeatedly with dish soap. still nothing. our last ditch effort = bleach. dude, bleach so does not belong in the kitchen. but it worked. had to do some dilution of bleach and water and dip the hand in briefly. washed and repeated. seriously, some of the worst pain ever. nick was reading that in some cases, the pain lasted three days. i would have died.
i guess this is just my psa to you. wear gloves if you are dealing with jalapenos. and if you don't have gloves, make sure you have bleach handy!
oh and i haven't even eaten the blasted things yet. hoping they are very, very tasty!

pothole slalom...

would totally make a doozy for a new olympic sport.
i seriously feel that i have to zig and zag every 500 feet to avoid a pothole. and some of them are ginormous.
this weather needs to make up its mind: hot or cold? snow or rain? it's freaking ridiculous and causing complete havoc with the roads.
friday a massive snow storm. monday crazy warm weather and fog like you wouldn't believe. throw in some lightening and thunder for good measure. yesterday evening was this crazy rain which was supposed to turn into snow. but no, that came this afternoon and was super duper thick! now we're heading back to the negative degree territory.
come on already... darn groundhog.
signed...
dreaming of spring. ;o)

good parents.

nick and i feel so bad for mr. guinnea pig, having to restrict his activities is no easy feat and the medications that are supposed to calm him down aren't helping. boo! been a bit tricky with his growling fits. he does really well for a while and then i think the pent up energy just gets the best of him. he runs around like an idiot and then can't figure out why his legs hurt... maybe surgery is in our future.
to entertain him we've taught him lots of tricks these past few weeks and are running out of ones he can do while laying down. thinking it would be way cool to teach him to nod yes and shake his head no... and use sign language signals too.

guinness loves the snow. and it sucks that he can't frolic about in it considering it's snowed quite a bit in the last few weeks. our consolation prize for him:
snow in a bowl. ;o)





and then catching snowballs... he got pretty good at it!
was a little messy. but so worth it. kept him entertained for a bit. however, we had to watch where we walked to avoid the wet carpet!