At the Beach

This past Sunday, Shawn and I decided to take advantage of the fact that I was lectoring at the 8:00am Mass.  We actually brought Satchel to Church with us, and we left him in the car.  (We came back to find him sleeping on the front passenger seat...so he didn't seem to mind hanging out in the car by himself for a little over an hour.)

We headed to Golden Gardens Park in Ballard, which has a good stretch of beach area.  This was only Satchel's second trip to a beach, and he loved it!  He's starting to go out into the water a bit.  Once the weather gets warmer, we'll have to actually get into the water ourselves and see if he follows us.  (I'll let Shawn do that...since water in the Puget Sound stays right around 52 degrees year-round!)

Here are a few pictures:

After walking on the beach for about an hour, we went to the Little Coney restaurant that's right next to the park.  It's just a tiny little place, but it's pretty good...and they have yummy corn dogs.  :)  After lunch, we headed over to Cupcake Royale (my favorite) to get a few cupcakes to take home for the afternoon.

It was a great way to spend a Sunday morning! It was also really nice to know that by the time we got home after all of this, it was still only 1:00!  So we still had all afternoon and evening to do whatever we wanted or needed to do.  For me, this meant reading, and for Shawn, this unfortunately meant working.  But at least he got some fun in on Sunday, too!

You Didn't Believe Me, Did You?

When I said that I was going to start blogging again at least once a week, you didn't actually believe me, did you?  Ah, well...you know what good 'ol Robbie Burns said about the "best laid plans of mice and men."

Things have been good around here. Nothing terribly exciting.  Satchel is growing like a weed!  Last time we weighed him, he was 43 pounds...but I think that was a couple weeks ago.  He's six months old now (as of last Friday)!  He still loves playing fetch, and he'll often bring us his ball to play with.  He's getting better about going on walks, and he's learning not to pull on his leash.  He's actually really good at this...as long as there are no other dogs around.  He loves playing with other dogs, so if he sees one, he doesn't seem to understand why we're not just rushing right up to play.

In non-dog news...well, there really isn't much.  We've been doing a bit of work in the yard, but nothing major.  Work for me has been very busy lately.  Gotta love it when kids wait until the very last day to try to submit all their assignments, and then I have to grade them really quickly so that they get the credit for it.  Fun times.  Especially when it's a situation where the student needs the credit from my class to graduate...like, tomorrow.  Shawn's been pretty busy at work lately, too, although it hasn't been quite as bad as we were afraid it might be.

The rugby season has ended for Shawn.  His club has both a Super League team and a Division 1 team (for all intents and purposes), and they both made their respective playoff tournaments.  Considering that his Super League team was one of the worst in the league last year, this was a big deal for them!  Unfortunately, they lost last weekend to NYAC (New York Athletic Club), who is undefeated this year.  But even then, it was actually a close match.  Certainly something to be proud of!

I think we're both looking forward to the summer.  We don't really have many plans yet (just a quick trip to Denver planned in June), so I think it's time we pull out the calendars and start setting some dates.  If we don't plan ahead, we end up wasting lots of weekends and not getting to do everything we want!

Okay...I'll do my best to blog again before another 3 or 4 weeks passes.  :-)

One More Appliance

When we bought this house, we went into it knowing that we'd have to buy all new appliances...except the dishwasher.  This was a foreclosure, and the previous owner took just about everything with them when they left. 

The first thing we bought was the stove, and we actually bought that and had it installed before the house was technically ours!  We needed to have a working stove in the house prior to the appraisal or we may have had an issue with our loan.  We choose a Whirlpool stove/oven, stainless "look" with a black glass cooktop. 

Once the house was ours, we bought the refrigerator.  For this, we went with a Frigidaire, stainless "look" with black handles.  Basically, we're going for the sleeker look without spending the absurd amounts of money.  :-)

At one point prior to taking possession of the house, we thought our dishwasher was also unusable.  I have to admit I was a little bummed to discover that the dishwasher door does, in fact, latch shut, and therefore I didn't have an excuse to buy a new one right away.  :-)  Since we've moved here, the machine has done a decent job, although I've been noticing lately that it isn't cleaning all that well, and I occasionally end up re-washing some items.  So I was thrilled when Shawn suggested a few days ago that we could use part of our tax refund to get a new dishwasher!!  Yay!

So...any suggestions?  I'd like to go the "stainless look" route if possible, just so that all our kitchen appliances match.  I'm willing to consider black, though.  The main things I'm looking for in a dishwasher are simply a machine that will clean well and a machine that is quiet.  I had heard good things about Bosch, but on the Lowe's website, I've noticed that those machines aren't receiving very good reviews.  Whatever we get, we're limiting ourselves to less than $700. 

So feel free to give me some input!

Oh, and in case you're dying to know, we did purchase a washer and dryer for the laundry room when we first moved in, too.  We just chose to go the Craiglist route for those, though.  :-)

5 months old

Satchel is five months old now, and he weighs about 40 pounds (give or take a few...it's hard to weigh him at home).  He's getting so big!  He loves to play fetch and tug-of-war, and he still loves to snuggle.  He's been losing his baby teeth at a pretty rapid rate lately; I've found three teeth on the carpet in the last two days.  He's begun to love car rides.  I think he's figured out that getting in the car usually means he gets to do something fun once he gets out of the car.  Shawn was cleaning out the car the other day and took Satchel outside with him.  Satchel jumped into the car and happily hung out in the backseat while Shawn was cleaning.

Here are a few recent pictures of the little guy!

Here, he's checking out the camera, wondering what's going on in the front yard.

 Trying to look all innocent.  Really, he's hoping that I look away so that he can jump up into that chair.

 He's figured out that he's now tall enough to look out the window by himself.  He likes to keep an eye out for Shawn to come home.  He also sometimes likes to stand with his front paws on the window sill.

 Awwwwwww.......

 Getting ready to go on a hike on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

 It's hard to get a non-blurry picture of him, especially when we're playing fetch.

Why blog?

It's been a solid month since I last posted on this blog.  Wow.  That's pretty pathetic.

But here's the question....has anyone noticed?   Hm.

I guess the real question needs to be...why do I blog?  I certainly don't do it to make money (since I have no ads posted and I'm not doing anything special to up my readership or to get sponsors).  I don't really expect that strangers will be interested in following my blog for the sake of being entertained by my style of writing.  I initially started the blog as a place where friends and family could be updated quickly and easily about the things going on in our lives...but I'm not sure who actually reads this.

Part of the reason that I've enjoyed blogging is simply because I like writing things out.  If nothing else, this blog has been a diary of sorts for me over the last couple years.  And for that reason, I would like to continue to blog.  At least until I get back in the habit of blogging, I think I'll aim to post once a week.  If I post more than that...well, good for me.  :-)

Diggin'

I told Shawn once that I thought that perhaps Satchel is part cat.  Not only does he love snuggling with us, but he seems to dislike getting wet and dirty.  If we have to walk somewhere that's wet or muddy, he follows me...trying to tiptoe around the super muddy parts.  Unlike a lot of dogs, he doesn't seem to have any desire to roll around in the dirt, and he will walk around puddles instead of walking right through them.

In our side yard, we have a downspout that will need to be redirected this summer.  After a rainy day (which is a lot of days in this area!), we end up with standing water in part of our yard. 

Satchel has recently discovered this.  I've found him pawing gently at the water, trying to figure out what's going on.  I've also found him drinking from the water after he's been playing for awhile.  He has also pawed at the mud a bit, but I wouldn't call it digging.

Until today. 

I wasn't exactly sure where he was in the backyard, so I called him to come...and he obediently came running up the steps, onto the deck.  Where I saw this:

He had the sweetest little innocent look on his face...like there was absolutely nothing unusual about all the mud covering his paws.  And then he got to play with the towel while I got the mud off of him before letting him back inside.

Definitely not part cat.

Getting so big!

When we first got Satchel, he quickly discovered a suitcase that Shawn had left in our living room.  It's just a carry-on size...and Satchel loved sleeping on it.

Isn't he a cutie?  Such a sweet little puppy!

He's still a sweet little puppy...just not quite so little anymore!  I took this next picture this morning.  He's still trying to sleep on the suitcase, despite the fact that we bought him a bed this past weekend.  (He does sleep on the bed sometimes...but other times, he definitely seems to think that we bought him an awesome $60 chew toy!)

Isn't he just getting so big?!  And he's just over 4 months old now.