Little Pink Dogs

Whenever Charlie travels for work he always brings me back a little gift. A few weeks ago he went to Seattle and brought me back a cute little dachshund cookie cutter.

(Yes, we are totally obsessed with our dog. We have officially become those crazy dog people that everyone makes fun of.)

This weekend we decided to make some dachshund sugar cookies. Charlie did the baking...

...and I did the frosting. Cracker stuck close by in hopes that he might get to try one.

And in the end, we ended up with four dozen little pink dachshund cookies. We tried to make brown frosting, but it didn't quite turn out. Since when do red & green make pink?

Pumpkin Contest

Every year Charlie's company has a pumpkin carving contest. Everyone who enters gets $20, and the winners get $200! The theme this year was Movies. I wanted to do something really creative and fun, but by Thursday night I still didn't have any great ideas. And I didn't want to spend more than an hour or so on a pumpkin. Here's what we came up with:

Charlie had warned me that people really went all out for this contest, but since there were going to be 25 winners... I still had a tiny bit of hope that maybe we would win. Here are some of the other entries:

Needless to say, we didn't win. But we did get our $20, and next year I'll be more prepared!

My Week With Mikael

My best friend Mikael and her little girl came to visit us for a week. It was fun to have her here and a nice break from our normal routine. We went on morning walks, went to the beach, to the parks, the pool, got Sprinkles cupcakes and Golden Spoon, went shopping, and out to lunch and dinner. Unfortunately, they were here right during all of the fires so they had to put up with all of the smokey air. But we had a great week anyway.

Enjoying our Sprinkles cupcakes

Lunch at Souplantation

Getting Isaac ready for bed

Isaac Austin Wood

He has arrived! Check out his blog for all the details:

http://isaacofwoodbridge.blogspot.com

Our New Backyard

These pictures are of our new backyard. The entire backyard was covered with an old wood deck. We wanted grass and knew it had big potential! I started a few weeks ago on it and tore out the side deck. I quickly realized the job was a big undertaking. We hired a crew who dug out the deck, brought in new soil, put in an extensive sprinkler system, planted plants and flowers, laid sod, and made it look great!

Party Time...

Everyone's invited!

Flourescent Nightmare

It's been a few years since I've gone to a nail salon for a pedicure. I have no problem doing my own nails. And I'm cheap. But a few weeks ago as I was straining to reach my toes, I decided that next time I was going to be paying someone to reach them for me. "Next time" was on Thursday.

I've got to hand it to those nail girls... it's a job I'd never want to have. Unfortunately, most of them are a little hard to understand. This was the case on Thursday. And gosh who knew this was a sales job! The girl kept pushing me to upgrade to the Deluxe or even the Supreme Package. Nope, just the basic pedicure. That's all I want. But somehow during the 30 minutes or so I was sitting there she must have tricked me into agreeing to something extra. Sure the massage and all that is nice, but all I really wanted was to have my toe nails trimmed and painted. $30 later I walked out with soft, smooth feet and perfectly manicured nails.

But wait....

How did I end up with this awful color on my toes? Did I pick this? I promise it looked much better in the bottle. And I think the lighting in the salon made it look different too. (The picture actually looks better than the real life version too.) So now what? I have flourescent pink toes that I paid $30 for! That day I abandoned my flip flops and wore shoes for the first time in months. When I took them off, my worst fears were confirmed. The first thing Charlie said to me was "that color is AWFUL!"

What should I do? Pay to have them re-done? Try and reach them myself? Or just live with this flourescent nightmare for the next few weeks until I can finally bend at the waist again?

4th of July

Charlie & I started out our holiday by waking up early for the Woodbridge 5k/10k run. This is just one of the many fun activites that our community hosts for the 4th of July. We decided that we'll do the run every year as part of our holiday tradition. (I already checked for next year and they do allow jogging strollers on the course!) Charlie ran the 10k while I walked the 5k with my pregnant friend Christy and her husband Tennyson. Aftwards, we went to their house for a yummy breakfast.

Later in the afternoon we met up with my family at my aunt & uncle's house in Anaheim Hills. The kids all went swimming and we had a BBQ with lots of good food. We decided to bring Cracker with us because we felt bad leaving him alone all evening and were worried he'd freak out during the Woodbridge firework show. We are becoming "those people" who bring our dog with us everywhere we go! But everyone seemed to like having him at our 4th of July gathering. And he enjoyed crawling around under the table eating any crumbs that happened to drop.

Just before dark we headed over to the park to watch the firework show. We thought we had a great spot, but as the show got started we soon realized that the show didn't have much height to it. About half the show was hidden behind the trees! And poor Cracker was terrified by the fireworks.

We had a nice 4th of July and enjoyed having a day off of work!

"Cracker, how do you plead?"......"Not Guilty!"

Welcome Home Cracker!

We finally got our little dog. He is a 4 year old miniature dachshund named Cracker. We think he's adorable! His owner was sent to Iraq and the wife moved in with her mother. The mother didn't want Cracker, so they took him back to the breeder where they originally got him.

He is such a good dog! He is very well behaved and affectionate. We think he's feeling a little attention starved after being abondoned by his owners. He had been back at the breeder for three months, living with 130 other dachshunds. Poor little guy.

Now he is home with us. He absolutely LOVES Charlie. He follows him all around the house. I think he likes me too, but Charlie is definitely his new best friend.

The Next Best Thing...

...to Sprinkles Cupcakes would have to be the Barefoot Contessa box mixes.

Yesterday I decided to stop by Sprinkles to pick up a few Father's Day cupcakes for Charlie. I figured the store would be busy, but as I pulled into the parking lot I realized that "busy" was a major understatement! After finally finding a parking spot clear on the other side of the shopping center, I made my way to the store and took my place at the end of an incredibly long line.

The last time I had seen the Sprinkles line even close to this long was on Valentine's Day - and even then it was only half as long as what I was facing yesterday. After about ten minutes I threw in the towel. I knew I wouldn't be leaving with cupcakes anytime in the next hour or more.

But then on my way back to the car I decided to stop in Sur La Table. Lo and behold the Barefoot Contessa cupcake mixes!!! Charlie and I had tried the chocolate ones before and they were fantastic. This time I went for the coconut. I made a second stop at Bristol Farms to pick up a few ingredients. $14 (these mixes aren't cheap) and 10 minutes later I was on my way. I glanced at the Sprinkles line again as I drove past... the guy in the green shirt who had been in front of me hadn't moved an inch.

Making the cupcakes myself probably took just about as long as I would have spent standing in line at Sprinkles. And for $14 I now have a dozen cupcakes instead of just 4. They are worth every penny. These things are to die for. If you'd like to try one, just stop by before we finish them all off!

The Impossible Rescue

For the past month, we have been trying to adopt a dog. What we thought would be a quick and easy process and turned out to be very frustrating and disappointing.

In case you were wondering.....we did not get Buddy (from Carrie's post below). The owners never called us back. We don't consider ourselves too picky....we want a medium sized dog that is not a puppy and is somewhat well behaved.

We were hoping to adopt a Dachsund named "Brownie". His owner is a Chinese woman in Garden Grove who worked too much and no time for him. After two weeks of emails, phone calls, and cancelled meetings, she decided to give Brownie to a family member. We liked him and were sad when we didn't get him. Here's a picture of Brownie:

Later, we found another dog on the internet. His name was Buddy. He is a black dachsund, that is 3 years old, house trained, and a little overweight. (this Buddy is not to be confused with the original Buddy in a previous post). We called the animal rescue, spoke with the adoption coordinator many times, filled out the applications, our references were called, and we set up an appointment on Friday night to go to Pomona on Tuesday for the final interview and adoption. We received an email from them today telling us they gave Buddy to someone else! We were very angry and disapointed. Over the weekend we went out and bought a collar, leash, dog bowls, toys, crate, and special diet dog food.

Our serach continues for a dog.........we didn't think it would be this hard. We'll keep you posted.