Dog days of summer...

Just a few cute pictures of the work goin' on with the boys.

"We ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti..."

Hehe don't they look like Hannibal Lecter? Poor guys. We've got them pretty used to their "cheese baskets". They know that when the baskets come out, cheese is soon to follow. They don't interact much with these one, but I guess we'll get there.

The other night I was tired and feeling pretty down about the doggy situation. After a quick walk with the boys, I gave up and came in the house. Bobby refused to give up. He put their "cheese baskets" on and stayed outside with them for about another hour. I looked out the window at one point and thought, "This is the kind of Dad my kids get to have" it was a nice thought. :)

A girly moment....

Please excuse me while I have a little squeely schoolgirl moment...

There's a movie coming out called "Guns Girls and Gambling".

Starring the best character actor on the planet Gary Oldman

And two of my favorite celebrity crushes, Christian Slater and Dane Cook; (This is them on the set for said movie... Look at that sexy squint!)

Also with Jeff Fahey from Lost

   

And True Blood cutie Sam Trammell

GIGGITY I don't even care what the movie's about - I will be there opening day! :)

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom." Anais Nin

The most difficult part of any exercise plan for me is always the first day. If I've had a long period of inertia (aka; being lazy) I have such a hard time changing THAT pattern! I can easily get up and clean my house, do laundry, make dinner... But taking a 30 minute walk, or digging the Jillian dvd out of the cabinet... for some reason it's just so tough for me!

In the same vein, it is also difficult for me to change the pattern of hiding in my house. I am wary of this pattern as it is indicative of depression... And still it happens to me on a regular basis! Sometimes I just enjoy being in my home (especially lately, because it's MY home and that is still new and exciting!) but sometimes I stay in because it is difficult for me to make that first step, to break my pattern.

I realized today that I am stuck in both of these unhealthy patterns! The sit-on-my-fat-butt pattern has been for a few weeks. The stay in my house has only been about a week, but still I feel it happening. I certainly don't want to be that girl. Ick! So how about we do something about it?

I got off my butt and took one of the dogs for a couple miles of walk. Up around our neighborhood and back into the nice 'hood behind us. I walked as fast as I could stand and worked up a pretty good sweat! When I got back I took the other dog out back and did lunges while playing fetch. Wow my legs are sore already!!

So now I will try to set a new pattern. Tomorrow maybe I will walk a little longer. Hopefully soon I can get my bike from my mom's house and I will continue to break out of my rut! What else can I do to break the pattern? I'll have to think of something I can get out of the house and DO (that is free)...

A little of the "rain"...

I have been trying to get up the oomph to post a blog about my beautiful blue cabinets, or the greenness of our backyard... But I'm a bit down this week and just can't bring myself to post a cheerful blog. Maybe next week.

But I decided that I called my blog "Sunshine - and rain" for a reason. So I'm going to share a little bit of the rain we've had this week.

In the month since we moved here we have been blissfully happy. We started coming together, feeling like a family (yes, us and our dogs is a family!) And we even started to work some of the kinks out of our relationship. Things definitely haven't always been running smoothly, but we were ironing them out, and feeling very good about it. Living together in the moments we had, and eagerly looking towards the future. Okay, that part has not changed at all - we've just had a hiccup because the comfort of our home has been disrupted!

On Sunday night our dogs started fighting - violently! We tried together (and sometimes at contention with each other) for two days to fix the problem, and stop them from fighting... To no avail. On Monday night they fought and Ledger AND Bobby got hurt. Don't worry Bobby is okay! (Ledger is too). But we realized at that point that whatever was going on was beyond our abilities to fix.

I realize that most people at this point would just find a new home for Ledger (the new dog) and stop whining about it. And we did discuss that option. But ultimately what we decided is that that is not the kind of people we want to be. We chose to bring Ledger into our home, and we are not just going to discard him -  as I said earlier, we feel like this is our family! 

Our vet suggested a Behavior Specialist at UC Davis and we've got an appointment with them next Wednesday. Did you know that there's a credit card you can get, that is specifically for expensive Vet bills? It's no interest for 18 months. THANK GOD for it, because it's the only way we were able to make the decision to see the specialist!

For now life is sort of tense in our house. The dogs have to be separated constantly, and playing "musical dogs" means that Bobby and I spend more time in different rooms than usual - but we are managing. We've decided that tonight we will have a (very cheap!) date night and spend some time together.

Bobby was making a video of the dogs playing together the last time they fought. I figured I'd share it, because... Why not? Maybe someone can watch it and catch something we missed? Any info we can give the behavior specialist is helpful! :)

"I'm a lean mean ground beef machine! " - Meatwad

My friend Stacie (over at One step at a time) tells me that I don't blog enough. So I thought I'd post a quick (and triumphant!) blog about my dinner tonight!

I came  home thinking I would just make some quick pasta with turkey burger scrunched in it. I was looking at the turkey burger and thinking "blah", so I decided to try my hand at making meatballs (which I had never done before)!

Of course I didn't look at any recipes, but just started tossing stuff together. I was feeling a little nervous when I popped them in the oven. (Is that how you're supposed to do it?!)

But they were looking pretty good when I took 'em out! After I added sauce and linguini they were looking mighty tasty! 

Bobby said they were super moist, and he ate his plus a few off of my plate - so I'm calling them a success!