February 25, 2008:  Hey again, not much new around here.  We had a quiet weekend, Lisa worked and I did a bunch of stuff around the yard.  The weather was decent so I decided to get started early on the yard work.  There is a concrete pad on the east side of the house that from the looks of it used to be the bottom of a dog pen.  We've talked about cutting a bit off of it and planting grass in its place.  We worked all day and all night Thursday again so after sleeping in Friday morning I went out and rented a concrete saw.  I made a single cut the length of the pad and broke up the 12' x 3' section of the pad with a sledge hammer.  It took about 5 hours to break it up, load it into the trailer, and bring it to the concrete recycling pile at the nursery down the street.  I picked up a trailer load of topsoil and about 200 square feet of sod and got a good portion of it rolled out before it got too dark.  Saturday morning after Lisa left for work I finished rolling out the rest of the sod so after it takes we'll have lawn right up to where the shed will sit.  We're hoping that the month we have left before Stella comes home is enough time for the sod to take.  We won't be finishing all of the back yard this year but at least this will give us more yard for the dog.  In the afternoon I went over to Eric's place to help him with the new stall he is building for the barn.  When we were finished we put up a kennel partition in the dog's room so the puppies can share the room with the other dogs.  Speaking of the puppies, they are getting really big and actually starting to act like dogs too.  I was only around them for a few minutes but they were playing with a couple of toys, wrestling each other and even starting to run around the room a little.  They are 4 weeks old today so only 4 more weeks and one of them will be running around our place!  Other than all that we added a couple more pictures to the wall and are still waiting for the two prints we had to order.  This week will hopefully be a little slower at work and Bryan will be arriving from Denver a week from Friday to do some skiing.  We'll be doing some standard Seattle tourist stuff and hitting either Baker or Steven's Pass.  It is getting late and I should probably finish up.  Lisa just called to say that they broke their daily record by over 50 perscriptions and she's just leaving now, almost 2 hours late.  Have a great week! 

February 20, 2008:  Good afternoon, hope you are all having a good week.  I hate to say it but things have been mostly just more of the same for us since the last time we spoke.  Last week I worked a ton of extra hours topping them all off with an all nighter Thursday night that led right to our yearly celebration party at work and a trip over to Eric and Isabela's place to see how the puppies were doing.  I was awake from Thursday morning to Friday night at about 10pm with about an hour of sleep in the afternoon.  I'm being told that things are going to change soon at work and they better because as soon as Stella comes home with us I'm not going to have that kind of time anymore.  The puppies are doing great, their eyes are open and they are just about able to walk more than a few steps before falling.  They even got their first meal of formula out of a bowl, which was quite funny to watch.  They are starting to play a little too, biting each other and even barking a little too.  Now we're really getting excited about taking her home.  We won't choose the one that will become Stella until the puppies get evaluated in a few more weeks.  I was so out of it that we completely forgot to get new pictures so I borrowed this one from their website so you all don't have to go without until we get over there again next week.  Lisa was off all weekend so we worked on finishing the living room decorations and getting a list together of stuff we need before Stella comes home.  Our ficus tree has been dropping a lot of leaves so we went to the nursery it came from to ask some questions about it and pick up a couple more plants for the house.  We got some answers about the tree and plants for the living room and kitchen, so far the tree has been better too.  We also picked up another painting for the dining room and ordered one for the last wall in the living room.  Once that arrives and we get it up on the wall we'll just have one more lamp to pick up and the room will be finished.  Lisa has always wanted to put together a collage of picture frames in the staircase with black and white images of us, the dogs, our families and whatever else looks good.  We made a trip to Ikea and picked up a bunch of inexpensive frames and got them hung on the wall after work Monday and Tuesday.  Most of the prints came from our printer but the two larger ones are on order, hopefully they'll be here by the weekend so I can put them in the few empty frames.  Other than that things have been quiet, the weather has been great and I was even able to get a bike ride in Sunday and Monday afternoon, man am I out of shape! 

February 11, 2008:  Happy Monday everyone.  Not much to report here, it was a busy work week as always but a quiet week around the house.  We haven't been up to much really, thinking about the puppy and trying to plan for her arrival is taking up most of our free time.  The weather has been pretty bad, mostly just very rainy at our place but the mountains only about 20 minutes from the house got a minimum of six feet in a six day window last week.  They say the avalanche danger was the worst it's been basically ever.  The local news weather crew said the following about this year's snow fall in the mountain passes:

"Imagine the sleepless nights the DOT crews had the winter of 1955-1956, which saw an incredible 828" of snow between Oct. 1 and May 31 at Snoqualmie Pass. This winter, we're "only" at 390 inches -- still more than we received all of last year and only 30" short of the normal snowfall for an entire winter season."

We haven't been up there in a while but hope to soon, the highway has been closed more than it's been open lately so even if we had time we probably couldn't get through.  Bryan is coming up from Denver to do some snowboarding at the beginning of March so we'll get to check it out then for sure.  As for the puppies, we haven't been able to get out to visit them but really hope to this weekend.  We've heard that they are about to open their eyes and are starting to get strong enough to walk around a little, it won't be long and they will be trouble times 13!  If we get over there this weekend or sooner we'll be sure to get more pictures and post them when we can.  The weekend was pretty quiet around here, Lisa had to work and I just messed around with a few things here at the house.  We picked up a few plants a month or so ago and haven't really decided where we were going to put each of them.  We had a couple of plant stands but they were just a bit too tall to sit in front of the living room windows.  An hour or so with the grinder, a cutoff wheel and the welder and now they fit perfectly in front of the window!  Have a great week. 

February 3, 2008:  Hello gang, hope you all had a good week and fun Superbowl weekend.  Work was crazy but that's nothing new and certainly not worth talking about.  Lottie had her litter on Monday and it was a big one, 13 healthy puppies.  We got to spend some time with them on Tuesday and they are quite possibly the cutest things you've ever seen.  They don't do much other than sleep and eat for now and we're told that's all they'll be doing for a few more weeks.  Lottie is being a great mother and other than showing concern when we pick up one of the puppies, she's great with them being handled.  We don't know which one will be coming home with us in eight weeks but this one has great coloring and is very sweet.  There were five girls born so we'll see how their colors change and personalities develop as time goes on.  We ran a few errands on Saturday and even found one of the lamps we needed for the living room.  I changed an outlet in the living room and the switch for the lights in the garage to a lighted one so you can easily tell from a distance that it's on or off.  I seem to keep forgetting the garage lights on so this will at least show us if they are on or not when we walk by the laundry room.  Today we went over to watch the Superbowl with Eric and Isabela and see how the puppies were doing.  When we drove into the yard Isabela was walking one of the horses back to its stall in the barn.  She stopped to say hello and the horse stuck its head into the driver's side window of the Element.  That is the closest I've ever been to a horse so it startled me a bit.  She was very friendly, Isabela said it was probably because she could smell the huge vegetable tray that was sitting on the passenger seat, maybe horses aren't so scary after all.  Anyway, that's about it for tonight, it's late and I have another long week coming up at work so it's bed time for me.