the way from end to end. It's like a huge agility tunnel for her, she loves it. Unfortunately for her it's only about 16 inches high under there so we are
going to put some chicken wire on the two ends to keep her from getting stuck in there. Gregg and I completely overbuilt that deck and I'll tell you one thing,
there won't be any removing a couple boards to get her out, it would take a bulldozer to get it apart! She's starting to get the house training thing down but if
we don't watch her closely for her "signal" we'll miss it and she'll just go on the floor. She shows us but she isn't making it real obvious yet, that will come
soon enough. We've left her alone in her crate a couple times and she isn't real excited about it but that will also take time for her to get used to. She
was much better last night than the first two nights so hopefully things will continue to get better as the days and weeks go by. Lisa is off the rest of the
week so she'll be leaving her each day for a few hours to help her get used to being alone. The hardest part seems to be that she was with 12 other puppies,
Lottie, Claire, Keanga and Nelson the whole time so she was never alone. Overall she's doing very well, plays real hard and sleeps real hard when she's done.
I added a link to the left under 'Just Us' for lots of pictures of Stella. It's going to start out
small but keep watch for more and more. Lisa is taking them so fast that I had to get a bigger memory card so it doesn't fill up so fast! Have a great week.
March 27, 2008: Good morning all, hope you are having a fine day. Things are alright here, can't complain I guess.
It's been a while since I've done an update so I'll try to remember everything, probably won't happen though. My work was a nightmare last week so
that can be blamed for the lack of updates. We worked 8am to 8pm or later every night but Friday, only because nobody could stay awake after 5pm.
I got home and went straight to bed each night, couldn't even get myself to the hottub! Early in the week we bought tickets for my parents to come out
for a visit at the end of April so we're real excited about that. Neither of our familes have been out here and now that the inside of the house is mostly
finished and we'll have Stella home it will be a perfect time for them to come out. Lisa had to work the weekend but had Sunday off for Easter so
we were able to run a few last minute dog stuff errands, put together the gates and crates and even do a little puppy proofing. Everything is ready to
go, just need to pick up some food and treats and that will be it. We even picked up a small portable carpet cleaner for spot cleaning accidents,
hopefully just having it will mean we don't need it. Saturday I picked up the plywood we'll need for the shed including three sheets of exterior T111
that we'll use on the back, which will but up agains the house and never be seen anyway. We took advantage of the fact that it will never be seen and
used it as a test for the paint we had color matched to the house. We're building it in place so after that wall is up we won't be able to reach it for
paint but it still needs to be protected from the rain. It only took me a couple hours to prime and paint the three sheets and the color was a perfect
match. The weather was so good that after my chores around the house Kyle and I went for a nice ride at some trails the locals call
"the beav". The ride was
great and for the first time since I got the Prophet last year it felt great. I
guess it just took a little more time to get used to it than I thought it would, now I can't wait to ride it again! This week at work has been much better
but Lisa's has been much worse. They had one of their two technicians leave last week and they haven't replaced her yet so Lisa has been staying up to two
hours extra each night to get all the work done. Other stores that do the numbers they have been doing have two or three more technicians than she does yet
they expect them to all have the same wait time for a perscription. I'm not sure how much longer she's going to last there if they keep this up. If
you are an avid reader of jayandlisa.org you might remember that I put a bunch of new sod down in the back yard a few weeks ago? For the first few days there
was some animal that was pulling up the corners of it at night or in the early morning, we just assumed it was a crow because they are everywhere in our
neighborhood. It stopped for a few weeks but started back up much worse this week. I came out the other morning and saw more brown than green.
A little research online told me that it was likely raccoons pulling up the sod to find bugs underneath. It couldn't be a bird because some of the pieces
it moved weighed more than a few pounds. The only way I read you can keep them away long enough for it to root in solid enough is to cover it with staked
down chicken wire. The other night, in the pouring rain, we did just that and knock on wood, they haven't been back. I'll get some pictures of it
over the weekend. Speaking of weekend, we pick up Stella Friday night!!!!! I'll be getting lots of pictures for the next 10+ years and maybe even some
video so get used to it!. We'll talk again soon for sure.
March 18, 2008: Hey everyone, sorry it's been so long but as always it's
been crazy around here. My trip to Vegas went well, everyone took to the training like fish in
water. Hopefully I'll have time to follow up with them soon so they can start putting their new
knowledge to work. After I got back catching up at work was a challenge, let's say Friday
didn't come fast enough. Over the weekend we planned to tackle a few small yard projects but
ended up doing much more than that. I finished the foundation for the new shed and we brought a
load of old bricks that were piled in the back yard to the concrete recycling place down the
street. In the afternoon one of the neighbors came by to ask if I wanted to go in on the rental
of a de-thatching machine. We have a horrible moss problem on our lawn and after the first
application of moss killer it looks exactly the same as it did before. I've learned the only
thing that will really kill it is to remove it. Sunday we did just that and quickly realized
that we only had a few good blades of grass on the entire lawn. We hauled over a pickup truck
load of moss out and now our yard is almost a mud hole. We applied another coat of moss killer
and will hope for the best. If the last remaining moss dies off this week we can move on by
hitting it with a huge amount of grass seed and fertilizer and maybe by the end of the summer we'll
have a lawn again. We also made it over to Eric and Isabela's for sushi and puppy time.
It was awesome as always and the puppies are getting huge and insane and did I mention huge?
By the time she comes home with us in another week and a half she'll weigh another eight or nine
pounds, which is completely insane if you think about it. They all make their trip to Portland
for their evaluation a week from tomorrow and then they get to go to their new homes. We
can't wait for that weekend, it's going to be insane to have a puppy around but it sure will keep us
on our toes. Work has been awful this week and it's only Tuesday so I'm sure there will be plenty
more to come. It's late so I should get to bed, we'll talk again soon.
March 10, 2008: Hello again, how's things? Things are good here. Speaking of here, here is actually a hotel room outside of Vegas where I am very bored.
Why would someone be bored in Vegas you ask? You must have missed the "outside" of Vegas and that I'm here for work, well, I guess I didn't say the work part but now you
know. I have to be up very early in the morning tomorrow for training, funny part is that I'm not here to get training, I'm actually here to give it. Our NOC is here and i'm meeting a
vendor of ours here to train two crews on a piece of equipment that we use that they have never been trained on at all. What's in it for me, well, hopefully I can not be the only guy in the
whole company that understands how these things work and maybe they won't call me when they break, wishfull thinking I guess. The quick wrap up of last week, the party at Petro and Mike's was
weird, lots of young people (friends of their roommates) and we were even asked what school we go to by one of them. Nothing makes you feel older than spending an evening of drinking with a
bunch of 19 year olds. For the most part they were all cool though so it was still fun. Bryan was up this weekend and we went to Steven's pass for some skiing and boarding, the weather
was actually great and the snow was pretty decent, a little wet but that's what you get this time of year. It was nice to see Bryan again and actually get to hang out, the few times I visited
him in Denver we really only got together for an hour or two. Lisa worked all weekend and even picked up another shift on her normal Thursday off last week. We really didn't get to spend
any time together over the weekend and I left yesterday before she got home from work so it's going to feel like forever before we see each other again. I'll be back late Wednesday so that won't
be bad, we're blocking off the weekend to hang out though for sure. We've rounded up the rest of the dog stuff and it's either in the mail or already at the house. The baby gates will be here
only a few days before she comes home but at least we'll have them. The toy baskets are filling up and Lisa told me this morning that my Mom sent a big box of toys for her too, can't wait to see what
she sent. Well, that's about enough for me, I'm spent and it's about time for bed. Hopefully we'll see the puppies again this weekend and I can put together a page of all the pictures we've taken
that I haven't posted yet. Have a great week!
March 5, 2008: Good afternoon everyone, hope you are having a fine day. The weather is great here, the sun is out and there isn't a cloud in the sky.
My new seat at work is right in front of a wall of glass overlooking a yacht club so I can enjoy some of it while I work. I'm stuck on a long and quite boring conference call at
work so I figured I would bang out a quick update. Things have been crazy as always but instead of me working all the extra hours Lisa has. She has picked up a couple of extra shifts
at different stores in the last week or so. We got a few loose ends finished up in the dining room and living room so they are now officially completely finished. We finally started
gathering up dog stuff. We picked up a few baskets for toys around the house and even started to fill them up with fun things to chew on, hoping that they look even more fun than our
shoes. We ordered the crates we need and even a pooper scooper. If my high school shop teacher taught me anything it was to use the right tool for the job and as unpleasant as it
is, this will make it much more tolerable. Everything should be arriving in plenty of time for Stella's arrival at the house. Speaking of that you can see the new pictures of the
puppies. We went over on Sunday for a few hours and they are so much bigger than last time we saw them. We got pictures of our own but I'm at work and they aren't so these from their
website will have to do for now. At one point 11 of the 13 all fell asleep on Lisa's lap, sort of anyway, they don't all fit that well so some just had a leg or two there but you get the
idea, large pile of puppies! So it will be about three more weeks before she comes home but a busy three weeks for sure. Bryan is coming up from Denver this weekend and I fly out
to Vegas the night that Bryan flies home. I get back next week and less than two weeks later she'll be coming home. A week after that Gregg is coming out from NH for almost a week
to chill out and help me build the new shed. We figure we can get the shed finished in three days at the most and we'll have the rest of the time to do the stuff we didn't get to do last
time he was here. We're both pretty psyched for him to visit, Gregg is awesome. We were going to build the shed from a kit but after much discussion it turns out we can build a better
shed for less money by doing it from scratch. I ordered the door for it yesterday so the project has officially started. It sure will be nice to get all the yard tools and supplies
out of the garage and into their own space. Well, that call is over so this update is too, have a great week!