Michael & Liz are Bloggable

So it has been about two months now since we got Daisy and while she has always been kind and nice to us, lately we feel like she is finally loving on us as if we have always been her owners, and as if she always wants us to be.

Today I went to see the Bengals game at a local bar and when I came home Liz was napping on the couch and Daisy met me at the door. I picked Daisy up and sat on the couch and she immediately went into hibernate mode and just closed her eyes and went limp on my chest with the occasional kiss here and there. After about 10 minutes I put her on the ground and opened the sliding glass door to let her out. She ran out and then turned to see if I would follow. I closed the door to stay inside and she ran up to it and starting scratching. I opened it up and she just stood in the doorway waiting for me(see Exhibit A above). I made my way out and she wagged her tail and led me down the stairs into the yard. We played fetch for a bit and when I got bored and went inside she came right in after me. I sat on the couch to check some fantasy football scores and Daisy climbed up to the couch and slowly walked over to Liz, walked all the way up her legs and plopped right on Liz's stomach into a ball to go back to sleep(see Exhibit B, Daisy tried to get up when I got the camera, so she was no longer in "ball" form). This of course woke up Liz but it's without a doubt the greatest way to wake up, let me tell you. And while this is not the first time this has happened, it has been much more frequent and we feel like she is finally 100% comfortable with us.

I must say there are times when this love waivers, and that is any time we put her in the car to go anywhere. Up until 2 months ago, car=bad. It was either to go to the Vet to get spayed or even worse, to be taken to a new home and will not come back to where ever she was. But we are beginning to change that because everyone at the Vet loves her, and by loves her I mean I'm lucky to walk out of there with her in my arms, and any other car ride is to fun places where she can run around. We think she is beginning to know what the words "go to the vet" or "going to see cousin Dewey" mean.

It has just been nice to see her transform the way she has and I'm sure she will continue to do so. After all the reading I have done about dogs and dog training, people always say that a dog won't obey you and won't want to do tricks for you unless it loves, respects, and trusts you. So now with that being said, it seems like lately she has been a lot more well behaved. Whenever we say "no bite" she actually stops, she hasn't gone to the bathroom in the house in at least a month, and she has very quickly picked up on the tricks we are trying to teach her. She has mastered, "sit", "stay", "come", "no bite", and "go to the ramp". And now we are working on "shake", "stand up", and "lay down". She will willingly do these tricks but we have to show her. We'll see how long it takes her to do them herself. Luckily for us, dog training has been a ton of fun so I see no reason why she can't learn English by at least next September.

Tonight she has another full night of fun. We are going over to Jon, Julie, and Cousin Dewey's house for dinner, pumpkin carving, and some scary movie fun. Probably going to watch "The Thing" and another scary movie like "The Shining" or something. She'll of course be preoccupied by the Deweymeister.

Here is one more picture of Daisy sleeping on us:
I also want to include one more thing. Liz came home a few days ago with a surprise. The back story is that on our honeymoon the cruise ship sailed by the Na Pali Coast on the western side of Kauai. When we were sailing by I took the camera and took as many high resolution pictures as I could and there was one clear and overwhelming favorite of the bunch. For a long time I had it as my background on my computer and just love it. Well Liz took that picture, and with the help of Stacy, they got it blown up and framed and Liz brought it home the other day. It is absolutely amazing and is a perfect picture to put above the mantle. I really love having meaningful things hung up around the house rather than just a generic picture we buy at the store, so that picture will be a reminder of the awesome time we had on the trip to Hawaii. Here are 2 pictures of the picture:


PS - I love the Bengals, but they depress me. Fire Bresnahan and draft 7 players for the defense.

After coming home from the hardest day of work I have had since working at IBM, I must blog about how awesome life is. I realize that this blog is about Liz and my lives and what we do and where we go, but I want to take a second to say just how awesome life is when you have a wife like Liz. I realize we only have 4 months experience in the marriage department, but I feel like our lives flow like peanut butter and jelly. Whenever she falls off the side of the sandwich, as that tends to happen in PB&J's, I flow right off the side with her. And the bite of a PB&J isn't as delicious without a little bit of peanut butter and a little bit of jelly. Metaphors and jokes aside, we just don't have arguments, I feel like we communicate a lot about life and the daily events, and we always know how the other will react in most situations which makes it very easy to live with each other. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that this paragraph is just about as long as a reader wants it to be so I will leave it at, life is great with Liz.

So as far as the events in the past month or so. Momma D came to visit and that was a lot of fun. She came with her sleeves rolled up and boy did she change this house around. She painted one of our guest bedrooms royal blue, our master bathroom a dark cappuccino color, and kick started my deck project. She also got to meet Daisy for the first time and I know that they both loved that. We are so appreciative of her visiting and helping us out around the house. We look forward to more of that in the future :).
The weekend after Momma D was here, we went to the beach with Jon and Julie and Cousin Dewey. It was a great time and we will remember it most by our lack of preparation. Liz and I didn't even pack enough for a night of sleeping on the couch, let alone camping near the beach. A full change of clothes, a bathing suit, sandals, flashlight, matches or fire starters; these are all items that make sense at a camp site near the beach, apparently not to us. But regardless we had a fantastic time. We'd like to do again sometime soon and possibly make it a tradition. Here are a few pictures from the trip(you might have to click on them to see them better):

This is Daisy "roughing it". Has anyone seen the movie Troop Beverly Hills? I can't believe I just made that reference, but hey, I have 3 sisters.

Daisy had a blast chasing Dewey... actually it was both chasing and antagonizing, couldn't really tell:

Successful Antagonization:

Daisy loves to dig, and the beach is her digging heaven:

Cutest. Picture. Ever.:
My two loves:

So after the beach the other two big things we've done is have a pumpkin carving party and that was a blast. Liz made the very smart move of buying a pumpkin carving kit at Target and that helped a ton! It also gave us outlines of things to draw on the pumpkins. Here are all the pumpkins:
Liz's is the worried face in the middle and mine is the tree to the right that says "Happy Halloween" on it and Daisy's is the dog bone between us. The other pumpkins are our friends that came over.

We also had a good time at the pumpkin patch and Daisy loved to roam around and smell everything. We swear she is the most curious dog. Loves to smell things. We have tons of nicknames for her and "Curious George" and "Magellan" are two of them. Here is a picture of Diasy and I at the pumpkin patch:


OK, so this post has been forever long, but that's mainly because of the photos. Hope everyone enjoyed them. Events coming up for us in the future are my marathon on November 4th, Thanksgiving in a month and who knows what else...

PS - Daisy just sat on my lap and had something to say: "jrerej tvtv vvtffytgghftr5t54gtxz"