Adjusting to our new life

The past 11 days has been quite an adjustment for us as we try to get used to having Colby here with us. I think that it is actually a little harder for me because I am home more often than Justin is.

I think the thing that we are having trouble with (at least the biggest thing that I am having trouble with) is the biting. I know that he thinks he is playing with us, but his little teeth are quite sharp. We try to give him toys to chew on instead - but he really just wants our hands. So now I have scratches all over my right hand. I hate having to leave him in his pen, but I don't like to get hurt. So when he won't give up on trying to chew on me, I have to put him up for a little while.

Despite the biting problem, we love him. :) And especially right now when he is sleeping while Justin rubs his tummy we think about the fact that he really is just a baby and he is so cute.

On another note - we think that he has already gotten quite a bit bigger since we brought him home on the 14th. I hope that he stays on the small side, but it is good to know that he seems to be happy and healthy.

So easy to lose my patience

The past week has been an adventure as we get accustomed to have Colby here. Especially since Justin left on Sunday evening for a 2 day training up in Chicago and I was on my own to take care of our new puppy. For those of you who have never tried to housetrain a young dog - it is no fun.

Sunday evening was nothing but headache for me as I tried to finish getting tests graded for my students while Colby barked almost the whole time. Then on Monday morning I kept taking him out to try to potty but he wouldn't do it - instead he waited until we had come back inside so he could poop on the floor in my bedroom. I grabbed him and took him out again (this time in my underwear) for him to just stand outside and whine until we came back in. I barricaded him in the kitchen (so I thought) to run upstairs and finish getting ready. 2 minutes later - he has pooped on the floor in the kitchen so I get the joy of cleaning it up before leaving for class.

On MWF my schedule is that I go teach my 2 classes and am gone for close to 4 hours. I come home to eat lunch and then head back up to the college where I meet up with a high school kid that I am tutoring in AP Statistics. When I got home from school, I see that I had not successfully barricaded Colby into the kitchen since I find him underneath the couch. He is so small that he can fit through the gate that we bought to keep him in the kitchen. It was not easy to find a gate to fit a 5 foot opening and the one we found doesn't do us any good! I take him out, feed him and take him out again but can't get him to potty before I have to leave to get back to the school. An hour and a half later when I get home I find that he has pooped in his crate so it is now all over him and his pad, his two little stuff toys and a chew rope we had in there for him.

The chew rope goes in the trash - the other items go in the washer and Colby goes in the tub (something that he does not seem to like very much). After I get him clean, I take his crate outside to hose it down and get it clean. The rest of the day and Tuesday both go very well and I think that his little accident on Monday is an isolated incident. Until Wednesday morning.

By Wednesday, Justin is home so Colby gets fed his breakfast a bit earlier than normal all in the hopes that we will be able to get him to potty before I have to leave for class. Everything seems to be going well - he even went to the bathroom outside about 15 minutes before I had to leave. So I stuck him in his crate and ran upstairs to brush my teeth and change my clothes. No more than 5 minutes later when I came back downstairs - he was covered in poop. Urgh! So here I was - already in my nicer clothes having to give him a quick bath, put his stuff into the washer again, and get his crate cleaned out before I can leave. Luckily I made it to class on time since I really don't have the luxury of being able to show up to work a few minutes late on occasion.

Now this morning even though I had taken him out 45 minutes earlier and he did his business, I found a pee stain in his crate that wasn't there when I took him out less than an hour earlier. I know he is just a baby, but supposedly they don't like to go where they sleep (I think he is proving that wrong) and since he is 2 months old, he is supposed to be able to go for about 3-4 hours without having to be taken out. I have a whole list of things that I need to do - but I am not doing any of them because I finally got him to sleep but if I get up he will wake up and chances are mess in his crate again. Grrr. I think that Justin should take a couple days off work so that he can take care of the dog all day and I can get some stuff done.

A new member in our family: Colby

Yesterday, we adopted a new member into our family. Colby was born on Ash Wednesday, is about 4 pounds and so cute!!!

We have both been wanting to get a dog ever since moving into our house. Then over the past week Justin has made a few comments about needing to get a dog. Yesterday morning he said - today we should go look at some dogs. We did and ended up bringing one home.



So now we are already enjoying all the work involved with having a brand new puppy - including getting up in the middle of the night to take him out and try to get him to potty outside and not on our floor - not working so great right now.

As expected we spent more on the puppy supplies than on the adoption itself. Oh well! :)

Here are a few more pics Julie took of Colby this morning. Isn't he so cute?

Our Easter weekend

First and foremost - this is the coldest Easter weekend that I (Julie) ever remember. Yesterday, it was so cold here, that by the evening it was 63 degrees in our house and we had to breakdown and turn on the heater - something I never thought we would have to do in April in Houston. But beyond the weather - here are some pictures and a little bit about our weekend.

Believe it or not - this is a picture of the cake that I made on Saturday. It may look like a hollow chocolate rabbit - but it a cake. :) Making the cake was an adventure because about 7 minutes after I put it in the oven, the power shut off. And this wasn't one of those "the power goes out and then turns right back on situations". No - the power was out for 45 minutes and the whole time I was freaking out that my cake would be ruined since it had already started baking when the power shut off. Luckily though - I was able to turn the oven back on as soon as the power came back and the cake seemed to turn out fine.

I posted the best picture first, here is a picture from the side where you can see that even though I cut the the rounded portion off of both halves before putting them together, it did not fit together very well. Oh well - it still turned out very tasty and of course I got a picture that makes it look its best.

After finishing with the cake, Justin and I colored some Easter eggs. Here are just a few pictures of the eggs that we colored. Coloring eggs is not just for kids!

Then, we had our friends Jen and Paul and their kids Aaron and Brian over to play games and eat some of the yummy bunny cake. We ended up playing a few children's games that we had bought this past week - Chutes & Ladders, CandyLand and Ant in the Pants.

Sunday morning we ate some of the hard-boiled eggs that we had colored the night before and sat at our beautifully decorated table.


Did I mention that I put together Easter baskets for us? Justin's is the big one on the right - mine is the smaller one on the left.

Then for Easter dinner we headed down to Texas City (really close to Galveston) to be with some of Justin's family for Easter. We had a great dinner and then afterwards, Justin's job was to help the kids dye some eggs. He had gotten some good practice from the day before. Here are some pics of them having Easter egg dying fun.

our trip to UT

I know, I know - it has been almost 2 weeks since we have been back from our Spring Break trip out to Utah and here we are just getting around to posting anything about it. We started out by heading up to Logan where we had dinner with our friend, Stephanie, who we know from back in the good old days in Tallahassee.

The next day we went to the Logan temple and then had lunch with our friends, Bretton, KimberLeigh and their son, Tennyson. Julie knows KimberLeigh from back in the day when she went to BYU, so we go way way back.

Then we headed down to the Provo area to spend some time with Justin's mom and her new husband. They took us back up to Salt Lake and gave a private tour of the Conference Center. Here are some pictures that Justin took on the roof of the Conference Center.



The next day we went to BYU campus and saw an exhibit on the life of Christ and spent some money at the BYU bookstore - you can't go to campus and not buy something at the bookstore!

And then our trip came to a close. Overall we had a good time except for the fact that Julie was sick with a cold the whole time (which actually became a sinus infection by the time we got home). That part was no fun. :(

I have the best husband ever

Last night was the first Enrichment of the year and also the first Enrichment that I was supposed to be in charge of. I say "supposed to be" because due to the fact that I was given the calling so close to the activity and the activity being so close to Spring Break (when we were gone), someone else had to do most of the planning.

Anyway - I was in charge of food. We did cheese fondue and had about 7 different birthday cakes for people to eat. The cheese fondue was a hit and I have gotten many requests for the recipe :).

But, enough about that and on to why I have the best husband ever. I asked Justin to please come up to the church to help me clean up when it was all over. He came straight from work and got there around 8pm. I set him up with some food since I knew he hadn't eaten yet and then he washed every dish that we had used for Enrichment that night. Without his help I would have been at the church until after 10, but because of him I was ready to go home just after 9.

He is wonderful - that is why he is mine.

Sherry and Rick's wedding

Well, they are now Rick and Sherry Ashford. Here are some pics outside the Dallas temple.

Weddings are a beautiful thing

My sister, Sherry, is getting married married today. We hope that today goes by with no other problems because already things have been a headache for her.

A friend from college was supposed to fly into Dallas around 8:30 last night. Needless to say, when he called around that time, we thought he was calling to say that he had arrived safely but such was not the case. Not only was he still in Las Vegas, but his flight had been cancelled and the airline was being very incooperative. They could not guarantee him that they would get him here in time for the wedding but refused to put him on another carrier. The interesting thing is that the employees at the ticket counter kept lying to him. They told him that the red-eye flight was sold-out and they could only give him a stand-by ticket but that there were 100 people on the stand-by list ahead of him. The truth was - there were about 20 empty seats on the red-eye flight. He finally accepted a refund on his ticket as there was no way he would make it here in time.

This went back and forth for a while but Sherry called someone with a bit more authority than who our friend was working with. The result - he got on the red-eye flight and ended up only paying $198 for his fare (even though at one point they said it would cost him $1000 to be on that flight).

As Sherry was dealing with all of that mess, she broke one of her nails. I know that any man reading this thinks that is no big deal but when you are getting married, you have your nails done because people are looking at your hands so much. So, breaking a nail the night before is a big deal. We have our fingers crossed that in addition to getting her hair done right now, someone will be fixing her nail soon and she will have no other problems to deal with today.

This all makes me think back to when Justin and I got married and how stressed out I was. I hope for her sake that last night was the end of all the stress and today she will be able to relax and enjoy.

Tax Time

Justin and I are finally ready to do our taxes. I estimated what our return would be back in January before we bought our bedroom furniture (I have always been really close when I estimate, in fact I have never over-estimated what my tax return will be - which is a good thing).

So if we were able to estimate our tax return why not just file our taxes, you may be asking. That is actually something that has been annoying to us both over the past 7 weeks. On January 15th, Justin sent an email to our bishop back in Tampa asking for our official Tax Charitable Donations Statement so we can itemize deductions on our taxes, the response was that it would be printed and mailed at the end of the month. We had assumed that, but asked for it just to make sure that they hadn't forgotten us and knew where to send it.

When February 15th came around and we still didn't have the statement from them, I sent an email. I kindly reminded them of our address and let them know that that was the only document we were waiting on to be able to file our taxes. I got no response to my email. So then Justin sent another email to someone else in our old ward again asking for the statement. Again, no response. At this point, I was getting extremely frustrated and kept pointing out to Justin that legally they had a responsibility to mail us the statement by the end of January.

Justin sent a final email last week, the morning of March 2. He sent it to everyone in the bishopric asking if they would at least fax us the statement since we had not yet received it. Interesting enough, we got this statement in the mail yesterday. Why is that so interesting? It is postmarked from Tampa on March 2. Looks like the last email saying to at least fax it finally prompted someone to go and drop it in the mail.

That means that Justin and I have a fun night in store for us - getting everything entered into TurboTax. Good thing we kept all of our moving receipts in a file all ready to go!

Post - Valentine's flowers

Because flowers are so expensive right around Valentine's Day, Justin got me some flowers after Valentine's. I am not such a fan of red roses, but when I have my pick, it is the roses that I go for. This is just a couple pictures of the roses that I got this year after Valentine's was over with.