Snooooooow!

It finally snowed yesterday! We just got a few inches, but it was more than enough to play in for a bit. Nandi and I headed out for an hour, and when we got home Jeff was home from work. Apparently, everyone else at work bailed because the whole 2 inches of snow at that point were enough to shut down the city. So, we went out again and played more!

Uh . . . Mom? Why are you making me sit in this cold stuff? I want to play!

Hellloooooo! Do you see the SNOW?!?! Let's get moving woman!

Ugh! Fine, just one picture and then we're moving!

Pink Cupcakes

I have a friend who makes collars. She has a ton of fun ones, and until we got Nan I couldn't get one for my own pet. Summit and Mitzie get out of all collar except Beastie Bands. So I've been amusing myself by sending collars to random friends and family whenever she did a fundraiser. But I've wanted the pink cupcake collar forever since I saw it. And now Nandi has her adorable pink cupcake collar, courtesy of my awesome friend B. Check out teenytinycollars.com and see if there's one that would be a great match for your pup!

Frozen Waterfalls

So it was cold here last week. Not like Minnesota or Iowa or Massachusetts cold, but colder than it's been in our lifetimes in Portland. In fact, it was cold enough to freeze waterfalls! : ) So Jeff, Nandi and I took a trip to Multnomah Falls to see the frozen falls. Multnomah wasn't entirely frozen, but it was moving much slower than normal.

Here's Multnomah from the parking lot. : )


And Jeff and I. Nan is there too, but she's not in the shot.


Here are the lower falls, from where we were standing in the previous picture. Doesn't it look snowy? Notice how everything else is brown and ugly and now snowy? Yeah, the weathermen here lie and make me sad when they promise me snow that doesn't show.


Here are the upper falls:


Check out the blue green color that showed up in the upper falls!


On our walk back down from the upper falls (on the bridge) we noticed that there was nobody on the bridge. That never happens, so I made Jeff whip out the camera super fast and get some pictures. I don't mind people in pictures, but only when I know them. ; )


Then we hiked over to Wakheena Falls. We saw this little wall of icicles on the way.


And here is my favorite wall that normally has water trickling down it. Obviously, there's a good bit of water there when it freezes; people were climbing it when we walked by.


Here's Jeff and Nandi near the bottom of Wahkeena.


And me and Nan; you've gotta watch out for this one! She's got sneak attack kiss issues that I was just recovering from. : )


Here's Wahkeena from the bridge that was crazy icy and scary to walk on, so I made Jeff do it.


The same spot with a slow exposure.


And more Wahkeena with some cool ice.


There was this cool log with a ton of horizontal icicles on it.


And here's Jeff, Nandi and I at Wahkeena (don't mind Jeff, he has balance-while-on-ice-with-a-dog-issues).

It's Official!

We have a new family member!



We have a new family member!

We picked her up the weekend before Halloween for a trial run. She did the costume thing (OK, so it was just a little witch hat and not that big a deal) pretty well, don't you think?



She did a nice job of chasing away the squirrels on our deck.



She poses nicely for pictures in fall leaves . . .



She gets along with the cats . . .




And even butt cuddles with them! : )




Her name is Mandarin, but we call her Nandi for short. She's a 65ish pound American Staffordshire Terrier. She was picked up in August as a stray in Vancouver, WA and was dropped off at a shelter by animal control. Her owners never claimed her, even though she was clearly well taken care of - she'd been spayed, had a collar, trained, housebroken, and overweight.

One of the volunteers at the shelter is involved with the rescue we adopted Nan from and knew we were looking for a dog just like her. She called us up after she got to know Nandi a bit and knew she was good with cats (she hid from the cats when they tested her). We met her and fell in love, so the rescue pulled her from the shelter and put her in a foster home (with cats!) just to make sure she was a good fit. She was, so we picked her up for a trial run. We got the paperwork from the rescue, signed it, and mailed in her adoption fee so now she's all ours!

*le sigh*

I was going to put up Labor Day weekend pictures, but I'll do those later. I figured I should explain.

So that super precious pibble? : ( She wasn't the right match for us and I'm so, so heartbroken. She is such an incredible, amazing dog. She walked with a loose leash almost all of the time. She stopped being so interested in the cats and stopped wanting to chase them. She slept like a log after the first two nights all night long. She always rang the bells to go outside. She did everything we asked of her. But we weren't able to crate her and leave without her screaming.

It's been almost a week since we ended the trial period and drove her back and I'm still so sad. : (

I hate that I'm sure that eventually things would have been OK. I hate that I don't have the time to try and make sure things were OK by the time I start school in two weeks. I hate that we took her back and confused her and made things harder for her. And most of all, I hate that I'm relieved that I can go to the grocery store or to the post office or library and not have to worry about her screaming and crying in her crate.

I am happy that someone who will be a much better match for her than we were is getting the chance to adopt her, and I hope it goes well.

I miss the pibble. : (

This one is for my Mom! : )

Is it funny that Summit knows more tricks than Kaylee Josie? : ) I taught her "The Hand Game" last night. She still remembers it tonight, and does it without the nibbles on my fingers which I very much appreciate! It's just like when we would play it at restaurants while waiting for our food when we were growing up. Now if I could just teach her to play the paper game ...

I've been a slacker!

But all of my time has been taken up by this sweet little face!


I'm kind of a sucker for pibble kisses. : )


And kind of a sucker for her. : )

Bones!

Dude, look at this bone I got!



It is soooooo good!



Whaddya mean someone wants my bone?!?



Whatever. I tried giving it to her earlier and she didn't want it. So it's mine now!

She's here!

Jeff and I headed up to Seattle to pick up Josie for our trial run with her. I think she thoroughly enjoyed the ride with the top down. : ) Everything is going great so far. The cats aren't completely pissed off at us. They are wondering what in the world is going on, but they're curious. Josie is definitely interested in them, but I think she's just wondering why they won't play with her. I mean she offered them her bone in exchange for the ball in a track toy and they didn't accept the trade. What's a girl to do?!

Here she is when we stopped to sign the papers giving us temporary custody.

I love the look on her face. I think this is when she realized it was going to be a 3 hour drive back to Portland. ; )

And here she is chilling with Jeff after the long ride.

I have a super massive headache, so I'll post more tomorrow. I'm sure we'll have plenty more pictures, including one of Mitzie's puffed up tail!

Thank you so, so much A&D for doing such an amazing job with her. She is a total sweet heart and we are so lucky to have the chance to adopt her.

The new place

The path from the front to the back deck.

The water feature on the lower back deck.

Most of the rest of the lower back deck.

We have a garage! Not that we can fit all 3 cars in it, but at least there's storage.

Lower level bath.

Guest bedroom.

Upper deck.

Upper deck.

Living room, kitchen and Mitzie from the upper deck.

Living room from the stairs.

Kitchen from the dining room, looking towards the living room.

Dining room.

Check out that cool window! It lets light in from the windows in the stairs.

Mostly the office. But there's a super comfy futon for guests to crash on.

Upstairs guest bathroom.

Our bedroom, and the Mitz checking out the birdfeeder on the upper deck.

Our bathroom.

We love, love, love, love, love it! As you can probably tell there are a ton of big wonderful trees all out back. there's a huge park literally in our backyard which will be great for walking our dog.

It's got a gas fireplace and Jeff is so excited to be cooking on a gas stove instead of electric. I love all of the shutters in the rooms instead of regular mini blinds because they let in a ton of light and I can open the windows all the way and not have to worry about the cats jumping through the screens. And the cats love it because they have 4 flights of stairs to chase each other around on. For real. We're going to have to up their food intake if they continue the zoomies that just happened because they both went batshit crazy (normally it's just Sum who does that). I mean 4 laps through the place? They'll be worn out for the rest of the day!