Yikes!

Let me start by apologizing for my lack of blog posts. I've been feeling super stressed lately with the last paper I wrote for class and now that it's over I might finally have some free time!

To catch things up: I'm in week 4 of my second MBA class. I've written two papers regarding management and had a hard time with both of them. Although I thought it stunk my paper on the Verizon mission statement got me an A+ and great reviews from my professor. Not going to lie: it was a HUGE confidence booster!

In puppy news: Buster and Bella have learned how to get underneath the porch (boo!) so we spent a few hours moving stuff around so they couldn't. I don't think we would mind as much if it wasn't DISGUSTING underneath our porch. We've been weaning Buster off of his kennel at bedtime and he's done pretty well. The hardest part is that he loves to jump on the bed at 3 or 4 in the morning, which we hate. I think he's pretty smart though because he chooses a time he KNOWS I'm too tired to put him back to bed so I leave him on the bed. Silly boy!

Other than that we just got back from a weekend getaway in Kansas. We spent a majority of the weekend in the Kansas City/Lawrence area seeing as many friends and family members as we could! It was a super long 15 hour drive, but the puppies did fabulously well! They spent the first five or so hours trying to figure out what we were doing, then relaxed and slept most of the way!

Thursday night we got lunch with my best friend Brenna and boyfriend Drew. We spent Friday in Lawrence getting delicious burgers from "The Burger Stand" in downtown Lawrence. Then I took Brenna to get her first pedicure. This hour pedicure and gossip made me realize how much I miss my girl time with Brenna. She's one of my best friends and I have such a blast when we hang out.

We went out to dinner with our friends Megan and Dusty. We drank some margaritas, ate some delicious food, and visited about life. I forgot how much I missed spending time with them. We spent Friday night at my favorite bar in Lawrence, the Sandbar, and was glad to see that nothing has changed. After witnessing a Hurricane (google it!) and slugging down a couple of Shark Attacks I remember what I love about that bar.

Saturday was our day with the least amount of activites planned. We visited my brother, sister-in-law, and nieces in Lenexa because my brother just got his gallbladder removed (ouch!) and weren't sure if we'd be seeing them at the family reunion on Sunday. After playing UNO and Mancala with my nieces we headed back to Brad's place where I took a much needed NAP!

Saturday night was a BLAST! Our friend Sasha had an awesome house-warming party and we ended up taking a FREE suburban to a nearby bar. After drinking too much we headed back home where I woke up with a killer headache, ick.

We headed to Seneca on Sunday for a family reunion. It was SUPER hot and humid, which I definitley don't miss about Kansas. We got to visit with my favorite aunts, uncles, and cousins and got to wish my favorite and ONLY! little brother a happy 20th birthday! It's still scary to think that he's 20! We then went back to my parents house where I finished my paper and was taken out to dinner by my parents.

Overall, the trip was a great success. Made me realize how much I miss Kansas, but know that things will work out the way they are supposed to. Thanks family and friends for the FABULOUS weekend! Miss and love you all!

And because the blog needs some excitement, here are some fun photos!



Aaron, Erin, Matt, and I enjoying our time at Saints!



Matt and I



The crew!


Buster fell asleep on my shoulder



Buster climbed into the taken apart kennel and Bella decided to climb in too. Then she fell asleep on him.

Back to School

back to school, cleaning, kansas, graduations, and more puppy fun

I'm turning into quite the blogspot slacker, not that I'm surprised. I have a few bits of news, but mostly just observations of life recently.

First big news...I'm going back to school!!! I've always wanted to go back to school, but now it's going to be official. For those of you who know me, I have a BA in history from KU, but was always planning on going to law school. Well now that I've had almost two full years away from school I've decided that law school isn't in my future. I've doing some searching and found a great online program through Baker University in Baldwin City, KS. I'm going to start the application process soon and am going after my masters degree in business administration with a marketing concentration! I'm excited to get back into things, but also a little nervous. It has been a full 1.5 years since I've done the school thing so I'm nervous about how I'll handle it. The great thing about this program is that instead of a full 18 credit hour schedule for a whole semester it's one class at a time. One class for 5 weeks, then another, then another and they automatically enroll me in the next one. Basically I'll know exactly which class I'm taking that week and I log in to the system every week and turn in papers, assignments, etc. I am very excited at a chance for a masters degree and hopefully a newer, bigger, and better job after that!!! Everybody has been super supportive so far, including my parents, Matt's parents, Matt, friends, and family. Hopefully with that many people behind me, I'll be able to put my full focus into it. Wish me luck! I probably won't start until August so we can get our vacations out of the way without me being distracted!

Happy graduation to a few of my best friends. To my cousin and one of my best friends, Stephen, my best friend and maid of honor, Brenna, and both mine and Matt's old roommate Aaron. Happy GRADUATION!! CONGRATULATIONS! You all deserve so much in life. On a similar tangent, how sad is it that after this year all of my good friends will be done at my alma mater? I don't have a day where I don't miss my days at KU so it's sad that my friends days are numbered there also. Graduation is such a joyous occasion, but when I think back to all of the memories and friends of my college days I do tend to get a little mopey. I miss so many things about KU; friends, campus, Mass. st., the Sandbar, awesome history professors, all of the buildings, being an ambassador, and so many more. College is truly the best time of your life, but it usually takes you a while to realize it.

On a nice little addition to the KU paragraph, Matt and I might be going back to visit! I've been really missing friends there lately so when I brought up the idea of going back in August, Matt seemed interested. It's also the same weekend as a family reunion so we'll get to see a lot of friends and family. We'll see if we decided on it officially, but it's definitely becoming more and more of a possibility!!!

I don't have any fun puppy news really, except for the fact that they are still super adorable and becoming fairly well-behaved. We had friends over on Sunday night and they still couldn't resist jumping on people for attention, but they are still puppies so nobody really seems to mind. They seem to have mastered the art of "sitting" but we're still working on it. Another improvement is in the kennel area. Buster and Bella both HATE their kennels, and for good reason. Well lately we've been reinforcing them getting in their kennels by themselves and they are getting better at it. If we go back there at night Buster goes straight in his kennel because he knows it's time for bed. Bella usually takes some coaxing, but she goes in eventually. Bella will go into the kennel when she's tired though, so they are progressively getting better. All I have to do is pat the kennel and Buster goes in so that's definitely better than dragging him in. On another note, they are growing so fast that I almost don't notice. It's harder to notice now that they are with us everyday. When we saw them once a week it was easy to see the difference, but lately their have been signs. Buster is getting longer and his tail is growing longer also.

Anyways, that's a good catch up on our lives so far. We've having a housewarming BBQ this weekend. I don't think many people are coming, but that just means we'll have more booze for us! lol. Happy reading!

What I've learned so far about dog training...

Now that I've officially been a puppy trainer for a solid four days now, I figured I'd write a blog about what I've learned so far.

1) Don't leave ANYTHING in reaching distance, and I mean ANYTHING! I explained to Matt about 2000 times that he can't leave any shoes or slippers on the floor. And everytime he does, one of the puppies grabs one and drags it outside. And then Matt can't figure out what happened to it. If either of them can reach it- it will be grabbed and probably chewed by one of them.

2) Even if you don't think t hey can get to it, they can! We keep towels by the back door so when they come in from outside we can wipe off their feet. We put them in the very middle of the table, but they still manage to grab the end and pull it off the table. It's pretty ridiculous.

3) If you leave them alone for too long, they will pee. Matt decided to leave them inside for two hours without going outside...and they peed! We thought we had done so well with potty training (only one accident) and then I came home for lunch and they had both done it in the living room.

4) Don't wear socks anywhere near the water bowl. Anytime they take a drink, they slobber water EVERYWHERE they go for a solid five minutes. It doesn't matter how much water they drank, it's everywhere. Everytime it happens, my socks get soaked and I get mad, even though it's not their fault at all.

5) They HATE their kennels. Bella is getting better about going in because she knows its bedtime, but no matter when they go in, Buster DESPISES the kennel. He absolutely hates it. We are close to figuring out a different way for them to sleep, but for now he needs to suck it up.

6) They are exactly like babies. Basically they drool, whine, bark, and need constant attention. Just like a baby or a toddler, the second you turn your head they are into something and will probably make you upset. It doesn't matter how long you leave them unsupervised, they will get into something you don't want them in. It's only a matter of time.

7) They really LOVE other dogs. Well, maybe love isn't exactly the word. We took them on a walk around the neighborhood and they had to bark at every dog. I think it might be because they were fenced that drove our dogs crazy, but either way, I can finally feed my hands and fingers again.

8) Bones don't always work. It took our dogs almost a full three days to figure out to chew a bone. They didn't get it until another dog came over and finished it off that they finally understood. Surprising.

9) Toys are only somewhat necessary. Basically we bought both dogs a chewy red bone as a toy. They haven't touched either of them! It's almost like they're scared of them, but they just want to hide them in the yard.

10) Learning come is easy, off, not so much. We taught both dogs to come in like four hours. They still can't get the "off" command. They both love to jump on everything. As annoying as it is, no matter how many times I push them off, they just don't learn. I'll have to try harder.

There are ten things I've learned so far about training. Even though it's a constant learning process both for us, and for Buster and Bella. In their defense, considering they've only spent five days in a house, they are doing super well. I just hope no more accidents are in our future. Happy Reading! If anybody is reading...

Puppies and Packing!

So we finally did it! After planning for what seemed like years, we moved all of our stuff across town into an adorable little green house. It's three bedroom/two bathroom and has TONS of space. I mean, the master bedroom and backyard are gigantic!

And to make things even more exciting we moved the puppies in on Saturday evening. We had one tiny accident so far, but generally they are learning extremly fast. Buster is our calm one. He would rather lay around and bask in the sun then do anything else. Bella is completely opposite. She would much rather run around and jump on people then lay down for just one second. It's so hard to believe that they are brother and sister because they are so different. But if you forget they're related sit back and watch as they wrestle and fight each other in what seems like some kind of awesome sibling deathmatch. I'll post some pictures on here later!

We spent all day yesterday unpacking what seems like a trillion boxes and putting stuff together. It's kind of amazing how much stuff we have. It didn't seem like we had any of this at the old place, mostly because it was much smaller. Our old place is disgustingly dirty now that it's empty and I am totally dreading having to go back to clean it so we can get a deposit back. Oh the joys of renting.

We had some friends over last night to check out the new place and received a really good response on it. I'm glad everybody likes it so much, especially considering it's green with blue carpet. Honestly, the blue carpet used to bug me, but it's really growing on me now. I'll take some pictures and post those later too so you can all see the house! One of the major perks of this house is that it has a two car garage! I've wanted a garage since I started driving, mostly because I HATE cleaning snow and ice off of my car. And being from Kansas, I got quite good at it. Just because I'm used to it, doesn't mean I like it. In fact, my ideal winter snowfall would be somewhere between 5-10 inches for the entire winter. Having to get up 15 minutes earlier just to clean off my car seems ridiculous to me. Not to mention that because we don't get much snow here in the valley of CO, when it does snow, even an inch or two, people drive 5 mph thinking they'll crash. I guess sometimes it pays to be from Kansas.

We had a blast with our friends last night, as did the dogs. Our friends Kati and Joel have an older dog named Marley who is the most hilarious dog to watch. They also have the brother dog of our two and watching them play is hilarious. Our three are the only ones left in the litter so it's nice that they know each other. Funniest story from last night: So we bought our dogs a couple of nice big dog bones, but they haven't chewed on them at all. They put them in their mouths and then just kind of run around with them, which is really funny but not at all helpful. So Marley comes over and steals both bones, plus a ball that was in the yard. He goes over to the corner of the yard and lays down with the bones and ball near him. Everytime one of the puppies came near he would let out a ferocious bark and the puppies would run away. It was hilarious. Matt started calling him "The Godfather."

I'll write more later, and hopefully post some pictures!

Happy Reading!