What a Morning Part 2

I loved this Modern family episode and it totally reminded me of my morning. I am so glad that it wasn't a pigeon that flew in our house because we seriously have pigeons all over the neighborhood.

What a Morning

I awoke quite early to a loud thud this morning and the usual sleepy dog missing from her bed. I headed out to the living room to find Cali climbing over the couch and jumping up on our new plantation shutters. The screen door was open and a bird had made its way into the living room. I was not ready to deal with this so early in the morning. This is usually something Tim takes care of but unfortunately he was already at work. If any of you know Cali you know that she will do anything for a bird. She has climbed chicken coops, swam too far out to sea, and recently ran away to a near by golf course (twice) to the duck pond all in pursuit of those stupid birds. She is the most well behaved dog until she is distracted by a bird and then shuts off all hearing to the outside world and more importantly her owners. So as I watched her jumping over the couch crashing into the shutters and nearly knocking off all glass items on the side table, yelling at her to stop was no use. I managed to get her outside where she continued to pound the window as the bird is now stuck in between the shutter and the window. I started to yell at the bird like I would the dog to make it stop fluttering in the shutter and realized quite quickly that the bird does not listen to you like a dog does most of the time. I grabbed a bowl and a cutting board to use as a lid to slide over the bowl and inched closer to the bird. (Why I am afraid of a small sparrow in my living room is beyond me) I realized that the bowl and cutting board idea was not a good one after about 20 sec. I managed to get the shutters open to have the bird fly into the dining room shutters. Now the dog has figured out that this is great fun and is slamming against the dining room window causing the bird to freak out and poop all over the place. I finally got the bird to fly out the original window that I opened.

This is a stark contrast in Cali from last week when she ripped off her entire foot pad. We think it happened when Tim took Cali for a bicycle ride and the asphalt was too hot. (A lesson to all dog owners and summertime heat) Her pad blistered and we had to end up cutting it off. Totally gross! So earlier this week she was not even in walking shape and was being pampered with iodine foot baths. I've never seen a dog willingly stick their foot in a bowl of water for 10 min. on end. She was soaking up all of the love. After the bird incident she has been put in the backyard for time out!

So I spent the remainder of the morning cleaning the windows inside and out, while ripping off a nail (I'm not that girlie but this one hurt) and forgetting that it was my parent's anniversary after the second call I made to my mom asking what to use to clean windows without streaks. She never mentioned a thing during the first call but during the second she asked, "Did you forget it was our anniversary today?" Oops!

My Brother is Married!

My brother was married this past Saturday up in Auberry. (about 45 min. above Fresno in the foothills) They got married on Kaitlyn's grandparent's ranch. Everyone did a lot of work to get the ranch ready for a beautiful wedding. It was such a great day, the weather was perfect, the horses cooperated, and everyone had a great time.

This is my sister and her husband Rudy. Deanna is due on Sept. 29th

We were in charge of the rehearsal dinner the night before. We had everything set up in plenty of time to mess around taking photos with the horses.

This is just a sweet shot of my brother and Kaitlyn taking care of the horses before the rehearsal dinner.

My parents

The siblings Kaitlyn made a sweet entrance on her horse Cody. I've been to a lot of weddings but havn't seen the bride enter on horseback yet.

Just married! The reception was up above on the tennis court.

Dance party!

A rare snapshop of my mom actually on the dance floor

Off to Cabo!

Summer has begun...

School ended last week and the week wound down with the last few days of teacher meetings and putting the classroom back in order for next year's group. With that ending comes the much anticipated beginning of summer. It is our first summer in the heat of Paso and so far we are enjoying it. I told Tim the other day that I was really enjoying the weather in Paso and he kindly reminded me that it was only June 5th. Weirdly enough, the sound of air conditioners turning on outside of homes in our neighborhood remind me of childhood. We haven't had to use our a.c. yet (thank goodness because it is currently not working) but a few more days of +100 temps might do it.
So what am I going to do with all my time now that summer is here? Well, I always find it funny that I keep completely occupied the first few weeks after school and then about week 3 I start wandering around the house wondering what to do. I have had 4 days of freedom so far and have painted two bathrooms, organized closets, rearranged the guest room, made a couple of cherry pies, and started to develop a writing curriculum for a new class I'm teaching next year. There's something about working constantly the last 10 months and then all of a sudden transitioning into nothingness. I have a hard time winding down I think. There's just something about having the free time all of a sudden to get all of those things that you have been putting off done. Don't get me wrong, I have been to the pool where I will spend many more idle hours this summer attempting to tan and get in swimming shape again.
I know the summer will fly by, it always does. 2 months just doesn't seem long enough. Tim and I have lots of plans this summer. (that's why I am getting my closet organizing done now) We are headed to Auberry this weekend to watch my brother get married. A few weeks after that we are flying to Maui for a week where we get to celebrate my 29th birthday. We have a Dodger game to catch in July as well as that trip to Vegas that we won. Sprinkle in summer concerts in the park, backyard bbqs, and some beach trips and the summer will be complete. Cheers to summer!

Cali the Hunter

Just when I thought Cali couldn't be a better dog...

A few weeks ago some gopher hills popped up in our backyard. As any gardener knows, this was a serious threat to my newly planted fruit trees. If something wasn't done quickly my trees wouldn't make it through the summer.

Before I could buy traps or poison, Cali showed her prowess as a hunter. I've never seen a dog catch a gopher, but in that first week Cali dug out four! Imagine our surprise, since we had never seen Cali actually catch anything. Sure she goes crazy over birds, squirrels, lizards, and anything else that moves, but she never can catch them. Granted, she did tear up our hillside doing it. Fortunately we hadn't landscaped so she wasn't in trouble.

Needless to say, Cali is the best dog ever!

It's Hard to Believe!

Over the past weekend Tim and I went to the Paso Robles Home and Rec show. I was excited to go but Tim was dragging his feet wondering what on earth we needed for our home. I just wanted to browse the different vendors and sign up for all the contests. Every home show has tons of contests. So the grand prize contest was a 4 day trip to Vegas in some fancy hotel. We of course signed up. We filled out our ticket stub with our name and phone number and took the other half of the ticket, in which they mentioned that we should be sure to keep in case we won. Well, I put Tim in charge of the multiple tickets that day for all of the various contests we were entering. (Some of you can see where this is going)

Well, we waited for any phone calls after the drawing on Sunday and didn't get a single one. No big deal, I have never won a contest in my life. Didn't think this would be the one. Well on Wed afternoon they called and left a message saying that we had won the grand prize Vegas trip! I was so excited! If you know me, you know how sometimes when I get excited I have these loud outbursts of sheer joy! I would have been one of those great radio winners that goes crazy on the other end of the line while they are on the radio.

Well there was one small detail. The message said for us to call the lady back so we could redeem our prize. So, my next question for Tim is, "where are our tickets we were supposed to save?" We need to redeem our prize. Tim then mentions that he didn't think we were going to win and it had been 4 days so he threw the tickets away! My outburst of joy quickly turned into an outburst of "you've got to be kidding me!!!!" Tim quickly replied that he knew exactly which trash can he put them in. My next response was, "oh you mean the trash cans that were emptied last night and the trash man took away this morning!!!"

So we debated all night. Would they give us the trip? I mean they had our name and phone number.. They had to give it to us right? So Tim's job this morning was to convince the lady that tickets or no tickets she had to give us the trip. I was anxious at school today to find out the answer.

At lunch time I walked into the office at school to find flowers sitting on the counter waiting for me. This was a great surprise and I had two things running through my head. Number 1: either these flowers were from Tim saying he was extremely sorry he did everything he could but we needed the tickets he threw away, or Number 2: We were going to Vegas!

I opened the card in anticipation and it read:
Pack your bags! We're going to Vegas!

Whoo hoo! Now I can never say I havn't won anything again. The funny thing is people are starting to tell us that they are hearing our name on local radio stations congratulating us.

The Landscaping is Done!

Here is the updated version of the front yard. It's nice to be done!