Our Marley and Me moment!

So...when Jim came home today from work, he opened the door to see a true "Marley and Me" moment with our new foster dog Kylie...Take a look at this picture of our little cute dog laying there innocently, while behind her is shredded paper towels!!! She found the roll and shredded every square of it, there was not one un-chewed square. Even the tube was chewed up. Her reaction sitting there like nothing was wrong was both frustrating and humorously cute!
We took Kylie with us to get Pizza on the patio of our favorite pizza place in Mission Beach, called Luigi's. Before we left we decided to put her doggy back pack on and put some water in it, so she would have water with her if she got thirsty and to try and add a little weight to help tire her out a bit! She looked really cute with her back pack on, she looked like a little service dog! Here we are at home before we left, at the beach, and at Luigi's getting some pizza.

Here is Kylie passed out on our floor, with one of her chew toys, and another time just passed out on the floor. She's all tuckered out!

Kylie is going back to her previous foster home while we are on our honeymoon, we will miss her a lot. We just started making progress with training her puppy manners. She used to pull us on the leash but we are training her with a special leash, some tasty treats, and a clicker that is really popular these days. We hope she doesn't lose all her training while we are gone for a week and half, but we now know how to make progress to try and shape her into the best yellow lab in San Diego.

Some other news, as just mentioned, we are going to Las Vegas tomorrow night (Wednesday) to be with Jim's dad, two sisters, in-laws, and step-siblings. Then on Friday night we head to Belize for our belated honeymoon!!!! We are so excited, there are adventures we will be taking most days such as ziplines, river tubing through caves, snorkeling, and hiking to the Mayan ruins. In addition we will be in a private cabana on the beach so we can't wait!!!

Also, we are flying to Raleigh-Durham on Friday night the 16th of January and staying through Tuesday night the 20th.

We'll post some pictures of our adventues in Belize after we get back! Happy holidays to all, and safe travels to anybody driving or flying!

Doggie Fostering

We started the last week by going to "December Nights" in Balboa Park last Friday night (December 5th). An estimated 300,000 people go the annual 2-night event in the beautiful park. They have lots of lights on, all the museums are open late and are free, they have booths, rides, etc. But the neatest thing they had were all the performers. They have carolers, dancers, musicians, magicians, comedians, etc. Some of the dancers were amazing, they would spin around upside down on their head, they had seniors tap dancing, etc. They also had little kids doing a routine that reminded us of our neices Ashley, Lauren, and Natalie. Colleen was so inspired by all the dancing that she took information from the group and she is going to sign up and take a 12 week tap dance class this spring!!!

Later during the week, we were able to work out a deal with our landlord where we could indeed get a dog (He had originally denied our request). We began fostering Kylie, a 10-month old rescue dog, a yellow lab (See article below this one too for info on her!)

It started out a little rough, on Friday night, our first night with her, we were taking her out for a final walk at 11pm before bed, and we unfortunately locked ourselves out!!! We had to call a locksmith, and the first one couldn't open us up. We had to call another locksmith and he was able to do it. This took almost 3 hours, until 2am. We were so tired, and Kylie had to be really bored, but she handled it so well. We felt so bad for her!

This weekend, once we got our door open, we took Kylie to Dog Beach here in San Diego, a big wide beach where dogs can run without a leash! The dogs can play with each other and run into the water. Kylie runs as fast as a bullet across the sand and is not afraid of the water, and she loves meeting other dogs.

We also took Kylie with us to Einstein Bagels, that has alwasys been our weekend morning tradition, coffee and bagels at the Hillcrest Einstein bagels, where we know the staff and all the patrons. We always wanted to join the crowd of dog owners who sit out on the patio and have bagels with their dogs (Einstein sells 'dog bagels', they look like a bagel but I'm sure they are liver or beef flavor!!!)

Kylie and our cat Millie haven't got along so well, they avoid each other. Millie asserts her dominance over Kylie and shoes her away if she gets to close. Kylie cries because she wants to play with Millie but can't get close enough to play. We are hoping Millie can become friends with a dog someday, but we'll see how it goes!

Tomorrow we are going to take Kylie to the dog parade downtown!

Could Kylie Be Our New Dog???

On Sunday we went to a dog adoption event in San Diego and met a very well behaved cute yellow lab named Kylie.

She is 9 months old and is alreay potty trained, and is very well behaved, did great on a leash and is a very sweet dog.

Today (Tuesday) a volunteer from the agency brought Kylie over to see how she did in our condo. She seemed love our condo and loved sitting by the window and watching all the downtown action!

Our little cat Millie did great too. Our cat gets really angry when she sees other cats, but seemed oblivious to a dog in our condo unless Kylie got too close to Millie. Then Millie would give a little hiss, a warning swat in the air, and Kylie would walk away.

We walked Kylie around the block and we enjoyed how well behaved she was. She loved to walk on the leash and loved to run on the leash when we tried jogging with her. They say she loves water and swimming so she would love Dog Beach here in San Diego.

We'll keep updates posted here on what happens with Kylie!!!!

Thanksgiving Weekend

Our friends Lindsay and Aaron visited us on Thanksgiving, they drove Wednesday night from Albuquerque, NM. Because of their late start and slow traffic through the foggy mountains, they arrived at 4:00 AM on Thursday. We were all troopers though and got up 2 hours later at 6:00 am to get ready for the Turkey Trot 5k run in Balboa Park.

The weather on Thursday morning looked decent when we woke up, but when the race started, the rain started too! It has rained a total of 0.15 inches since April, but that morning we got over 2 inches of rain in 2 hours! It was miserable, but we all finished. Over 7,000 people ran too, and you can tell they were mostly San Diegans because nobody has rain gear for jogging! We didn't get any pictures because it was raining too hard to take a digital camera out! The race was very crowded, and Colleen had to wait to cross not only the start line, but also the finish line in the race. That never happens! Last year only 4,000 people ran it, they weren't prepared for the huge crowd.

We were soaking wet, the streets were flooded, but that didn't ruin our thanksgiving spirit! By noon it cleared off and the sun came out. We visited Coronado Beach so Aaron could see the Navy Seal training base, then went home to start cooking our big Thanksgiving meal. This pictures is from our breakfast / brunch at Richard Walker's Pancake House after we cleaned up from the race.


For the big Thanksgiving meal, we made homemade cranberry sauce, we mashed potatoes, cut up apples to add to our stuffing, sauteed green beans, cooked some delicious turkey, and had a wonderful meal! In addition to Lindsay, Aaron, Colleen, Jim, we had L.J. over too! And, Colleen's sister Erin and her boyfriend Nate arrived from San Francisco. When we were done with dinner, we played two intense games of Cranium! Then we crashed because we had only had two hours of sleep. This picture is from right after we ate, notice how everybody is tired, even our cat Millie!!!! Also, notice our "fireplace" on the left?!

On Friday, the weather was beautiful so we took the Old Town Trolley Tour of the City. It is a great way to see the city and learn all about neat facts on how the City was founded, developed, etc. We toured Old Town, downtown, Coronado, Little Italy, Balboa Park, etc. When we were at the Hotel Del Coronado we saw a unique sight, ice skating on the beach!














Here is Lindsay and Aaron in front of the Hotel Del Coronado







Saturday we had breakfast on the beach then we went to the zoo. We toured the zoo for 6 hours and walked over 5 miles thourgh the hills and canyons of the zoo. We liked these Koala bears, notice how they sleep in the trees?? Really cute!

Sunday all of our guests left and we began the clean up! We went Sunday afternoon to a doggy adoption event and met a wonderful dog named Kylie. See our above blog for more on what could be our new lab!