Boo!

Happy Halloween!

And since it's Thursday, here's a Throwback Thursday photo of Allie's first day home with us.  She weighed a whopping 9 pounds.

Cuddle Monster

 

 

 

Trick or Treat

Instead of Trick or Treat, our church hosted Trunk or Treat this weekend.  I was a nurse:

We had some very elaborate costumes and car decorations.  Here is our senior pastor:

And here is our associate pastor with her husband:

We had 22 cars and over 70 children, so it was a big success!

Pumpkin Retrospective

One year ago, we had just brought home our new puppy.  Our first outing as a family was to volunteer at our church's pumpkin patch.  Allie discovered her first pumpkin while we were there:

She also got tuckered out by the end of our shift and fell asleep in my arms:

It's hard to believe how much she's grown and changed over the past year.  Sometimes I miss her cute puppy stage but then I'm reminded of the frustrations that went along with it - and I'm grateful to have our (mostly) well-behaved adult dog (although she will always be a puppy to me).  She still has a bit of a mischievous puppy streak in her, but that's only sometimes annoying and is often just plain funny.


2012

So here's to our adult puppy!


2013

And here's to a second year of our pumpkin family - Daddy, Mommy, and Allie.

Long Lines and Leaves

Recently, we purchased a long line to start training Allie with.  We're able to tie it around our waist when we're out in the yard so Allie starts to learn that she can be outside with us but can't leave the yard.  It gives her enough freedom to roam and explore but stops her from going too far and allows us to reel her in if she decides to run after a dog, squirrel, bird, or Vespa scooter (with or without a dog on it).

Today's yard time was spent raking leaves.  Here are some photos of the action.

Happy Fall!

I did another house thing!

From J:

So, here I am to brag about the latest house thing that I did, which I'm (irrationally?) proud of.  It all started on a Monday afternoon with a pipe leak under the sink...just a fine mist, really, but it had been going on for long enough to leave some standing water.  A pinhole had developed in a ~2" copper nipple between two tees, conveniently below the shutoff valve for the sink supply.  This was no big deal to fix - I used some two-part epoxy and wrapped that section of pipe rather than cutting it all off and resoldering.  But that's not what I'm proud of.

While I was under the sink cleaning up the water I had an epiphany.  "Self," I said, "there's a lot of wasted potential storage space under here.  You should build a shelf in multiple sections that fits around all of the pipes to solve that issue.  And your wife will be very happy with you."  My internal monologue always has my best interest at heart.

So that's what I did.  I used some scrap plywood and 2x6's leftover from building our washer/dryer pedestal, did some measuring, made some cuts with my jigsaw, and presto!, storage space. 


First piece - the hole in the center is for easy removal, as the dishwasher shutoff is underneath this section.

 

Getting there...

Doubled storage space = happy wife.

2x6's on their edge ended up being almost the perfect height to clear some of the piping (that's why it's not flush with the existing shelf).  Slap on some paint to match the existing cabinets and it was an easy job!  Total cost: $0.00.