Weekend of Change

This week was both Becky and Kaylinn hair change up week, however, after a short bout of hair envy Brandy decided she was going to join the fun. And therefore, this week...

Kaylinn went from...
to...
I went from...
to...
And Brandy went from...
to...
Oh, and Maia, Allison and I got new nails...mine being purple. I figured, why not?

Good times people :)

Snow Day in Charleston

Who would expect having to call all my speakers and facilitators and e-mail all my participants to cancel a meeting in coastal South Carolina because of...SNOW and ICE! I mean, that's crazy. And then I woke up this morning with all state government offices closed, which means SNOW DAY!!! I mean there is not actually snow, but there is ice. So, I am sitting by the fire, skyping with Brandy and Maia, and Kaylinn is ripping stuffing out of a stuffed snowman, chewing bones like a wild woman, and taking random naps throughout the house. It's pretty hysterical.

Sweet Child

Now that her brother and cousin are gone the pup dog is all kinds of tired. By the way, in case you ever take care of 3 dogs, 2 cats, and a fish tank in a condo while working two jobs...well, good luck.

A Dog's Snowy Wonderland

It's snowing again! A lot. I figured I would share some pictures for all of those who can't look out the window and see it.


The dogs are hysterical. They split their time between making trails, and running in the trails they made.

They also spend a lot of time trying to scare off the birds. The birds have figured out they can't get to them, but I will say the longer it snow the closer they get to being able to jump over the fence.

My dad took them outside the gate and helped them blaze a trail to the bird feeders. They felt much better being able to chase them away.

Here is Kaylinn's trail to the top of the picnic table.

They also like to stand on the porch and contemplate jumping down. At this point the snow is right below the porch, so they could, but they would sink down a good 6 feet after the fact...somehow they sense this.
Of course, not all the dogs feel the snow is that exciting. Tootsie and Belle are sitting on the bed with mom (notice we lost the isolation battle with mom)

Kaylinn is not one of those dogs, she is LOVING the snow!

Problem is the aftermath...I mean, honestly, look at this! She is a walking ball of snow.

Still snowing...

The Big Snow

So...I got my snow...and then some! Around Christmas time I was feeling very left out with being the only person in my family not seeing a snow storm. When I headed home I figured I may be able to get some snow, but, I never figured I would see quite this much.


Yes, that is a trampoline frame. And it was still snowing at this point! The news called for 20-30 inches and it did not disappoint. You see that band of really dark blue...that is where I am.

Needless to say the dogs were not quite as tall as was necessary to comfortably deal with the snow. Instead they did this hilarious dolphin-like action leaping through the mounds of snow. It was hysterical to watch.

Check out what Kaylinn looked like every time she came in - her long furry hair and the snow were a disastrous combination. We tried rubbing (it just made bigger ice balls) and even a hair dryer, to no avail. Eventually the poor thing just had to sit there and lick them off.

Beyond flat out entertainment factor, it led to very sleepy pups, who spent their time split between napping and barking at the birds on and below the bird feeders. Apparently they were very offended that the birds could stand on top of the snow. Personally I think the birds should have been offended that the dogs were barking at them after sitting by a warm fire.


Unfortunately there was a part that I had forgotten about snow...or perhaps blocked from memory. Shoveling out AFTER a ginormous snow storm. My mom and dad had stayed in Baltimore since my mom has to get to the hospital every day (the ended up walking to the hospital on Saturday). Without my dad around for shoveling support we were on our own. We followed directions and shovelled off the porch often. Here is me shoveling at partial snow point (we did this about 5 or 6 times so I don't know when in the snow fall it was).


The real problem came in when we had to tackle the front of the house. If it was us to us I would have been fine to stay snowed in, but alas, you must get back to life. This was the view out the front door near the end of the snow...

And this is what it looked like around 1:00 today. Now granted we had nothing to do with the roads, purely the cars, but that is a LOT of snow movement!

Brandy headed out to start the project while I finished up cleaning the kitchen.

She eventually figured out it made you feel like you had accomplished a lot more if you could get to the point where you could actually pull one of the cars out. You then had to shovel to the other car, then pull that out, then pull the first in, shovel the rest of the area, then pull the second one in. After getting those two done we were toast and ended up leaving my parents other car as was...yes, I know we are horrible children. Might I add that when my dad got home he didn't seem to have nearly the issues with the shoveling that we did. Apparently practice does make perfect. His shovelling was far superior to our initial attempts.

So now that we are technically able to reach the outside world I probably have to stop watching TLC and the Food Network for 18 of the 24 hours in a day :)

Weekend Notes

Well, my body has done it again. I go the entire year without getting sick and pretty much every single January, right after our deductible resets and you have to pay the full amount for doctors visits, I get sick. I'm not feeling horrible, but definitely not well. I almost didn't go (in fact yesterday I tried to ride it out) but when I woke up this morning with my ears and jaw hurting from the head congestion I decided to go if for nothing else to get something to deal with the symptoms. As I suspected, it was a cold, so they couldn't do anything for it, but they did give me stuff for my head. One good thing about having still not gotten around to taking the tree down was that I had something nice to look at while I laid around on the couch all day long.

Kaylinn has also been entertaining me while I've been laying around for two days. Brandy and John got her this enormous bone for Christmas. It's literally as long as she is. For a few days she would sniff it, but not really mess with it much. And then suddenly she decided she was interested in it, and became very concerned someone else may be interested in it. So she now carries it into the bedroom when we go to bed, then back out to the living room when we wake up. I guess carrying is a bit of an exaggeration, with it's size she had to drag it behind her. If she is laying on the couch she drags it over to the couch with her, if she lays on her bed she drags it over to her bed with her. It's quite entertaining.


So, if nothing else I've got entertainment going for me :)

Pup Dog Birthday

Kaylinn and Dudley are 3 years old today. Sweet, sweet baby puppies.


How can you not love these faces?

Ok, back to work.