Sha, Pree & Bla

To say the Dylan loves our dogs is an understatement! He is such a cuddly boy and seems to think they are just big, moving, stuffed animals that want him to snuggle them. In addition to our dogs Sasha and Capri, I also watch my sister in laws puppy Bella on weekdays. Dylan has affectionately named them Sha, Pree and Bla. Every time he wakes up Capri follows me in to get him and he puts his hand through the crib to have her lick his fingers and then he looks around and says "Sha? Sha?" wondering why Sasha hasn't come to greet him as well. She of course usually hears this and comes in to say hello too. He loves to cuddle them, even though they are only tolerant for so long. He just buries his face into their sides or head and tries to snuggle them. If he walks by Sasha in her bed you can guarantee he will stop and climb in with her, laying his head on her body. It's adorable! And when Bella is here it get's crazy! Granted they all sleep most of the time but when Bella wants to play she want's to play hard, like a puppy! Dylan loves this too. They are all jumping and snipping and growling - don't worry Dyl is at a safe distance, usually in his high chair - he is just giggling his little heart out, and when they stop he starts growling to try and get them going again. It's hilarious!


Kristi brought Bella into a store a few weeks ago and she and Dylan shared the cart.


I don't know why this is blurry but the important thing is you can hear how hard Dylan is laughing! Isn't that the greatest sound? He is really into finding body parts and is pointing out her beep-beep (belly button) at the beginning.

Capri is more into keeping her distance but I love when she lets him sit with her. She loves to watch TV and occasionally Dylan can sneak up and sit with his arm over her back and she "allows" it, I still wouldn't say she loves it. It's also great when she is so focused on the TV (really she is a junkie!) and Dylan walks up behind and scares her to death!
It's hard to tell below but they are cuddling in his chair, or is it her chair?? ;-)

Puppy Dog Tales

You all know how much I love my own two adorable pups - Sasha & Capri. Well my sister-in-law, Kristi, got a beautiful little chocolate lab that I get to help take care of during the day while she works.

Meet Bella - She is incredibly sweet, playful and patient, especially with all these kiddos around. Although she loves to torment Sasha and Capri is still trying to figure out where she fits in!

This is a few weeks ago, she ran around the chair with the broom while Dyl tried to put the dustpan back on the handle where it goes! This went on for about 30 minutes...

6

Of course mine would be Dylan or the pups and in this one you get both!

I can only tag 6???...Annie, Ashlii, Ashlee, Lisa, Abi & Jenn

1. Go to your pictures on your computer
2. Go to your 6th folder
3. Go to your 6th picture
4. Post it
5. Blog about it
6. Tag 6 people



This is one of Dylan's first real interactions with Sasha, obviously he is in LOVE with her! She is constantly licking him and trying to sneak one on the face, the bad part of that is that when Dylan is really excited he opens his mouth so wide in the cheesiest grin so Sasha can lick him right in the mouth!! We are trying to teach her to stick to the head and feet... lol what can you do!?!

Capri's new do and Dylan's new hat

I took Capri to be groomed last week and it totally made my day when I picked her up...doesn't she look adorable!? They usually put on a bandanna or something that makes her look like a boy dog but this groomer went all out with the bows!! :D



Dylan got this awesome new hat too, he loves it!

Catching up…

It’s been a long time since I posted!!
Below is a recap of the last couple of weeks…

April 2nd to 4th...
I went on a quick business trip to the West Coast, and when I say West Coast I mean that I covered some pretty good distance in 3 days… on the 2nd I flew to Portland, did a 2 hour presentation at Oracle and flew to Seattle that afternoon. I saw very little of Portland as you can see by my two pictures taken from the Oracle office downtown. I would really like to go back though, downtown and along the river looked beautiful from my taxi!

I arrived in Seattle pretty early and was staying downtown so I booked it down to what I thought would be the water and Pikes Place, I was surprised to find that it’s not really on the bay, I guess I was picturing something more like San Francisco. I didn’t have much daylight and figured being alone, pregnant and hiking back up the hill to my hotel may take some time so I just took a few pictures before going back. It was a pretty walk and lots of people were out heading home from work. The next morning I didn’t have meetings until 11:30AM so I went back down the hill to the market, there is a lot more going on there in the morning! All the shops were opening and I had some delicious freshly made doughnuts for breakfast – healthy!!

After my presentation I once again headed straight to the airport to catch a flight for San Jose (my company headquarters). I went straight to my hotel in Santa Clara, caught up on work, ordered room service and went to bed early. The next morning I had a Project Management training and Serene and was back in the air by 6PM. Unfortunately this flight didn’t go quite as smoothly! Southwest is the only airline that leaves late enough out of San Jose and it connects in Las Vegas, against my better judgement I booked this flight and was delayed for 2 hours in the crappy Vegas airport. I didn’t get in until almost 2AM and was exhausted! Overall it was a great trip!!

He’s gonna be a rocker…
The greatest thing happened the 16th while I was driving… I turned up the radio and the little guy started rockin’ out! I turned it back down and he was completely still so I turned it up and once again he was jammin’, this went on for about 5 minutes and then I think he fell asleep. I usually can’t feel him unless I am completely still so it was really fun to feel him so active while I was driving!

Say Cheese…
Ryan bought us a new camera while I was on my trip, it’s a Nikon D80 and we are still learning how to use it. As you can imagine the pups are our best subjects for practice so below are a few pictures from their most recent photo shoots.

This is where Capri sits while I work all day, I realize it's not the right lighting but she's just so cute!

Foliage is fun…
You know you are old when something like planting bushes in your barren flower beds is a highlight!! Last weekend we (meaning Ryan) planted 7 bushes in our front yard. It was a beautiful day, we even got a little sunburned. All of our neighbors were out doing yardwork too, it was fun to finally meet everyone.

Look at the dogs in the bedroom windows.

Serene Party….
Only three people (including myself) at Serene (my company) live here in Utah, but two of my California team mates are living here for a couple of months to work on a project in SLC. Last night they came over for a Rock Band party with their wives and the Hammer family (Colter is one of our Solutions Consultants and we have worked together and been friends for about 4 years now). We missed you Jeff! It was so much fun to have everyone over, thanks for coming!!

Puppy Dog Tales....

This is our adorable Capri...causing mischief!!

We keep her in the laundry room while we are gone, with a gate instead of closing the door so she doesn't feel so trapped (yes, I attribute human emotion to animals). Well on this special Easter Sunday she escaped and proved to us once again why we have to keep her in a room instead of roaming freely with Sasha. What you see here is at least one full roll of paper towels, a legal pad and some miscellaneous papers she found. I have to wonder how long this took her and what role seemingly innocent Sasha played in the affair...

The second mess is her haircut and not technically her fault! I usually take her to a groomer but upon returning from work yesterday I was surprised to find Ryan had decided to take this on himself. What would compel him to do such a thing? I have no idea BUT he did a fantastic job and cleaned up the mess. Not to mention Capri is looking quite stunning with her new do, don’t you think!?

Capri & Sasha ~ Sasha & Capri

Sasha, The Story: It was a cold day in October, the year 2000… ok seriously… I was at Target with some friends and there was a family selling their litter of Akita-Dalmation puppies out front for a mere $10 a pup. I immediately fell in love with this little yellow mix, the only one without black and white markings (we later found out she probably had a yellow lab dad). We decided to get her and purchased all of the necessities at the store before taking her to Ryan’s work as a “surprise”. He was currently working at Garts just across the street so I brought her in all bundled up in my coat. Of course the other girls in the store swarmed and by the time Ryan made it over he was surrounded by not only the puppy, but 6 girls giving him puppy dog eyes as well, how could he say no!?! Well, he loved her too but the fact was we weren’t allowed to have pets at our current apartment. She spent the night with us and we devised a plan, we were sure Ryan’s parents would love a new puppy right!? With only Michael left at home it seemed like the perfect solution. We were hopeful and made sure she looked her best, bow and all. We went to his parents with Sasha following close behind as we walked into the house, she didn’t have a name yet but Ryan’s sister was on a mission in Russia at the time and Sasha was chosen as a good Russian name. Ryan’s brother and mom rushed over to play with her while his dad kept his distance, giving us a “what have you done?” look. It was decided that joint custody would be the best solution and as soon as we could take her we would, little did we know that would be 7 years… She happily became the family dog and over the years everyone loved her, the neighbors, the family, especially our little nephew. When we purchased our house in 2006 it was quickly determined we were finally in the perfect position to take her, now they have visitation rights and when Ryan’s dad is here you will nearly always find Sasha at his side.


Capri, The Story: As we moved all along the Wasatch Front over the years we determined it would be nice to have a dog, well mostly me especially when Ryan was traveling, even if it was just a little one. Our first little pup was a Toy Poodle named Bender (after the robot in the cartoon Futurama). He was the best dog!! Such a sweetie and very smart, actually too smart. He was acting out (accidents on the carpet, chewing on things, etc.) and we hoped a friend to play with him while we were at work would help, that’s when we got Capri. She is a Miniature Schnauzer and was only 1 pound when we purchased her from Bird World. To wrap up the Bender story, this didn’t help and he now lives with a wonderful family with three kids to give him plenty of attention! Back to Capri… We got her in January of 2006 and she has been my baby ever since. She is very playful and territorial, she gets jealous of Sasha easily, but she is a good friend and loves to pick on Sasha for attention. It will be very interesting to see how she responds to the new baby, she is pretty good with kids and keeps her distance but this will be different for her. We named her after the beautiful Italian island of Capri, one of our favorite places!