Snuggle Puppy

I've been working on making various little blankets and what-nots since I've been home....and Piper has been very excited to help. Very:

So, since I take her everywhere with me, I figured I'd might as well make a little blanket for her since Ozzy, my Dads dog, took it upon himself to not only pee all over Pipers new bed, but he also tore all the stuffing out of it so now it's a flat piece of fabric. Go Ozzy!

I attempted to go to the JoAnnes Fabrics here, but apparently it went out of business during the two and a half years I've been gone. LAME! So, I swung over to Beverly's Fabrics...their selection was less than impressive. In fact, they only had six fleece fabrics to choose from. I ended up heading over to Monterey and their Beverly's had only two other patterns in addition to the other ones the last store had. What the hell? Do people think that Californians don't need fleece or something? Anyway... I ended up picking a print with a blue background and a matching red one that had little dogs all over it. Figured it'd work well since you can flip it to whatever color you want, especially if you have a boy or girl dog :)

I know you're probably thinking "She's just a dog. WHY are you making a little blanket for your DOG?". Well, she's always riding in the car with me..and the car I'm currently driving has leather interior. What do dogs do when they try to settle down to sleep? Nest. What does nesting entail? SCRATCHING and DIGGING. After watching my weenie dogs do it enough times with their blankets and attempt to do it to my Xterra, I realized I'm gonna save myself some grief with this puppy and have a blanket in the car for her to burrow into. It fits PERFECTLY across in the back seat of the car as well as my Dads F150, and when you just "toss" it into a seat, it's the perfect set up for a dog to snuggle into.

Since I bought a yard and a half of the fabric, I was able to actually make two blankets. So, I have a spare if anyone is interested (seriously!) Piper loves it and weasels right into it whenever she hops up on the bed.

 Think I'm joking?

LOVES it.
Believe it!

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Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!!

I don't remember if I ever posted about a photo contest my base was having, but I remember asking a lot of my friends for their vote in terms of several pictures I considered entering. Between the support board that I own and dozens of emails sent out, the majority of the pics that were picked came down to the top three, which was the picture of my backyard, a castle from the Netherlands as well as a pic of some red tulips.

 Well, I got an email the other day informing me that one of my pictures actually took FIRST PLACE!!! AHHHH!!! I'm so excited!! I kept thinking it was my Belgian backyard:

But in fact, it was the picture of Hoensbroek Castle! 

Yay!!

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Baby Aiden

As I had mentioned in a previous post, the whole point of me coming up to Washington was to see my cousin and her brand new baby boy, Aiden. I mean, aside from them..I also wanted to visit some of my friends, but the baby was a huge part :) 

Alexandra's due date was supposed to be Sept 13th, but it looks like Aiden wanted to hang out a little longer and was born on the 15th measuring in at 9lbs 4oz and 21 inches long! Big kiddo! His mommy did so good with the whole thing and is madly inlove with her new man :)

This kid is so insanely cute! He makes little squeaks and whimpering noises while he's sleeping on Alexandra's chest. Now I'm starting to see why veteran mommies like holding other peoples newborns..they're cute, they sleep and they're squishy! Not the diaper kinda squishy, either.

While Alexandra was chillin' in the hospital a little longer, my Aunt Loo took me over to their house so I could see how they had it all set up. In the last several months, they moved into a new place so this was gonna be my first time seeing it. It's VERY cute and decorated very very nicely! There's no man vibe in the joint, lol. I'm sure you're wondering what I mean by that...it's basically along the lines of: no car decor, no hunting stuff, no man-ish things. It's put together very nicely..not saying that guys aren't capable of that or anything, but let's face it..guys aren't very metro about decorating unless they're high maintenance.

 

 Aidens room is SO cute! This is the sign that hangs over the entry to his nursery:

 Here's the actual nursery. They went with a jungle theme..mainly like lions and monkeys:

I absolutely LOVE the sun they have as the overhead light!! I think I need to buy one for myself so when I go back to Belgium, I'll install it in my office so I can have some sort of "sun" during the upcoming winter, lol. Apparently they got it from IKEA, so that's something I'll keep an eye out for.

When the baby shower popped up for Alexandra / Aiden, I was still over in Belgium so I wasn't able to attend. Sadsies. So, I waited till after her party to see her updated "need" list on the baby registry since you know how those parties go. Sometimes people will bring exactly what she needs while others bring the most random thing possible, lol. I ended up getting her a boppy that has a little monkey on it, a changing pad with two different covers (one of 'em has a monkey on it) and I also sent her Roarbert, which is a Scentsy Buddy so the nursery will smell like baby powder :)

The boppy is chillin' in the corner while Roarbert is on the bookshelf:

 This little kiddo is definitely gonna be spoiled rotten as he plugs along. I'll be visiting him again tomorrow through the weekend, so I'll snap some more pictures of him then. :)

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Shiney Syndrome

I've been really lagging on my posts! Sorry!! Between driving around and visiting people, it's been hard for me to actually stop and write stuff out. So, here's my attempted effort in terms of a post :)

When I headed out on Friday to make my way up to Washington, I stopped into Eugene, Oregon to check out VooDoo Doughnuts. If you're a fan of Man vs. Food, then you've seen the episode where Adam goes there to check this place out since it's known for it's variety of crazy doughnut flavors. I ended up getting myself a Butterfinger doughnut (it was WAY too sweet for me!) and a "Miami Vice" which is blue raspberry (it was FANTASTIC!)... although, I felt like I was diabetic after I ate them (took me several hours to eat 'em since I'm not a huge sugar junky). It was just one of those things you wanna try once you've seen 'em on TV...does that make any sense? Anyway, at least I can say I've tried their goodies :)

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Drive Drive Drive

Driving solo sucks. Like, really sucks. I mean...I can drive by myself from Salinas to Santa Barbara without a problem, but today, I drove from Salinas, CA to Eugene, OR. With the two breaks I had, it took nine hours and forty five minutes to get here. That's a whole lotta quite time to myself and it SUCKED. Given, I got to talk to Eric for the first part of the drive..so that was nice because we caught up on everything that's going on in Belgium verses *here*. Lots of "I love you" and "Miss you" before I really had to super focus on the traffic (yes, I was driving hands free so I wouldn't get pulled over!). Every few hours, my Dad checked in on me to make sure I wasn't dead...so I suppose that's having some human interaction during my drive, lol.

Here's some examples of how UN-stimulating the scenery was for me:

 Hey, look! A building! Although, it was on the verge of falling down...but still, it shows that there was some form of life out there at some point:

More dead landscape..

I ended up taking a break near Shasta Lake because I reaaaally needed to stretch my legs. One MAJOR con about driving solo: I can't take pictures of the scenery like I want to! The lake looked SO pretty when I was going through the mountain passes, but by the time I was able to legally pull over..I was only able to get this shot. This lake is massive and all I got was this little wedge of it, lol

As I plugged along, there were more and more trees which I totally love! It's safe to say that when Eric officially retires, I REALLY want to live in either Oregon or Washington because of all the greenery. While driving through the endless sea of dry landscape earlier in the day, it really made me miss Belgium...mainly a healthy, green, and lush looking countryside.

Have you ever been to the Black Bear Diner? No? In that case, you're totally missing out. There's actually one in Salinas, but from what my Dad has told me..the quality of food at that particular location has gone down hill (sadness!), so, I was stoked when I saw one right off the I-5! Their avocado chicken club sandwich is DELICIOUS!

Several more hours of driving and I ended up at my hotel, which is a "Super 8". I'll be honest, I was expecting it to be a junker because it's only $50 a night. MAN, I was wrong! I got a huge king sized bed, the bed itself is soft, free internet, a mini fridge AND a microwave! Seriously, that's awesome! 

 

Yes, I'm watching Jersey Shore... don't judge me!

So ya, there ya go! That's my day in a nutshell! I'll be heading out in the morning to finish making my way up to see my cousin since she had her baby boy today. Aiden (her baby) was born weighing 9lbs 4 oz and was 21 inches long! BIG baby! I can't wait to meet him!!  Then from there, I'll be heading up to Fort Lewis to harass SuzAnne..woot!

On that note, time to hit the hay. Night night!

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Pampered Piper

I'm such an animal person, it's kinda sickening sometimes. When I think about my dogs, I think of 'em as if they're my kids.So, it's really not all that surprising that Piper is getting spoiled rotten. Then again, I have that mind set that pound puppies should get extra spoiled considering what they went through. 

Piper is only five-ish months old, and she was a stray that was picked up over in Soledad. Honestly, she's lucky that she was found because people over there would use a lil dog like her as bait for training their dogs to fight. Really horrible stuff! When I was looking over her paperwork, she was actually picked up & brought into the SPCA on Eric's birthday (Aug 22nd), so that made me smile cause that's kinda like a "sign" in my eyes. They ended up spaying her, giving her all of her shots and put her up on the website in hopes of finding someone to adopt her. Ding ding ding! She's got a home and is getting spoiled rotten! Even my Dad is spoiling her, which is hilarious since she's such a tiny little dog. 

Today, I took her over to Carmel to pick up a Puppia harness for her since most of the local pet stores here don't carry them. For the life of me, I have NO idea why they don't! It's like they're only carried in dog boutiques or something. So, we popped into to Diggity Dog since I knew for a fact that they carried 'em. My Mom and I used to go in there all the time with Waldie and Ozzy since you can find some pretty unique things in there. Honestly, it's by far one of my favorite places to shop in terms of pet items because the staff's awesome, they have a massive variety of foo-foo things if you wanna dress your pet up, and lots and LOTS of collars and leashes to choose from in addition to decorations or whatever else you can think of. 

After looking around for a bit, I decided to get her the Puppia soft vest rather than the halter because she's so small. It's either the "small" in the halter was just right...and she's still gonna grow, or the medium was way too big on her. With the vest, it's still adjustable and has the clipping mechanism to make sure it doesn't break away while walking her. She got LOTS of compliments while we were shopping! A lot of people kept asking me if she's part wire haired dachshund that's mixed with something else..who knows, honestly. She's just ridiculously cute and VERY well behaved!

Here's some other goodies I picked up for her. Dad suggested that I get a "loose" leash for her since I plan on taking her with me most of the time while I'm out and about, so it'll be easier to carry with me rather than a retractable leash. I got her a Kong chew toy as well as a little Kong flyer (puppy size) since she's wanting to chew on anything / everything. The big Kong flier (the bunny) is something she likes sleeping with, go figure!

 This is the Red Dingo dog tag I'm ordering for her:

 Ever since we brought her home, she's been smoothing things over with Ozzy since they didn't exactly get off on the right foot during the "introduction" session at the SPCA. They're both to the point now where they can sleep next to one another, play with their toys, etc...although, Ozzy doesn't like sharing Dad with Piper yet, but that'll take time. At least there's been some progress in the last few days :)

All in all, she's getting very settled in and has a pretty good layout of the house already. She's FABULOUS in the car! I thought Izzy was a great little co-pilot, but Piper has her beat (don't tell Izzy!). Piper curls up in the passenger sleep (or in the back seat) and just passes out till we've reached our destination. Once I park, then she hops into my lap for me to take her out and do whatever it is I need to do. For a tiny little dog, she rarely barks unless something really loud startles her...other than that, you never know where she's at because she's so quiet..that's why I have two cat bells on her collar so it'll help me keep track of where she is! When it's time for bed, she curls up on the pillow right next to me and stays there till I get up. Very good lil puppy! 

All this spoiling is really tuckering her out..

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