A Surprise

Well, my DH surprised me and gave me an early Christmas present this evening! It's an old roll top desk. Isn't it beautiful! I can't wait to start using it!!! I'll have to share more about how he surprised me later but for now I wanted to show you my wonderful gift! I sure have a thoughtful, sweet husband!!!

Mushrooms, Toadstools, and Shrooms

With all the rain that we have been getting little mushrooms have started to poke there little heads up all over the field that I walk in with Callie. Here are a few pictures of the different shrooms that I've seen on my walk.

Doesn't this one look like a flower?

Can you just see little fairies dancing around the toadstools!

Callie is sniffing this big mushroom!

This is on top of a mole hill.

This is my absolute favorite shroom picture!

Callie

I guess it has been awhile since I last said anything about our Callie dog. Well, she is officially ours. We signed all the papers and had her spayed about 3 weeks ago. We are discovering more and more what a sweet dog she is! She has a wonderful personality. She likes to be with people and play with other dogs. She seems to enjoy following little kids around (part of that herding instinct). She is great on walks, never wandering to far and seems to look forward to wrestling with my husband every evening when he gets home. Overall I would say Callie is a very warm dog. Both of us are so glad that we got her and that she has turned out to be such a great dog.

I will say that the week after we got back from our trip was a rough one with her! She peeped on the floor almost every night, run back down to my in-laws house 3 times, and came into the carpeted area of the house (where she isn't allowed) and chewed on several newspapers. By the end of the week my DH and I were a little fed up with her behavior. (On the cute side with all of this she found the basket in the living room with all the stuff animals and took each of them and set them on her bed. She's an interesting one.)

This week she has been much better. My DH and I have been working really hard on praising and giving her a treat when she potties outside. We started working on that this past Saturday and I'm happy to report that she hasn't had an accident yet. (Of course now that I haven't said that she'll probably pee on the floor tonight.) Another thing that has helped is if my DH or I wake up in the middle of the night we'll let her out. I really hope this continues to work because she is a much more enjoyable dog to be around when she does her business outside.

As for wandering down the in-laws to visit their dogs...I've been trying to go down there every few days so that Callie can play with them but then there is a time to leave. We are trying to teach her that its okay to go with when we take her but she isn't to go on her own. So far it seems to be working but I don't think she has quite mastered that one yet!

Yesterday I had a lot of fun with her while I was raking leaves. She is so funny to watch. She'll go to the back deck and then all of a sudden come running as fast as she can to the front yard where I'm raking leaves and jump over the pile and then quickly turns around want to be play. I couldn't help but laugh. She looked so cute and was so playful!

I know I'm really bias but she sure is an adorably cute dog!!!

A Surprise Visit

Well, some of you may have noticed that I've been absent from my blog for awhile and that is very true. The reason I didn't post is because I made a surprise visit down to see my family. I left October 25th and returned home November 2nd. Only my parents and grandma knew I was coming down and I have to say it was a lot of fun to walk through the front door of my parents home and completely surprise my sisters!!!! They sure were taken back. Let's just say they were trying to figure out how I got there. I had a lot of fun surprising them as well as other people during my visit. What would be funny to watch was people would say a casual hi and then do a double take. "What are you doing here?" was typically their first response. I enjoyed surprising/visiting family and friends as well as former coworkers and students. Another fun surprise was the fact that one of my friends from church had her baby while I was out visiting so I was able to see him when he wasn't even a day old. (He was just precious and I'm so happy for them!)

So where was my DH during this time, he was on an Elk hunting trip. Unfortunately because of the warmer weather the elk weren't migrating like they typically do. Only one of the guys on the trip ended up getting an elk. And since there wasn't that many elk around, the group came home a day early, which meant my DH and I arrived home the same day! Believe me I didn't complain!!!

One thing I realized while on this trip was how much I missed my husband. We have only been married for about 3 1/2 months but I felt like a piece of me was missing. It really was the weirdest feeling for me and even L said the same thing. Though we both enjoyed our trips, we both agreed that it would be awhile before we want to be a part from each other.

So now that we're back home we are settling into daily living. It has rained almost everyday since getting back and my DH had snow one day up on the job. The leaves are also doing a great job at carpeting our front yard and I have been trying and let me repeat trying to rake them up. I've spend two days out there trying to get the leaves at least in piles and then move those piles off of the grass but both times it got to wet and rainy to continue. I have to say I'm making some progress but its going to be a continually battle to get them all off the grass. The only time I'll win is when the trees have shed all there leaves. Until than the battle will continue!!!