Bailey's Progress Report

Potty Training
After over 2 weeks of no accidents, Bailey had 1 on Thursday. I was playing with her with her new laser pointer and she squatted in the middle of trying to find the red dot. :-/ Oh well...baby steps. She is doing very well with the bells, but she still rings them sometimes when she just wants to go outside.

Training
We have been working on "Take It" for a while with not much progress. Bailey will take her dumbbell, but she immediately drops it. The only thing she will keep in her mouth when we tell her to take it is a treat (of course). We're putting this on hold since we're all getting bored with it. Josh and I will try another approach when we come back to it. We've decided to work on "Say Your Prayers". This is one I wanted to teach our do before we even decided to get Bailey, so I'm really excited about it. I just started this one Wednesday morning and she's already making progress :-) She's got the feet part down, now we're just working on showing her what to do with her head. We decided to teach her to touch a target in order to this. It will take a little longer since there's another step added in, but we think it will be best in the long run.

Bailey is also showing lots of improvement with her walking. She hasn't really pulled in a long time. She will occasionally pull if we don't use her pinch collar when we first get home from work. This is when she's most excited. She's doing much better with "Heel". I saw a rabbit when I was walking with her earlier in the week. I could tell she was very excited, but she didn't try to chase it, she just tensed up a little. I released her so she could do her business, and she tried to take off (the rabbit had long since hopped away, but Bailey still tried). She obviously didn't get far. She's also gotten a lot better about not picking up random things while we're walking. She's been good about listening to "Leave It" for a while now. When we're heeling with her, we don't really let her sniff things, she has to keep up with us. When we release her, she's free to wonder and sniff as much as she wants. She used to try to pick up things in passing while we were heeling, but now she ignores them for the most part. She still tries to drink water from any puddle we pass, but that's really the only issue we're having right now. We even saw a paper towel balled up on the ground the other day and she completely ignored it! She loved to chew on paper things so this is a big step!

Bailey's Victims
Bailey chewed the piece that connects the strap to the bottom part of one of my Havaianas. They might not be the most comfy flip flops ever, but I still love them. It was such a clean break too. If Josh hadn't been home when she did it, I would have thought I broke them somehow. There aren't even any chew marks.
She has continued to chew on our foyer floor, but we knew she would. We ripped it up this weekend so it's not a huge deal. We still correct her because it's not acceptable behavior. She nibbled on the stair railing a little bit too. She should be almost finished teething by now, so hopefully this won't last a lot longer.

Toys
We got a laser pointer for Bailey! It's so entertaining and it's perfect for when we're watching TV and she wants to play! Definitely much better than a squeaker. We also got her a little turtle that has eggs in it. She is supposed to take the eggs out. She likes to find toys and things, so I thought she would love it. It took her a little while to figure out what to do with it. I just took the eggs out in front of her several times. I would let one stick halfway out for her to take out and eventually she figured it out. We got her a new Kong too. She's had a puppy Kong but she's able to chew into it now (it's softer and is supposed to be good for teething). We'll be passing the puppy Kong on to her little sister!

We ordered her lots of chewy treats since Bestbullysticks is having a sale right now. I got some of her favorites and ordered some new things for her to try too.

This picture is from when we were painting the foyer last weekend. Bailey stayed on the stairs and watched most of the time, but she did try to roam a little bit. This is one of those times she was trying to sneak down in the foyer. She was almost there and I told her "no". She just sat like she was. Haha. She did manage to get some paint on her butt and tail. She was SO good and patient. We did this last Saturday and we were going to take her to the dog park Sunday. Unfortunately, it was rainy. We decided we would take her today since she was so good yesterday while we were working on the foyer again. And...again...it's supposed to be raining this afternoon :-/ We've been getting SO much rain. It's ridiculous. Seriously, our back yard has been all mushy since August!

Bailey's Progress Report

Bailey is definitely back to her old self now. She's added a few things to her list of victims. Yesterday, we came home to this...

She also gnawed on the baseboard a bit, then she got sick on the stairs. It was pretty gross but what can you expect after eating wood and vinyl?

We've been planning on replacing the ugly vinyl with ceramic tile for a while anyway, it just hasn't been a priority. Now it is. We hope to get it replaced within a month...hopefully in a couple weeks. She was definitely bad, but at least she did some of the work for us. Haha. Now we have to decide on a tile, buy our supplies, borrow the tools from my co-worker and designate a weekend to do it.

Earlier in the week she chewed on the baseboard again. We're out of bitter spray so I put some lemon juice on the area she's been chewing on. She didn't touch that area, but she found a new one :-/. We'll have to figure out something else next week. 

This is the worse she's ever done in one week :-/ I think it's probably because we've had longer days this week. It's been really exhausting for both of us so we haven't played with her as much as we normally do. 

At least she's showing improvement in other areas! We're doing really well with potty training. She hasn't had an accident since my sister was here and she's starting to ring her bells consistently. The only problem is she sometimes rings them when she wants to go out to play. Hopefully it won't take long to break her from this. We take her out every time she rings them (unless it's right after we get back in...she does do that sometimes), then we give her a few minutes to go. We can usually tell if she's just trying to play and we go back in if she doesn't use the bathroom. She needs to know we go out to play on our terms, not hers. 

We wanted to take Bailey to the dog park last Sunday, but we weren't confident that she was completely healed from her surgery. We decided to take her to Fell's Point instead. We wanted to walk her around for a while then have lunch since they have lots of pet friendly outdoor dining. We got there and I was going to see if she needed to pee while Josh paid for parking. That's when I realized that we left her leash at home. I couldn't believe I forgot it. We just let her walk to the car by herself. She's so excited to get to ride somewhere, she always just jumps straight in the car. I brought her water, treats and a toy, but somehow I didn't even think about her leash. Josh walked around a little trying to find somewhere we could buy a leash. We ended up driving across Baltimore to buy one. We decided to keep that leash for the car in case something like that happens again. We finally made it back for lunch. It looked like it would rain any time so we only walked with her for a little bit before we sat down. She did pretty well considering she was ready to play and this was her first time sitting in public while we ate. There were plenty of people and dogs walking by. She just watched most of them, but she did try to follow a few of the dogs. One dog passed by twice and barked at her each time. Of course Bailey barked back. It was tough to keep her still, but I was proud of her overall. Next time we definitely want to exercise her a bit more first. Our waitress was super nice and she played with Bailey for a little bit. She was so nice and Bailey gave her plenty of kisses. Our food was delicious and our nice waitress brought a beach bucket of water for Bailey. Josh got a crab burger (a burger with a crabcake & bacon) and I got shark tacos. I don't know which one I liked better. We had a great time and it was nice to expose Bailey to something different. My only complaint with the outdoor dining is how many people smoke. That's actually how I picked the restaurant...it was the only one without people smoking. Haha.

 Being so good! Obviously she wasn't very interested in her rope. There were may too many people, dogs, crumbs and new smells around to be interested in that.

Bailey's iced water.

Bailey's Progress Report

Recovery

Bailey has recovered quite nicely from her surgery :-). She's almost back to her old self now. Our cuddle time with her is once again limited to a minute or two at a time. She was so pitiful for the first few days, but that didn't last long at all.  I think I'll start running with her again next week. We may start running in the evenings since it's getting cooler and it's still dark when we wake up in the morning. 

Toys/Treats

This is her teddy bear I got for her to have when she got home from her surgery. I looked everywhere for a large stuffed animal that wasn't ridiculously expensive and seemed fairly well made. I didn't have a lot of luck until I finally found this one at Goodwill. The only downside is that it had the hard beady eyes. I didn't want to have to worry about Bailey eating them, so I took them off and sewed the eyes shut. I wouldn't let her have it before her surgery, but she stole it off the coffee table a few times while I was in the process of sewing it up. When  I picked her up, she didn't want anything to do with it. She finally started to play with it around Tuesday. This is when I knew she was getting back to her old self. 

The deer antler is still going strong! She's had it for almost a month now and it's still got lots of life in it. Definitely worth $12 and we'll for sure be buying more when she finally finishes this one off. 

Training
We finally found a dumbbell to work on retrieving stuff with Bailey. We didn't want to use any of her current toys (or anything that looked like her current toys) because we didn't want her to get training time confused with play time. We're focusing on "take it" right now. It's kind of boring, but it's the first step to a lot of the big tricks we want to teach her. We've worked on this in the past, but with treats. Of course we didn't have any trouble getting her to take her treats. Now we're using the dumbbell (which is really a rubber dog bone we got at Target). She'll put it in her mouth, but we haven't gotten her to hold it in her mouth yet. She just bites down and lets go. Eventually, we'll be able to get her to take other things. This is how we'll eventually teach her to put away her toys (my big trick) and bring a beer (Josh's big trick). It's kind of hard to work on this when there are other cute tricks we want to teach her, but I know it will pay off in the end.

Potty Training

BIG improvement here. She hasn't had any more accidents since my sister left. Maybe we were having trouble with her because there was another female dog in the house (who was about to come in heat)? Whatever it was, I'm SO glad she's back to her old self in that area. She's even started to pick up on the poochie bells. We've placed them at the stairs on the second floor since that's where we are most of the time. She's been hitting them by herself for a while now, but only when we ask her if she needs to go out. Yesterday, she hit them on her own while we were watching TV. I was SO excited. This morning when I took her out, she hit them before she started to go downstairs. I used to have to make her stop at the top of the stairs then ask her before she hit them. I'm so glad she's finally picking up on what they're for! It may have been easier for her to associate them with going out if they were on the door rather than the stairs, but we weren't sure if we would hear them or if she would even go ring them without us since she used to wait at the stairs. 

Food

Bailey has been completely on her new food for almost 3 weeks now. Her fur is SO soft and shiny. I love rubbing her and I'm so glad we decided to switch to TOTW. I know she likes it a lot. When I e-mailed them, they sent 2 bags of each of their flavors. We kept the ones we didn't choose as training treats. They're fine for if we're getting her to do something simple. If we're doing something more complicated or something she doesn't like doing, we have to bring out the big guns, Beggin Strips. Haha.

Homemade Frosty Paws

If you haven't heard of Frosty Paws and you have a dog, you should check them out...or at least the idea of them. They're pretty pricey. Lucky me, I found a copy cat recipe on pinterest! I decided to make a half recipe for Bailey to see  how she likes them. 

Ingredients

2 cups plain yogurt

1/2 a banana

1 tablespoon peanut butter

1 tablespoon honey

Directions

Blend in a blender and pour into ice trays. Cover in plastic wrap and freeze. For easy removal, sit the tray in warm water for a few seconds. Store in a Ziplock bag. SO easy!

I'm not even going to lie, I tasted them and they're good! This recipe kind of tastes like a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Bailey loves them and they're cheap, so I'll be making more. I'll be experimenting with flavors too. I'll probably try some more savory ones with beef or chicken stock. 

Bottling Time!

Josh and I bottled our first batch of beer yesterday! For our first batch, we chose a weizenbier, which is a German wheat beer. We used a kit for this batch, but we'll be using a recipe for the next. Josh decided he wanted to name it "Naive" since that's what we were when we started out. Haha. We messed up a few things, but I think it's still going to turn out pretty good! I didn't think to look at our start time, but I think it probably took about 2 hours including sanitizing everything. We had some issues siphoning the beer from the fermenter to the bucket we bottled from, but we figured it out eventually. I think we ended up with about 44 bottles and a mason jar. The mason jar is completely experimental and we don't expect it to work out very well...but at least it looks nice! This is a little less than we expected to yield, but we accidentally drained a few pints out early in the fermentation process. I also spilled a little while I was filling. 

 The beer in the carboy before we siphoned it out. Notice all the gunk at the top? That's from the hops we forgot to filter out.

 Siphoning into the bucket. We finally filtered here.

 Josh bottling our first beer!

 The capper.

Beer #1!

Josh did most of the filling and I did most of the capping, but we both tried each. He decided he likes filling the bottles better. I thought I would too, but luckily I like capping better! I wasn't very good at filling and I tend to not enjoy things I suck at. Now the beer has to age in the bottles for a little bit to carbonate. We should be able to try our finished product in a little over a week!

We have a long way to go, but we learned so much from this first batch. We're hoping to brew our second batch this Friday. I'm excited to do something festive! We're doing a Pumpkin Ale. I'm not crazy about Pumpkin Ales, so I have no idea why I'm so excited about it, but I am!

Weekend Visits

My sister came to visit this weekend! I was so excited for her to come because I haven't seen her since May! She came in Thursday night with the guy she's dating and his little Jack Russel Terrier. We had stuffed shells for dinner then caught up a little before going to bed early. I had to work Friday and we just relaxed that night because Nikki didn't feel well. They made a traditional New Orleans meal for us since he is from Louisiana. Red beans and rice, YUM! My sister also made chicken & veggies & cornbread. Dinner was delicious. We just watched a movie and crashed early Friday night. 

Saturday, we had lemon blueberry pancakes for breakfast then we explored Baltimore for a bit. We went up to the top of the World Trade Center. There's an observation area up there and we had never been. I thought it would be really cheesy, but it was actually pretty cool. We were 27 stories up. I know that doesn't seem very far up, but we could see SO much from up there. I took a few pictures, but they didn't turn out very well. Unfortunately, I don't think the exterior of the windows had been cleaned recently. We showed them the Inner Harbor then walked around a bit more. We walked a few blocks to where Mike noticed a burnt building he wanted to look at (he's a fire fighter). It was just a burnt building. Haha. We heard music so we kept on walking. We passed a very interesting street that I've never been on. It's basically a block of strip clubs and other scandalous things of that sort. We finally found where the music was coming from. There were lots of belly dancers at some sort of festival. We watched for a few minutes then kept going. We decided to go to Fells Point for lunch. We were having a hard time picking a place, so we went somewhere we knew we liked, Kooper's Tavern. We weren't very hungry, so we shared a burger and a beer flight. I was really excited because they happened to have the Wisconsin game on. We planned our schedule around being able to watch the State game, so we weren't going to be able to see Russell play. AND it was a blowout! Not much of a game I guess, but I was still excited. We were planning on stopping at my favorite gelato place on the way out, but it was getting close to game time and we didn't want to miss anything.

 MUST go back! They had the distance from Baltimore to various locations around the world. Pretty cool.

 Me with my love

 Nikki and Mike

Sisters! This is the best pic from up there! You can see the aquarium (bottom left) and Ft. McHenry (right).

A lot of the bleachers are still up from the Grand Prix! You can see two sets of them here.

We made it home just in time for the game. I was SO excited to watch us play, but we were pretty horrible :-/ We made tacos during halftime. The second half was better, but not good enough. We lost our first ACC game of the season...to Wake Forest! UGH. We planned on watching the Michigan game since it was the first night game at The Big House. It was an awesome game! Unfortunately, everyone fell asleep. I finally decided to actually go to bed around 10:30. Yep, I'm that lame now. When I watched the highlights Sunday morning I was pretty disappointed. Oh well, at least I was well rested. 

Sunday Bailey and I got up bright and early around 7:30. This is our typical weekend wake up time. Everyone else slept in and I finally woke Josh up around 9:30. Nikki made waffles for breakfast and we just hung out for a bit. We decided we would cook Brats on the grill for lunch. We watched the Ravens game and they BEAT UP on the Steelers. YAY! We watched random bits of football for the rest of the afternoon then decided to bottle our first batch of beer. I'll post about that a little bit later :-)

Lemon Blueberry Pancakes

This is yet another amazing recipe from Pioneer Woman. She has more pictures and more in depth instructions than I do, but I think mine can get the job done. I knew I had to try this when I saw it, I just needed to wait until we had visitors since Josh basically hates blueberries. My sister was visiting this weekend so I decided to make them! They are SO good. My sister thought they were a little to lemony, but I thought they were perfect. I was going to make a blueberry syrup to go with them, but I ran out of blueberries.


Ingredients
1-1/2 cup Cake Flour (I used THIS recipe instead)
1 Tablespoon (additional) Cake Flour
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
3 Tablespoons Sugar
1-1/2 cup Evaporated Milk 
1 whole Lemon
1 whole Large Egg
1-1/2 teaspoon Vanilla
2 Tablespoons Butter, Melted
Zest From 1 Lemon
1 cup Heaping Blueberries


Directions
Mix evaporated milk, lemon juice and lemon zest together, let sit for 5 minutes.


Heat skillet to medium-low heat. 

While waiting, mix the cake flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together.

Add egg, vanilla and melted butter to wet ingredients. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients.

 Fold in blueberries. 

Melt butter in skillet, spoon in mixture about 1/4 cup at a time. Brown on both sides.

Smother in extra butter and syrup...ENJOY!

Where Were You?

I don't know anyone who doesn't remember where they were on 9/11/2001. I didn't realize it at the time, but it's a day I'll never forget. I was a freshman in High School. I was walking from my first period class to my second period art class when I heard people talking about a bombing at the Pentagon. I assumed it was a small bomb that resulted in a few injuries and maybe a death or two. Sad, but I didnt' think it was a huge deal. When I got to my art class, my principal came over the intercom and said that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. At that time, I wasn't even completely sure what the World Trade Center was. We didn't watch anything on TV in any of my classes, but I know some classes did. I heard various rumors throughout the day. I still didn't know how bad it was. I don't remember if I went to my mom's or dad's house after school, but I know we watched the news that night. I was shocked when I finally realized how bad things really were. The amount of smoke that was covering the sky, the people jumping out of the buildings, then the buildings actually collapsing. It was unreal to me. Thousands of people died that day. Thousands of moms, dads, siblings, children, spouses and friends would never be coming home again. SO many people could only sit around and wait, for what must have seemed like forever, to hope that someone they loved would be found. I can't imagine the agony they went through. Losing someone that way must be horrible, but not even knowing if they're dead or alive...if they're dead when their remains will be recovered...I just can't imagine. I never dreamed something like that would happen in the US. 

It was already a very very sad situation, but once I started to see the stories of families who lost people that day, it really just hit me. I remember seeing a story with a man who had lost his wife on 9/11. They had a 3 year old little boy and he had been asking where mommy was and when she was coming home. This poor man who lost his young wife now had to explain to his toddler that his mommy wasn't coming home. I just can't imagine how he felt. I can't imagine someone being evil enough to cause so many people to have these types of conversations with people they love. 

I had never been to New York at that time, so I never got to see it with the towers still there. I finally got to go a couple years ago, but the memorial wasn't ready at that point. I saw the memorial on TV today and I think it's beautiful. Hopefully I'll get to see it in person before too long. 

Until then, Baltimore has a small memorial that I got to half see this weekend. It was unveiled today, but we went Saturday. The marble has a timeline of the day on one side and the tarp covered thing is a piece of one of the towers. We'll go back to see it before too long. 

God Bless America!

Bailey's Progress Report

Last weekend, Josh's parents were in town. Bailey was very well behaved while they were here. I was very proud of her. After everyone left, we decided to take Bailey to the dog park. This was her first trip to a real dog park. We had a small one at our apartment, but there were rarely other dogs there. When we first got to the dog park there were only 2 other dogs there. I was pretty disappointed. One of them was a small dog who didn't like Bailey sniffing him. He was pretty mean to her but she handled it very well. Other dogs started coming in and eventually there were several there. Bailey really hit it off with a huge black lab. He played rough but she's a tough pup. They knocked over the water bowl and got SO dirty. She ran and ran and ran. She was completely exhausted! It was nice. Haha.

Dirty face!

Knocked out after playing at the dog park.

Bailey got spayed Thursday. I felt so bad for not being able to feed her breakfast :-/ I dropped her off Thursday  morning and picked her up after work. She was so pitiful! She got sick twice on the way home and again once we got home. She didn't eat well at all for the first day or so. She looked so lost and confused when she came home. It's been really easy to get her to take her pain medication. All I have to do is put a little peanut butter on it. The bad thing is it makes her really thirsty. We've been giving her more water than usual to keep her hydrated. She has had several accidents since she's been taking the medicine. She isn't doing a very good job at all of letting us know she needs to go out. Hopefully this is just the medicine. She'll be finished with her medicine in a few days and I'll be SO glad. We did get some good news. The Dr. wasn't able to find her hernia! It healed up by itself. I haven't noticed it sticking out in well over a month, but I asked them to look for it anyway. That saved us a little bit of money.

This is Bailey's incision today. There are no external sutures, just the liquid stuff. The small green mark below it is a tattoo (with some excess ink, Josh won't let me clean it off yet). Josh was anti-tattoo, but I was OK with it. It's just a precaution. It's just in case she is ever separated from us. Obviously, she should be scanned to see if she is chipped. In that case, we would find her. This could potentially not happen though. There is a possibility someone may try to spay her. When I worked a the vet through high school, this did happen a few times. Someone finds a female dog and decides they will get them spayed. The vet will look for a scar, but sometimes, there's not a visible one. The vet opens the dog just to find out she's already spayed. I would hate for my baby to go through this again if it's not necessary. So, while we have taken every precaution possible to make sure she isn't separated from us, and if she is that she'll be reunited with us, this is a small price to pay for peace of mind. Josh is fine with it now.

My sister was in town this weekend and the guy she's dating brought his Jack Russell Terrier with them. I was worried about Bailey trying to play too much with her and hurting herself. Luckily she's a small dog, so she can't really get rough with Bailey. Thursday night, Bailey mostly just followed her around, slapped around at her a little and tried to lay down on her. Friday, she was more to her old self. They've been playing really well together all weekend and Bailey hasn't been jumping or running much, which is what I was mostly worried about. Not to say they didn't chase each other around the coffee table a few times, but Bailey was pretty good at taking a break when she needed to.

Tug of War

She's still not 100%. She's definitely taking longer naps than usual. I know she'll bounce back before we even know it.

Other than the accidents while on her pain medication, Bailey has done pretty well with potty training. She didn't have any accidents at all while Josh's parents were in town. That is an accomplishment in itself. For whatever reason, Bailey is much more likely to have accidents when we have visitors. She did have one after we got back from the dog park on Labor Day. She woke up from a long nap and immediately squatted. I don't know if she even realized where she was yet. After that she was fine until she was on her meds. I worked the Friday after her surgery, but Josh said she had several accidents. I'm not sure if it was mostly because of her medication or if it was because there was another dog in the house (she had a few accidents too).

Bailey's victims were limited to her own property this week. We took a tennis ball to the dog park with us. When we got back that evening, she pretty much ripped it apart. Maybe it was because it smelled like other dogs in her house? I'm not sure what it was, but she's never showed much interest in that ball until Monday.

Fall is Coming!

It pretty much already feels like Fall here, with the exception of a random very hot day here and there. It's been getting pretty cool during the nights and not so hot and humid during the day. This is bittersweet for me. I'm definitely loving the weather right now, but I know the cold weather is right around the corner. It also means that football is here! I'm SO excited for football season.

We kicked off the college football season by watching Russell Wilson kick some UNLV butt and brewing our first batch of beer. I already miss him at State, but I know he has an agenda and I completely understand why he left. I think he'll get more recognition at Wisconsin than at State. His O-line is also much stronger than ours, so he has a better chance to show what he can do. I wish the absolute best for him. I know it's probably a long shot that he'll make it in the NFL, but I really hope he does. I just don't like the thought of Wisconsin showing up under his name

Saturday, we only got to watch part of our game since we were at the Baltimore Grand Prix most of the day. We were getting updates, which was awesome, but it wasn't the same. We were able to pull off a win, but I think if Liberty would have played well, the could have beat us. That's scary, especially this early in the season! Hopefully the team will get things together in time for ACC play this weekend! 

Another great thing about Fall weather, camping! We haven't been camping in a LONG time, but we've been collecting all the supplies we need. We just need a few more items and we'll be all set. We just need a good weekend to go. We have talked about going during our bye week in October. We'll see how the weather goes. I'm excited to be able to go camping with Bailey. This will also be the first time we've just went camping as a couple. In the past, it's been either with family or a large group of friends. It will be nice for us to get away with just us and Bailey...get out of the house, away from noise and technology. I'm really looking forward to it!

We're also super excited for our best friends to come visit us this fall. We try to make it to an away game each year. This year we're going to the UVA game in October while they're visiting. I can't wait! We'll have several other friends an family members come visit since it's the nicest time of the year as far as weather is concerned. It will be busy, but SO much fun!

After writing this, I'm so much more excited for Fall! YAY!

Baltimore Grand Prix

This year was the first annual Baltimore Grand Prix. I'm not into racing at all, but I thought it would be fun to go for the experience. Josh's parents were in town for the weekend and his stepdad is VERY into racing. 

 Danica Patrick qualifying or practicing. Who knows, it all looked the same to me.

After watching the cars for a while, we decided to leave to go to lunch. We just walked over the bridge to the Inner Harbor. 

The family minus Aaron hanging out around the harbor, trying to decide on lunch. 

 The hubby and I :-)

 We finally decided on lunch at Tir Na Nog. YUM!

 Back at the race. We met a really nice couple that had just moved here from Vegas about 3 months ago. They took this pic while we were waiting an entire hour for the race to start.

Once the last race started, we had a lot of fun. The cars were going SO fast! We were on the Pratt St. straightaway, which was the fastest point. They got up to 180+ mph then had to slow down to around 40mph for a sharp turn. Even with the sharp turns, they still were able to make it around the entire track, which was 2 miles through Baltimore, in 1.5 minutes!  

 

The race was pretty long. After about an hour, we were both getting headaches and we were bored. We decided to walk around and check a few other things out. 

 The pirate ship cruise at the Inner Harbor.

Our first major purchase if we ever win the lottery. Except we don't play the lottery :-/ 

We had a lot of fun, but the day was SO tiring! I never sleep in on the weekends and I slept until 9 this morning. I would have slept longer, but my sister called and woke me up. I can't believe I slept 9 hours! I'm usually up by around 7:30 on the weekends. We'll probably go again next year, but we won't get tickets. You can stand outside around the Inner Harbor and get the same views as you can with the general admission tickets we bought. Oh well, lesson learned. 

Our First Homebrewing Adventure

For Josh's 25th Birthday, I wanted to get him something nice. He gave me several ideas. My top choices were beer brewing supplies and fishing supplies. I thought about it for a while. I decided on brewing supplies since we would probably rarely go fishing. I just pictured Bailey trying to attack a flopping fish. Haha. Anyway, I contacted one of my friends who has been home brewing for a long time and he pointed me in the right direction! I spent a bit more than Josh wanted me to but I think it was worth it. It's something we can do together. We have a lot in common already but it's nice that we can share a new hobby. 

We brewed our first batch Thursday night. The whole process took us about 4 hours, so it was a late night. We were exhausted by the end of the night since we stayed up much later than normal. We both really enjoyed it though. 

Our ingredients. We used a kit this time because we pretty much had no idea what we were doing. We have already picked out a recipe for our next batch. We'll be making a Pumpkin Ale, just in time for Fall!

Josh sanitizing his carboy. Just sanitizing seemed to take forever.

Adding ingredients

Stirring

TONS of foam after adding the hops

Into the carboy it goes after cooling

Shake it!

It's fermenting now, we should be able to bottle within a week! 

Bailey's Progress Report

Bailey had a great time traveling home last weekend. She gets so excited about going on rides. I worked a half day last Friday and Josh was off. While he was packing the car, Bailey ran and got in the back seat. She didn't want to get out.

This is at a creek we found near our house. We take Bailey there to try to get her more used to water, but she really just wants to drink out of it. It was low on this day.

Training

Bailey has definitely mastered her wave. We usually eat breakfast and dinner in front of the TV, so we make Bailey sit in front of the stairs. For the past few days, when she notices that we're almost done, she'll wave at us. I'm convinced she does it because she knows we're suckers and she knows we'll let her come sit beside us. It's still super cute though. We've been working on some off leash training in the field behind our house. Bailey has done very well with this, but we're going to stop actually taking her off her leash. She tried to chase a cat with Josh the other day, luckily she was on her leash. She just gets so excited and I know she would ignore us. We have plans to take her to a dog park Monday if the rain holds off for us. This will be a great opportunity to practice with her. There are no better distractions than other dogs!

Potty Training

I know I will probably regret saying this, because she will make me eat my words...but, no accidents!

Toys
Bailey's bully stick lasted a week at most and she was only allowed to have it in the evenings after we got home. We'll probably still buy some because she absolutely loves them, but I wouldn't consider them a long lasting chew toy for her. The one be bought from bestbullysticks.com definitely lasted a lot longer than the one we bought at Petco though. Her dear antler is still going strong. We'll definitely buy more of those for her!

Health
Bailey gets spayed next week! I'm a bit nervous for her, but I'll be glad to have it over with. She's just a baby though. I know it's going to be so hard to get her to not play while she heals.

We've been brushing Bailey's teeth since she still had only baby teeth. I wanted her to get used to it. I don't think it's any easier now than when we first got her. She just moves her head from side to side & tries to eat the toothbrush. She will nibble on the bristles very gently. It's actually kind of cute. I've decided that I'm going to get one of the toothbrushes that goes on your finger. I've had to take things out of her mouth several times and she doesn't really care. I think this type of toothbrush will work much better for us :-). 

Congrats to the Mortons!

This past weekend, Josh and I drove down to NC for a wedding. It was so great to visit and see friends. We left Friday afternoon so we could beat traffic and hopefully make it to NC before getting bombarded with rain from Irene. It worked! We had a pretty smooth ride. We did hit a little bit of rain, but not much at all and only for a few minutes.

Friday night we went out with our friend AJ and a few of Josh's old RA friends. It was nice to just sit and catch up. It was also weird because the places we used to hang out are changing. It seems that every time we come home something is different. I guess this is just part of life. 

Saturday we got up and played with Bailey a lot. We knew we would be out late so we wanted to make sure she was good and tired before we left for the wedding. It wasn't until 5:30 so we had plenty of time to do this. While I was showering and Josh was playing Halo with Eric, Bailey managed to sneak a bite out of Chris' rug :-/ We're going to try to repair this the next time we're in town. I didn't even think to get a picture. 

Saturday night we drove to Benson to see our friends Andrew and Kristian get married! I know I've said this before, but weddings are so much more exciting since I got married. I guess because I know how happy I am to be married to my very best friend. I'm so glad that my friends will be able to share that too! I was so excited for them. Luckily, Irene didn't cause any major trouble for them. The outdoor ceremony had to be moved inside and several people were not able to make it because of the weather. Otherwise, you would have never known a hurricane was passing through during the event. We had so much fun at the wedding. We got to hang out with Andrew and Kristian more than I've been able to at any other wedding. The food is great and of course the dancing is always fun. After the wedding, we went back to Chris' and caught up with him a little since he wasn't home the night before.

With Hillary! I LOVED the bridesmaids dresses.

With Cheryl and the Hutchersons.

 2 very happy couples. :-)

Very Andrew :-)

We slept in Sunday since we got in so late Saturday night. Sunday was also Josh's 25th birthday so we had a cookout/pool party for him. It was small, but still lots of fun. As always, I barely have any pictures :-/ Eric cooked beer can chicken on the grill and it was amazing. We decided to take Bailey swimming again. It went better than last time, but I still came home with some scratches and bruises.

 This was during a calm moment

Look at those grill marks!

 There were lots of sticks in the yard because of the wind from the hurricane. She was SO excited to find this big one.

We took off Monday since Josh wouldn't have to spend his birthday driving home. We had intentions on leaving pretty early Monday morning, but we didn't get on the road until about 10. We still got home a little after 3. We hit a bit of traffic and made a few more stops than usual, so it wasn't bad at all. We unpacked and ran a few errands when we got home, then we just relaxed and watched Hall Pass. It was hilarious.

On the way back home.

It was a busy, but still very fun weekend! I was a little sad coming home because we won't be going back to Raleigh until Thanksgiving weekend. I've never really been sad leaving until this time, I usually just don't feel like riding all the way home. I know I'm definitely not ready to move back yet, I just wasn't quite ready to leave yet.