This is late...again. These past few weeks have just been SO busy. I'm also still trying to make myself like the new blogger, so I'm not as motivated to update :-/. Other than that, it's been a really good week!
1) Natalia - We got to visit with my niece last Saturday! I didn't know it until the Friday before, but she came to MD for the weekend with her other grandparents. Josh and I drove down to Ft. Washington to spend some time with her. We went to a playground with her and had a great time. She wanted one of us to start pushing her each time she got on the swing. She could keep herself going once someone got her started, but she didn't want to try to swing by herself. I was able to teach her how to start all by herself! It may seem silly, but I was really excited about it. Since we don't get to see her very often, I don't really get to teach her much, so this was kind of a big deal for me. :-)
2) IKEA - I was actually hoping to go to IKEA before we even knew we would be driving near there. It just worked out perfectly. Since we were already going to be really close, it didn't take a lot of persuading on my part to get Josh to agree to going. We got some furniture I've been wanting to get for the guest room and a TV stand for our TV in the living room. I'll post pictures at some point, but don't hold your breath. ;-)
3) Bottling - We bottled our blueberry wheat beer Friday! I found awesome American flag caps for it so I was even more excited! I've really been looking forward to this brew, so I'm ready to taste it! I will admit that I think we may be disappointed though. One of my favorite beers is a blueberry wheat so I have had high expectations for this one from the beginning. It doesn't smell the way I imagined, and at bottling (of course it will be different with some age and carbonation) it tasted nothing like I imagined. We're hoping some major changes take place over the next few weeks and it ends up being delicious anyway!
4) Bathroom - Yes, we work slow, but we finished (for now) our bathroom. The new mirrors are up and they look great. Eventually, I would like to paint the cabinets and add some new hardware, but that will come at a later time. We have many other projects that we want to knock out before we tackle the second phase of the bathroom update.
5) Bailey - I've mentioned before that Josh's big trick for Bailey is teaching her to bring us beer. We've been working on retrieval stuff with her for a while now to work toward this (and several other tricks). She's always been good about bringing us toys, but no so much with other things. Well, now she's pretty good about bringing us several things. We've been working mostly with soft things (koozies, an old dish towel, an oven mitt, newspaper) and she's getting really good. One of us can give her something and tell her to bring it to mommy or daddy, and she will! Newspaper is the hardest (since she loves to tear up paper). She does OK until it starts to make noise or if she has trouble picking it up off the floor, then she just holds it down with her foot and rips it. Other than that, I'm really impressed with how well she's picking things up. Anyway, this week, Josh decided to introduce her to an empty bottle. It took some higher value treats to get her interested since it's much larger and heavier than other things we've been having her pick up. We put a koozie on it to make it easier for her to grip. I know she wouldn't like, nor do I want her, putting her teeth on a glass bottle.
