The Old Oaken Bucket

I thought having to pick siding, shingles and shutters was difficult...I was amazed at the number of color choices. Now it's time to pick stuff for our 3.5 bathrooms and it is soooo overwhelming. I don't remember it being this difficult the last time we remodeled a bathroom which was about 15 years ago.

Ed would like a "bowl sink" for the 1/2 bath -- I don't know what the real word is for these types of sinks but I've never seen one until I saw my cousin's last month and I recently saw another one at one of my customer's homes. Ed liked it but he really really decided he liked it once we saw the display at the showroom we went too -- he called it The Old Oaken Bucket -- see the sink on the left side? It really is a metal sink but it does have a bucket kindof look. And it's somewhat old fashioned looking, don't you think? But if you know college football (and unfortunately I know more than I ever would have wished to), The Old Oaken Bucket is a huge rivalry game between Purdue and Indiana. And Ed is a huge college football fan.

Now if we're going to go with one of these "bowl sinks", I liked the one with the fish...it appeals to the "squiggle" in me :-)

Litter Number Nine

Harley must have written this card before he left The Seeing Eye and then someone forgot to mail it because we didn't get it until a week or so ago and of course, Harley is with us now :-) This litter with Nexa was born October 28th and it is a "J litter" -- someone told me there is a Jonas in that litter.

Dear Family,

Here is Nexa and our puppies. This was her first litter and my 9th. She did great from what I hear, we had 5 boys and 2 girls.

I am doing well. My handler tries to play with me as much as she can and takes me into the play yard often.

Take care,

Harley

Merry Christmas!

Lee spent a lot of time working before Christmas. I think Harley was a little sad about his early retirement -- afterall, he is only 3 1/2 years old. So he helped Lee out by listening in on some conference calls and doing some computer stuff for her.

I baked Christmas cookies for the very first time. They were yummy especially hot out of the oven. I think Ed's mom was a little stunned by my sprinkle choices, especially when I put orange sprinkles on the Christmas trees...

We put up a tiny tree on some snack tables instead of a full sized Christmas tree. 4 big dogs plus a tree in one house equals ornaments all over the place. Actually, the 3 older dogs would have been fine -- it's Ava, the instigator, who would have happily taken down all the ornaments she could reach for a little taste testing.

The best present from Ed was the Dog Santa outfit he bought at Old Navy. The one thing I would like about having a little dog is playing dress up :-) Ed found a Santa outfit and we tried the Santa hat and beard on all the boys--Ava would have dressed up as Mrs. Claus if we had the appropriate clothing for girls.

Ava did have a little elf hat so both labs got dressed up for picture time...it's a good thing they love me :-) !

A Day at the Barn

Last Saturday we decided to take Ava to the barn to meet Lee's horses. Harley met Blue a long time ago but he never met Reddington. Harley was a bit wary of both horses although Ava was very interested.
But both dogs had the best time running around one of the empty and very very very muddy horse paddocks. Of course we forgot to bring towels so in the end we just tossed the both of them in the back of car.

We brought home two very dirty and tired dogs and they ended the day with a shower and a good scrub down.

Out with the old...

Once upon a time, we had one bathroom. Right now we have none! Now our bathroom door opens out onto what will be a powder room and since there is no sheetrock, there is a continuing view into what will be another bathroom and a walk-in closet. It always amazes me that it takes so much time to put new stuff in and almost no time at all to take out the old.

Our old staircase was narrow, steep and definitely not to code. Now we have new steps -- they lay on their side in the living room for a day or two before the old stairs were ripped out (along with the corresponding walls) and the new staircase was installed. The new staircase is nice and sturdy -- and right now there is a view into the basement as well as the upstairs.

We're finally getting sided! We picked Clay with Bordeaux shutters. And since the framing is all done, the dumpster was moved into the driveway so now we almost have a complete view of our home!

Harley Barley Boy!

Harley's back! The Seeing Eye called me last Thursday to tell me I could come get him whenever I wanted to. I really really wanted to come get him on Friday but when my father-in-law heard about everything I was trying to squeeze into Friday combined with the fact that I was going away for the weekend, he said to me..."Sweetie, you're nuts." So I changed my plans and I picked up Harley on Monday.

The number one question since he's been back is did he recognize us. He was gone for exactly 2 years and 2 days and I was worried that he wouldn't remember us at all. Ed said that it wouldn't matter if he did or not since he was such a great dog anyway but I really wanted him to remember us. I waited in an office at the Seeing Eye for them to bring Harley in. There were two other women who worked for the Seeing Eye in the room when Harley came in. He sniffed the room first (it was a new room to him and there had just been another dog in there) and he pretty much ignored the other two women. But he came up to me, jumped up and gave me a kiss before returning to sniffing the room again. Now he was never a very excitable dog so I'm going to say his jumping up to kiss me was the moment when it clicked and he recognized me.

We got in the car and he settled right into the spot he always rode in when he was in my car. Later that evening, he was pretty happy to see Ed too so we think he recognized Ed too.

Ava loves having Harley around. She's from his fifth litter with one of his many girlfriends, Fancy. But we don't think they recognize their relationship at all -- she just thinks it is fun to have somebody around that wants to play with her. We're living with Ed's parents right now while the house is being worked on and their two older goldens don't play with her -- Aiden is grumpy and Bentley is blind. Ava and Harley are having a lot of fun with each other!

We are so happy to finally have a dog of our very own.

Anita--In Our Home 12/6/06 - 5/29/08, In Our Hearts Forever

So much has been going on between the dogs and our home...I've been taking lots of pictures but not updating my blog! Here's a quick recap with pictures to follow over the next few days...Harley is home, house is moving along although it is temporarily unliveable AND Anita had her Town Walk.
We (me, Ed, Lee and Matt) arrived in Morristown for Anita's 10 am Town Walk. This is what I call her Graduation. We didn't even recognize her! She's yellower than we remembered and the 1/4 golden retriever was really showing with her fluffy tail.

Anita made us so proud. She took her trainer through Morristown like a well-trained Seeing Eye Dog. What a huge difference from the puppy we raised that was afraid of cars, loud noises and the salad spinner! We walked about a half block behind with another Seeing Eye person who filled us in about everything Anita was doing.

Her trainer gave Anita the command to move forward when a van crossed their path and Anita blocked her trainer from stepping into the street.

We learned a lot about Anita's training after we finished with her Town Walk. Her trainer told us Anita was a little aloof when she first arrived but settled in nicely after being there for a little while. Anita was one of her favorite puppies to train even though the trainers aren't supposed to have faves :-)

She is really good about ignoring squirrels, etc... and maybe that's because she's been exposed to all sorts of other animals. And unfortunately she still is a bit of a pooper scooper -- gross!

While Anita did well on her trips to NYC, she will probably be matched with someone who lives in a town more like Morristown or smaller.

There we are for one last picture with our girl...little people in the background.

We're so proud of Anita and can't wait for her final letter to find out where she'll end up working.

Finally, a puppy of our very own!

Harley was the second puppy we raised for the Seeing Eye. When he returned to the Seeing Eye Foundation, we learned that he was being considered for the Breeding Program. We were so excited when he made it -- his whole litter was being considered for the program but only he and his sister, Hanna, made it.
Every time he had another litter, we received a picture of the mom and all the puppies in the litter. The last picture we received was from his September litter with Vesey -- that was his 8th litter.

And today we learned that Harley is officially being retired. He's only 3 1/2 years old but he's definitely done a good job at the Breeding Center. So what does that mean? Well, since we raised him, we were offered him back and we were so excited to say YES YES YES! We've been hoping for this phone call for a very very long while. There was a chance that he could have been sent to breed elsewhere at another organization or that he could go back into training and become a dog guide but we were really hoping he would retire in style and with a huge smile on his face.

We don't know when he'll be joining us yet since he will have to be fixed before he comes back home but we can't wait to get him back.

I hope he remembers us. He left us two years ago, December 6, 2006. Finally, a dog of our very own!!!

Everything but the kitchen sink...

Our kitchen will be the least remodeled room in the house. It's getting a new replacement window on the side, our sliding glass door will be replaced with some sort of interior door and our greenhouse window over the kitchen sink will go away.
Once we decided to remodel, I began to notice a lot of details about all the various homes I've been in. Most homes I've been in have a window over the kitchen sink and generally it looks out over the backyard. Before we remodeled our kitchen, our sink had no window, just cabinets over it but I think that's because it was an incredibly small kitchen -- most modern day walk in closets are bigger than our first kitchen.
We're adding 14 feet of room onto the back of our home without moving our kitchen so now my kitchen is in the center of the house instead of towards the back. My greenhouse window will go away and I'll be left with a space that basically looks into my new cropping room. So the question is, what should happen to the space that was the greenhouse window? The remodeling contract said they would close in the space but I'm leaning towards leaving it open and putting shutters on the other side that can open and close. I thought a rack of hanging wine glasses would look nice there and maybe a shelf with knick knacks because anything on a shelf any higher won't be easily reachable by me.
What do you think? A wine rack or leave the space open?