Wordless Wednesday

On the road again

We hit the road this week. Yup WE. The DH is on spring break and has friends and family in DC so he's coming with this week and staying the weekend. He returns on Sunday but I will be staying for work which means I will be gone for 11 days!

While we are away our awesome friends Alex and Joe will be watching the pups. Alex has also recently decided to start a new exercise plan. She is tricking herself into running by picking up Mesa and Baily as she heads out :) The girls are all for this new plan. A long walk and a run everyday? They are in heaven (and so are we, since tired dogs are good dogs).

About two months ago I went to an opening for a new dog shop with Big Carl and they just posted these pic. His ears look extra large!

We were tagged and a few beautiful awards

Charlie over at One Pibble's Wish tagged us in photo tag.
Here are the rules: Go to your first photo folder, find the 10th picture, post that photo and explain the story behind it. Then, tag five blogs to do the same.

Here is our photo:

I call this one scawwie Mesa. This is how she likes to lay on the sofa and watch people (when she isn't watching sports).


I am going to tag:


Fido & Wino
Ginger Jasper
Joe Stains

Look at what Tilly gave us:

I have to …

Put the Sunshine Award flower logo in my post. 

Send the award to 12  blogs that bring  sunshine into my life. 

Put links for the winners in my post. 

Leave a comment on their blog telling them they have got  a Sunshine Award from me.

Put these instructions on my blog so they will know what to do.

And Prinnie gave us this one:

The rules state that I have to say seven beautiful things about myself:

1. I think rescue dogs have the most amazing hearts

2. I have the ability to forgive and move on (Big Carl)

3. I will always have a special spot in my heart for Pit Bulls

4. I work hard so I can retire early and save more dogs

5. I have three beautiful rescued pups

6. I try to smile at everyone in greeting to make their day better

7. I work hard to not judge a book by its cover

I am supposed to give this to 7 fellow bloggers

And lastly (but not least) I got this one from Princess

I want to give all these awards to all my awesome blog friends! There are just to many and I can't decide who deserves them. Maybe I will pick them out of a hat!

Wordless Wednesday

you know that sofa cushion

the one that Big Carl vomited cat poop all over? Well we took it apart so we can clean it and next thing we know we see this:

and I see a little SHIT, I mean Big Carl, with fuzz handing out of his mouth. Sigh. RIP beloved sofa. It was an awesome sofa. HUGE, like MANGO sized! The DH is 6'4 and was determined to have a sofa that he could sit on and not have his feet touch the floor. Had to put it through a window since it doesn't fit up stairs. When guests come over they like to sleep on it once we put twin sized sheets down (they are a bit tight since it is so big).

Big Carl better be very glad I am on the other side of the country this week.

St. Pats fun

So before I left for my first week on site, the DH, Baily and I went to an event put on by the Four Legged Friends Foundation called O'Fluff's Luck Charms. The foundation raises money for low income families to help pay medical bills so pets are not taken to shelters and ultimately euthanized. We decided to take Baily because she is the best behaved of our three.

While there, they had fashion shows, raffles and blind auctions. Ian and I ended up with 5 gift bags (they were giving away the extra's), bought 10 raffle tickets and ended up winning a bag of dog food and the grand prize of a two night getaway to Palm Desert! We are very excited about that. We also won a silent auction and got 4 tickets to see the final home game of the LA Kings! Ian is a huge hockey fan having been born and raised in Alaska. All in all it was a great event and we actually walked away with more in prizes than we had spent in donations! We also shopped some of the vendors and got BC a new collar and some belly bands (super nice suede and sheepskin ones we got for a steal) since he still tries to mark everything.

Apparently Baily is not a big fan of me being gone all week. Big Carl decided to welcome me back by eating a whole bunch of cat poop and throwing it up all over the sofa... eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.

We are still here I promise!

Still trying to get the hang of my new schedule! Its still week one. Here is a favorite Mesa pic of mine. Two of Mesa's favorite things. Our friend from Alaska, Oscar and her tennis ball. This pic is from last fall but Mesa is super stoke 'cause Oscar has been down to visit us for the past two weeks while he is taking a bike trip from Northern Washington to his birthplace Columbia! He and his sister have been resting up before starting the foreign leg of their trip.

Oh and check out the view from my hotel gym. It's Camden Yard! Where the Baltimore Orioles play!

Mesa and Big Carl enjoy the sunshine

Baily was nowhere to be found during the beautiful day we had yesterday

Today is the big day!

After 2.5 months of confinement I am going to walk one of the dogs. Probably just Big Carl since he only needs to go around the block but its a lot better than I have been doing! Maybe I will take Baily since she is well behaved. The moose (Mesa) is too much for me and my shaky foot so she is not an option at this time :(

Wordless Wednesday

My Last Week

So this is my last week here before the travel starts! Im excited and nervous and a bunch of different things :) I have been spending a lot of time with friends. A lot of lunches out which is made a lot easier by my handicapped parking sticker, though when my friends get in my Jeep they always ask why the windows are locked. You see, Mesa likes to have the window rolled all the way down, if I don't lock the windows, she stands on the buttons and rolls them down. Well she stands on the buttons if I do have it locked as well but they just stay up. The pups are pretty bummed and have been mopey. They can feel the change in the air:

 

Baily decided she needed 3 Nylabones and a Kong before she could rest

  

Mesa is guarding the two bags of food behind her

  

Big Carl is hiding out so Mesa will stop picking on him

I am also spending a lot of time working on getting my blog stuff organized so that I can keep up while on the road. Don't forget to follow us (the link is at the top) if you stop by often since that is how we keep track of a lot of our bloggy friends!

another package!

This time from the pups over at the Kissa-bull blog because we won their Paw It Forward. The package was address to Mesa & Baily but Big Carl was tired of being left of out things that happened before he came into our lives so in the corner of the pic you can see him running off with something. Baily is licking her lips in anticipation of the treats and Mesa saw the balls in the bag, do you think she's ready to go?

Mango Minster Awards

We received a package from Mango and it was addressed to Mesa Grace. Aww he used her full name! It was loaded with great stuff. I tried to get a pick of the rope toy but in a matter of 5 minutes Mesa had gnawed off the rubber bone and Baily had gnawed it into three chunks so each pup could have a rope chunk to chew (isn't she thoughtful?). We also got this awesome medal, but Baily is obviously not impressed.

Mesa is really excited to have been recognized as the insane terrier that she is but in this pic she is focusing on a chunk of the rubber bone that is laying on her bed.

Wordless Wednesday

and now for the big news

Sorry I was MIA this weekend. Ended up having to work 10pm-7am Sat-Sun with Monday off in exchange so I vegged out as much as I could. Now on to the big news:

The DH and I are starting our own business. Since I don't talk much about my work here, I will give a basic run down. After college I started working for a company that developed Electronic Medical Records for hospitals and clinics (EMRs). For those of you who watched the Olympics, you saw a lot of GE commercials about their EMR. To say the industry is very transient is an understatement. I have been jumping around as a full time employee from project to project but it requires moving, a lot. The DH is trying to finish up school so its not easy on him when I make us move every year.

I have always received a lot of inquires about going into Independent Contracting. I used to work for once of the big consulting firms and quickly learned that hospitals want to contract only a couple people and the big companies are not going after those openings. The big downfall is that most of these contracts are 6weeks-6months and there is no job security. It's like you are on permanent probation and can be let go of at any time.

I have spent a long time thinking about this and the DH and I have worked out what it would be like because the chances of me finding a good local contract wasn't very good. Then a former coworker called about a position where she was contracting. After talking to the hospital and the people working there (I have already worked with many of them since this is a tiny industry) I decided to take the leap. Every 6 months my contract will be up for renewal but the project is slated to last a couple more years. Its a great opportunity for me but the big downfall is that it is in Baltimore. Yup, as in 2400 miles on the other side of the country Balitmore. This means that every Sunday night I will get on a plane and leave LA and return every Thursday night. Repeat x 50 each year.

This means a huge change for the family. The DH and I are used to a schedule like this (he used to work nights while I worked days so we only had weekends) but the pups are not. Its going to be hard to be away 4 nights a week but the 3 day weekends will be nice and this is putting us on the path of where we want to be in the future. AAAAAAAH SCARY! I have never been so uneasy as when I gave notice here and realized I really was going out on my own.

Here is how Baily looked after I made the DH give her the news: