Happy Thanksgiving!

This will be a short post. Today is Thanksgiving day. It's pretty early in the day right now. The turkey is due to go in the oven in about an hour. We expect to eat between 3-4pm. Today's menu:
Turkey and Dressing
Rice Dressing (family recipe-my favorite!)
Cranberry Sauce
Mashed Potatoes (made by Quinn-the best!)
Green Bean Casserole
Macaroni and Cheese
Crescent Rolls
Cream Cheese Chocolate Dessert
I think that's it. It's going to be delicious! My favorite holiday...I guess because everything revolves around the meal ;). Justin, myself, Quinn and Brooklyn are eating and celebrating the holiday together here at our apartment in Austin. Tomorrow Justin and I are driving to Houston for a friend's wedding. We are going to stay the night at Candace and Eric's house and then come back to Austin the following day. My best friend, Molly's dad is getting remarried and so we are going to his wedding. Basically it's a reason to see her and Chris and the kids (Riley and Harper), and I'm very excited! Also, Justin has never met them. We are bringing Brooklyn with us. Besides the drive from the breeder's home to our apartment, this will be her first road trip. Hopefully she does as well as she did on the drive home and she doesn't get car sick. Once we get to Candace and Eric's house she will get to meet and play with Daisy and Mocha. Daisy is my sister, Ginger's dog. Candace and Eric are watching her right now while Ginger is in New York visiting my oldest sister, Daphne. Mocha is their two year old Cat. This will be interesting to see how both of them do around each other. Brooklyn has been around dogs before and seems to do fine. She has also interacted with children and does fine at that, too. But this will be her first encounter with a cat, I believe. Animal Party!
In other news, we have been looking at real estate in the area and have pretty much pin-pointed the area we want to live in. It's about 9 miles out(southwest) from where we are currently living. It is a nice area and the development-community we looked at yesterday has a few floor plans that we really liked. If we build, it takes 6-9 months to complete the process, so we are possibly going to act on this as soon as next month. The houses in this particular development range from the mid 200s and go up to the 800s. We are looking at the lowest here but hope that because we will be in a nicer, more expensive neighborhood, this will increase our home's value pretty quick. This particular community is in an area where there's a golf course nearby and they are planning to build a new elementary school in the next few years too, which should also be a good thing for increasing our home's value. Anyway, we're going to keep researching and looking and then possibly starting the process next month...so we'll be moving to our house in the summer! Which is the perfect time to move in Texas ;).....(that's a joke in case you couldn't hear my sarcasm).
Tomorrow, Friday the 24th, is Justin and my one year anniversary. :)
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Pupdate written by Justin

We picked her up on Friday (well, Robin did) and brought her home. She was scared out of her mind on the car ride, but she doesn't appear to get car sick, so that was a plus. She sat pretty still in the front seat for the entire 90 minute drive. When I got home, we laid in the floor with her to try to calm her down. The only thing that seemed to calm her was sitting in one place in front of the couch with no one walking around. She would shake when we tried to pet her, but after 15 seconds of actual petting, she'd stop. She didn't eat or drink anything the first night, but we figured it was just nerves. We put her to bed around 11:30 and she didn't make a peep all night.

Saturday when we got her outside, she seemed somewhat playful in small doses. She hates her collar. At this point, we still weren't using the leash, because we didn't want her to hate us any more than she did. She still wouldn't really move around at all on Saturday. We put a blanket on the couch as "her" spot to sit, though she can't get up there on her own. She would fall asleep whenever we put her there, so I guess she likes it. She doesn't like the little doggy bed we got her, and although she doesn't cry in her crate, she doesn't just hang out there either. She doesn't seem to have her bearings in the apartment. She scratched on our bedroom door, and we didn't know why, then she proceeded to poop in the floor. So, she must think that's the way to get outside. She had a few other smaller accidents, but they could have been prevented if we'd addressed them differently. So it's not that big a deal. She still hadn't eaten or drank anything (other than some turkey I gave her) by Saturday night so we called the breeder and she recommended putting some wet food on top of the dry. That worked. She still doesn't like her dry food, but she's going to have to get used to it.

By Sunday, she was loosening up a little more, but still a freak. She doesn't like her leash AT ALL, so we're going to let that rest until she's totally used to her environment. She was a little more exploratory on Sunday, but still nervous at times. By last night, she was acting up and putting on a little show flipping around in the middle of the floor. I think it was more her trying to get her collar off than anything. She likes to chew on her rope, sometimes her kong, and sometimes a plastic bottle I gave her. Nothing that's really her favorite yet, other than sleeping on the couch. She's pretty lazy.

Overall, she's good when she goes outside, and she knows to go out there, so that's a plus. She doesn't whine much, though now that she's starting to like us, she whines when she wants up on the couch. Last night was the first time she came up to us on the couch asking to be brought up. She's eating and drinking and pooping regularly, but not dry food...yet. She held herself from 10:30pm until about 6:45am today. So, her bladder/colon seems to be working as well. Some friends came over for a few on Saturday, and she seemed mildly playful with them.

Robin's got all the pictures of her up on her flickr page for now, so check them out here.

She still stinks some, too...but Petsmart won't groom her until she gets her rabies shots, so Robin is on that, b/c the apartment smells already. I was worried for a few days, but I think she's finally coming around, and she loves her Mommy and Daddy. Most of the time. Oh yea, she likes to watch TV too...she watched some football with me last night. I approve. Seems to like the High-Def best, though.

Brooklyn

Still waiting

This past Sunday we drove to Pleasanton to meet a breeder and the available puppies she had for sale. Let me go back, first. For almost a year now I've wanted a specific breed, a French Bulldog. I've researched breeders online, and have seen them available all over the country. I've looked at several colorings and prices and I decided I wanted a black masked fawn frenchie. We didn't want to ship our new puppy, so we narrowed our search to three breeders here in Texas (Pleasanton, Dallas and Tyler). I emailed and spoke to the breeder on the phone prior to meeting her. She impressed me with her questions for me and her requirements, and she also just so happened to have an available puppy with the fawn coloring that I wanted. When we first got to her house we chatted for a little while and she showed us her babies. She had seven 7-9 week old cream and black frenchie puppies. She let us hold them and pet them, while we asked some questions about the breeding process, etc. She then led us out to the backyard where we could watch and play with her four available puppies. One of them was a bit older (10 months), which made it easy to eliminate because we wanted a younger dog. The other three dogs were all from the same litter and were 3 months old. We then had a fawn black masked female, a brindle female with some white on her chest and an all black female. All girls. We narrowed it down to two: the fawn and the brindle. If you're not familiar with what brindle is, it is a mixture of black and brown. I've seen versions of brindle before but nothing like hers. She was completely and evenly covered in brindle and it was beautiful. I loved her coat, which pretty much put her in competition with the one we ended up choosing. I liked and wanted the fawn color from the beginning so that helped my decision. The other thing that helped us choose her was her personality compared to the brindle puppy. She was calm, playful when you played with her and let you hold her. The brindle puppy was extremely cute, but was so wild and crazy we knew she might be too much for our apartment. I'm feeling pretty confident we chose the right puppy! So we made our decision and started the process. We left her with her breeder, along with a deposit and plans to pick her up later in the week. It is now Wednesday and this week could not be going any slower! She is getting spayed right now and will be recovering tonight and tomorrow, so I am scheduled to pick her up on Friday as long as she recovers from the surgery OK. I'm so anxious to bring her home. We took a few pictures at the breeder's home. None of them are very good..I can assure you I will have taken over 100 by the end of the weekend! But because it's all I have right now, I keep looking at her pictures. Oh yeah and we named her on the way home Sunday night. We've decided to call her "Brooklyn." And we've also already gone to petsmart and everything is set for her here at home. She has a collar and tag, a bed, food, and toys waiting for her! She wasn't cheap and I know Justin knows how thankful I am, but just so he knows again....THANK YOU! Brookyln is our pet, equally. But she is the breed I wanted most. Justin wants a bigger dog and will probably get Brooklyn's big brother or sister when we move to a house with a fence and a yard.
We have recently started looking at real estate in Austin. We're not going to jump at anything anytime soon, but we're preparing and learning about what the market is like here in the different areas of town. Basically, you can move West and live in a very nice and expensive home. If you move North, you can get more house for your money in a number of nice and overdeveloped communities. In South Austin, developments are popping up all over the place. They are a little cheaper in price and are conveniently located to all the recently built shopping centers and restaurants. It's also not too far from town. East Austin is the next up and coming area, however the houses are being bought by everyone who couldn't afford the other three areas of town. So it's sort of the reject part of town, and it's a little underdeveloped right now. It's the least desirable of the four in my opinion. West is definitely out for us because it's just too expensive. So we are mainly looking at North and South. Our next step is to meet and talk with a realtor who can help us find what we're looking for. We've researched the big nationwide builders that are in the area online and we've glanced at what's available in some of the newer homes that are already built. Right now we have a pretty good basic understanding of what's out there. We just need to take some time and be choosey about what we like and want in a house. I'll update on this topic as we gain more information.
Last weekend we saw "Stranger than Fiction," and I loved it. It's a good, light and heartfelt, also somewhat funny film with a good ending. Go check it out. If you like Will Ferrell, you'll like him in this, too.
I've got some laundry and other things to attend to now, so that's all for today's blog. I'll post new pictures of Brooklyn after we get her on Friday.

FRENCHIE!

He is not mine, but this is the kind of puppy I want. He's a french bulldog. I want one similar to his coloring, too. It is called "fawn." Isn't he sooooooooooooooooooooo cute?! Hopefully in the next few months I will find one for a reasonable price. I've seen them priced anywhere between $1200 and $2800. Of course the coloring that I like is more expensive. But just look at that face and those little legs and all that wrinkly, cuddly skin....

Democratic Defeat!

I am currently watching our President's Press Conference on the recent election outcome (by the way, congrats to the Democratic defeat in the House!). He is being careful to correct every reporter of his exact words...it's VERY apparent he does not want to be misquoted! His focus is on making sure the newly democratic opposition cooperates with his agenda towards the issues currently facing our country. Highest priority: keeping the troops in Iraq...keeping this country at war, for "the fight against terror." Politically, he sounds like an idiot..like he always does. It appears as though he's sending his message pretty clearly, and that is that he's heard the voters loud and clear and now there's nothing left to do but laugh about it. "It's time for a fresh perspective on the world's war against terror." Yet he's publicly emphasizing his 2nd, 3rd, and 4th priorities, which are issues such as illegal aliens, gay marriage, the no child left behind act. ??? Clearly, he sees where the democrats will gain power in office to work against his long planned out (?) agenda to stop the war on terror, but does he clearly see that America isn't going to buy his next plan, his plan to expand the war from Iraq into Iran and Syria? I believe that by the looks of last night's election results, it's evident America is awake now and they are not going to let this idiot in control run what's left to control. He's got two years left..two years to fight a war that he originally said "will doubtfully last longer than six months." Bush's worst political nightmare, Nancy Pelosi, supports change and that's all I need to know in order to see that the country is on it's way to a better future. If he exepcts to get much done in his final two years, he better be holding press conferences congratulating these winnings and begging for complete cooperation, that's for sure. Though it's highly doubtful we're going to see any bipartisan cooperation in these last two years. Not after he spent the entire time mocking and ignoring the democrats campaign strategy. Upon her winning the seat and title, I leave it to Nancy to hold congressional hearings in the coming months showing how Bush manipulated the facts to build early support for the war in Iraq. I believe this woman can clean up the house, and not because she's a woman, but because she believes in restoring civility. All of the ads against her campaign were exactly dead-on stereotypical anti-liberal campaigns. There was no creativity, portraying her as an out-of-control liberal who would increase taxes, fight to stop the war on terror and oppose all republican-conservative efforts to ban gay marriage and abortion. How did they ever come up with an ad campaign against her like that? Anyway, I'm starting to go off...
I won't go on.
Time to get going here. I have to do some errands...need to get Justin's truck inspected, and set an appointment to get it detailed. Tonight we have been invited to my friend, Joey Lumsden's house for dinner. He's an excellent cook and I'm looking forward to seeing him..it's been about a year since I last saw him. Also, it will be fun to see all the work he's done on his house and finally introduce Justin to him.
Bye for now!

ATX

Well, we're here. After two days of driving, two days of apartment hunting, two days of moving in, it's now Sunday afternoon and we've been out of Virginia for almost a week now. All is well here. I've already made a trip to Target and Kohls, and the Redskins won today. So, all is more than well here! I don't have much to say about the recent roadtrip. We both drove our own cars and tried to make it to Texas as quickly as possible. Because we only stopped for gas, food and sleep, I don't have any exciting roadtrip stories. The drive was pretty boring...but my ipod, my cell phone and my walkie talkie helped some.
After one day of driving around Austin looking for our new home and not finding anything we liked, we went to "Austin Cool Properties," where JC helped us locate our new apartment. He took us to two properties in South Austin. The first one was OK and it was in a good location, but we wanted to see some others before making a final decision. The second property he showed us was in a great location, very nice and cheaper than the first one. Without going any further, we decided it was the one we wanted. The floorplan layout, it being on the first floor, and the right price were our top priorities and this apartment met all of those requirements. There was no need to look any further. We signed the lease on Friday and moved in on Saturday. Upon our arrival to Texas, we stopped in Houston for a night and stored our things at my dads house, while we were looking for our place in Austin. Saturday morning, my dad, Candace, Eric and Ginger drove up here with all of our stuff (plus a couch from my dad that is on loan). And with all of their help, the move went really well. I wish we had had their help when moving our stuff out of apartment in Virginia. Justin and I moved everything down from the fourth floor on the morning of our move. It was tiresome and the kind of work I no longer plan to do in my life ever again. We have both decided that from now on, our moves will be handled by a moving company. It might be more expensive, but it will be worth every penny.

Justin bought a new TV the other day. He has been looking, researching, and contemplating buying it for a while now. It almost drove me crazy because he spent so much time looking at TVs but never bought actually bought one. Finally, we went to circuit city and he bought it. Originally, he was looking at a 37inch LCD, but when we got some help from the good salesman, Billy, he decided on the Hitachi 42inch Plasma. It was a good deal and circuit city through in some other special cable discounts and gift cards for purchasing it there. Here is a picture of Justin with his new TV.


This week I plan on finishing the unpacking and getting more into my job search. I have a puppy to buy and I need to figure out how I'm going to pay for him! He's not cheap! There is a breeder in Dallas that has three male fawn colored French Bulldogs right now. She is going to have one more litter ready before Christmas and of that litter, there will be two available puppies for sale. One of them is the highest price I've seen thus far for a Frenchie, but she says the little guy is made from a mix of her two *best* Frenchies. I don't care about all of that. I don't plan on becoming a show dog family and I don't plan on breeding my little guy either. I do care about his coloring though. I want the fawn color and I would like to get a boy, but if she's a girl, that'll be OK. Am I a freak or what?

I'm still getting sleepy on East coast time and I'm also waking up as if I were on the East coast. I haven't been very social since I got here either. This week I plan to make some calls to catch up with my friends that I've neglected, as well as make some plans to see some of the ones who are in the area. The cable guy is coming tomorrow and our washer and dryer rental is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday. I also plan to go to the grocery store to get back on track as far as eating healthy goes. We've been eating so much junk lately! By this weekend, we should be close to being settled. We'll need to get some more furniture, but there's not a lot that we need asap, so that stuff can wait a little while longer.

Unfortunately I have some terrible news regarding Justin's family. On November 3rd, his sister's recently born premature baby, Christopher, died of kidney failure. From the day he was born, he had a number of things working against him but he kept fighting and he made improvements over the course of a month's time. But there were just too many negatives against him for his size and age, from a health perspective. I honestly thought that he was going to make it though. I can't imagine what Krista and Eric are feeling right now..it has to be one of the hardest things to ever go through. I do know what it's like to be given hope and then it be taken away when watching a loved one critically fight for their life. You hope and try your hardest to believe that the doctors who are giving you the information really do know what they are talking about. You want them to tell you the medical truth but you want to hear that the person will be OK, no matter what. Once the outcome you never wanted to believe could happen becomes a reality it's a tough place to be when you're still hoping. It's a lot of things...a lot of emotions I never knew existed within myself. I can only guess that they are discovering those kinds of emotions right now. Please keep them and their family in your thoughts.