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.