Good Thing

It's a good thing these dogs are so darn cute....



...otherwise I might still be mad about things like this! I'm looking at you little dog (Mia~)!

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: The Major League Soccer All-Star game is tonight in Houston!

Silly Squid

Mia loves to pull Zoe around all the tile and wooden floors downstairs. She's still twisting and turning and pushing against Zoe in their epic battles.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: 3 months until we are headed back to Puerto Vallarta for an amazing wedding!

Toy Time

New toys at our place entail that each dog gets 1 & then Zoe promptly tries to acquire both of them for herself. The quacking duck was quite a hit and quacked for almost 20 minutes before the girls killed it.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Fabulous Friday! Hubby and I are celebrating by staying home and cooking.

Mia Mania

These are some older Mia photos from April that I never got around to posting. I'll admit- I'm really burned out right now with my New Zealand posts. 47 trip posts so far & I've got several more days worth of trip and probably 2 dozen more blog posts. I'm just going to take a break for a few weeks & then I"ll be back to finish the NZ posts.



Apparently Zoe wasn't share the couch on this day. And the random piece of fluff on her nose cracks me up.



Perhaps this is why Zoe wasn't letting her on the couch that day...



She looked up all innocently when she heard my camera.



Any toy, any treat, any stuffie- on her back rolling around.



She play paws at it with her feet and generally growls at most things in her mouth.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: All my major work traveling and panics are finished.

Hang Time

She's so serious when it comes to pool time...jumping is no joke!



In an instant- she's airborne a few feet over my head.



That's a puppy smile if I've ever seen one!



She's got a totally different jump form than Zoe, she rounds her back & start trying to eat the water below as she goes into the pool.



The only real problem is that she has zero sense of where she's actually jumping or if she's about to hit a wall/steps in front of her.



Last weekend was the highest I've ever seen her jump...



We need at least a few hours of swimming week to wear Mia out. It's too hot for the park in the afternoon right now, so I'm loving the pool.



Excellent form!



And of course, no action post is complete without an animated GIF.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: H's mom is kind enough to watch Mia this weekend while we are out of town...hopefully she'll be on her best behavior.

Circus Dog

This is how we spent some of our past weekend! More photos & video to come, but we are working on new tricks.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Good thing she's so darn cute, cause we won't even talk about things like this....

Mia's Birthday Swim

I decided Mia needed a mid-week swim just for her birthday a few weeks back. I handed my big camera to John & he captured a bit of the madness.



If I had to guess, I'd say she jumps in the pool several hundred times on any given swim day.



Not to good on the landings all the time....



Zoe still jumps occasionally too.



Trying to get a family photo...Zoe isn't too keen on Mia getting near her in the pool as Mia is still lacking the best swimming manners.



The two dogs looking & I'm not looking! Plus Mia sticking out her tongue.



I have to watch out when they both get to jumping so I'm not in the flight path.



Zoe runs around the outside of the pool & lures Mia to swim to the deep end.



Mia tries to get Zoe & nips at her ankles!



Lots of splashing!



Zoe has one of these elevated sling mats that she loves to lay on! It gets a cooler breeze underneath and is softer than the ground.



Mia can swim for at least 1.5 hour straight before even looking a little bit tired.



Such a pretty 1 year old girl! She weighs about 45 lbs and is a bit smaller than Zoe. I'm pretty sure she's done growing & hopefully she'll grow out of her crazy puppy stage soon.



Just a quick video of the dogs putting around the pool- waiting for something more exciting to happen.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Getting our (brand new) cook top fixed today (finally).

Camo Tug of War

Judging by the mess in my office, I imagine this was back in early February as we were packing the house & packing to leave for NZ. The girls fight over toys all the time....lots of growling and pushing and shoving and spinning. I just wish they would do it somewhere else besides right next to me! Other dog owners- is this pretty normal behavior?

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I've taken the plunge and joined the National Associate of Photoshop Professionals to get back into photography and improve my photoshop/lightroom skills.

No Room at the Inn

Another one of the throwback videos from a while back. We have the biggest, most expensive dog bed (i.e. a piece of furniture- my couch!) is generally where the dogs can be found. Between the pillows and the blankets, I guess there was no lounging room for Mia.



She's just a silly puppy- no two ways about it! She cracks me up and makes me smile on a daily basis for antics just like these.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I'm fired up about photography again & I'm ready to get serious about spending more time and energy learning.

Happy 1st Birthday Mia!

Mia turned 1 year old today! For her birthday, I took her for a mid-week swim at the pool. It was too hot to go to the park, so we played in the water



. She LOVES to jump & this is my view quite often as she leaps with great gusto into the water.



This- this is what we aim for! Synchronized dog jumping :)



Her mom Potter is back in the field & hunting again. You can find some of her siblings blogging too!



Mia didn't come to Houston until August, but this is the first meet & greet with Zoe. That's not a smile on Zoe's face- it's a snarl!



They were soon best of buds & a quick stroll down memory lane reminds me of some of my favorite teeny tiny puppy pictures.



Swimming with a young pup last summer was an adventure- she did awesome & this year, more importantly, she's learned not to swim *ON* us!



More from today- she's a beautiful and fun dog to watch, so entertaining!



She stalks the birds and insects and grass and toys in the yard with an incredible focus.



Mia is a very happy puppy- I've never see more wiggling and tail waging and puppy smiles. She is content to play with her toys for hours & loves to snuggle.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I'm going to be making some changes to the blog & I'm very excited about it :)

Mia & the Chuckit

I had taken a few video with my camera when I first got it last summer & didn't realize that Panasonic had set the default file format to some random ADCHD format, which is compatible with EXACTLY NOTHING!! I've put off messing with the files for months because it's so upsetting that I can't use their crappy included software and can't find any better freeware than what I used that left a watermark in the middle.

Anyway- rant over. We had a Chuckit Flying Squirrel when Mia was a puppy. This video is typical Mia madness, flailing around, being a spaz jumping around and spinning.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I managed to save a few funny older videos I hope to share in the next few weeks.

Pretty in Pink

Last weekend, I also got started on working on my office. This is what it looked like before I moved in all my junk & the dogs.



I still have a little futon daybed, aka the dog sleeper, and was really tired of the bleh brown walls.



Adding the shutters was a great first step & I love looking out the window all all the trees & birds & storms every day while I sit at my desk.



I am fully a 2 computer kinda gal now. I love my iMac dearly, but I still use my laptop for so many tasks- including sitting downstairs with hubby while watching TV.



I really, really struggled with what I wanted to do with my room- what colors and what type of feel. I loved my old office, but we've already got tons of blue in our bedroom. We've got green in our kitchen & yellow in our living room. Deep down, I still really loved pink!



I brought up a dozen color swatches from Home Depot with 50 colors & finally selected a pink that I thought was happy, soothing & not too loud.



I was up bright & early Saturday to start my big project.



I shoved all the furniture in the middle of the room & started painting. I quickly realized it was much louder than I'd anticipated & got a much lighter shade of pink for the 3 remaining walls.



H was outside working on the yard & cleaning the driveway.



I really like how the colors turned out & the pink makes me smile every time I walk in the room.



I really liked the couch diagonal, but it just took up to much room & the dogs were forever losing the pillows off the back of it.



I ordered new flooring & bought some smaller shelf racks from the Container Store. I'm going to add crown molding & a chair rail to add some spice to the room, then start hanging up all my stuff on the walls again.



This is from this past weekend and is my new favorite picture of my gang. The girls love it when H lays on the couch & they can snuggle with him.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: In town all this week & getting to much closer to getting caught up.