We need a yard...

This past weekend was definitely exhausting for poor Guinness and myself.  It was a whole lot of trips up and down the 5 flights of stairs to the garage to get him out to the bathroom/grass (Have I mentioned recently how much I hate our apartment complex and wish we were renting a house with a yard?).  Giardia is no joke... And poor Guinness was quite tired all weekend, and he even fell asleep on my lap twice when I was sitting on the floor with him, and he never does that - He's always wayyyyy too hyper and active.  I'm hoping he starts feeling better soon.

With all of those trips up and down the stairs throughout the day every day and all of the walks I take with Guinness, I don't understand why I'm not getting in better shape!  It could possible have something to do with my very poor diet (I did consume a lot of Oreos this weekend...), but who knows.  My family's trip to Hawaii is coming up soon though (just over 3 months), so it's time to get serious about getting in shape.  I'm thinking about doing one of those 30-day Challenge things for sit-ups and squats!  I know there's one of those for push-ups too, but I've always hated push-ups... It takes me back to the days in high school when we'd have to do push-up tests in P.E. in front of the whole class (anybody else remember that stupid football that the teacher would hold?).  I really need to start eating better too... Which will probably mean I'll have to start cooking more, since eating takeout is almost always unhealthy :(  And I should probably stop eating Oreos.

Here's more pictures of Guinness (because I know you all can't be sick of them yet, right? haha :) ).

Guinness looking sad because he doesn't feel good...

But then he cheered up when I said his name!  It's not too hard to cheer him up.

 He seriously zens out sometimes when he starts chewing on towels.  He'll close his eyes or sometimes his eyes roll back (he's doing that in the picture... kinda creepy!), and he just chews and chews.  He's in the zone!

And you can kinda sorta see in the 2nd towel picture how cool the coloring in his fur is getting.  It's way better in person though, trust me.  Every bit of black in his fur is now also another color.  On the top of his back, there's dark brown mixed in with the black, and on his sides there's a lot of white and lighter brown mixed in with the black.  I'm excited to see what he ends up looking like!  It's so funny to compare to the coloring he had when he was a puppy:

Oh, and one thing to add about that picture of him as a puppy:  the size of a puppy's paws determining how big they'll get as adults does NOT always work.  Look at how tiny his paws were!  Everyone (his veterinarian and puppy class trainer included) thought he'd stay pretty medium-sized because he did not have big paws... They thought he'd max out around 40 or 45 pounds.  Well... Our dear boy is not even 6 months yet (almost!), and he's about 45 pounds already.  My new guess for his full-size is 60-65 pounds.  I've always loved big dogs, so I definitely don't mind... But we're just definitely going to need a yard for him!

Busy, busy!

Things have been quite busy lately!  I feel exhausted, honestly.  I'm happy to report, though, that my headaches are finally pretty much gone from my stupid head injury.  I have not been sleeping well this week though, thanks to a new stupid train that goes by our apartment twice during the night now, blowing its ridiculously loud horn the ENTIRE time it's passing by... It goes by at about 1am and 4am, and it scares the shit out of me every time.

Last Friday we had a really fun and fancy wedding to attend.  The reception was held at the same place that the dance competition takes place in Silver Linings Playbook (Ballroom at the Ben).  It was soooo fancy and soooo beautiful.  McGee and I got all dressed up, and had a blast dancing all night!  The reception was really extravagant, and an example of this was the dessert room.  Most weddings have a wedding cake for dessert, but this one had a whole dessert room!  When you walked in the room, you were hit with the AMAZING smell of chocolate (I was in heaven).  There was an ice cream sundae station, a million mini pies and tarts, a chocolate fountain, a station where they'd put your chocolate liquor of choice in a chocolate shot glass (quite a few people were camped out at that station), cookies and candies and cannolis, and of course wedding cake!  It was dessert heaven.  I sucked at taking pictures that night (I was way too busy having fun and dancing!), but I did get a picture of the very cool ice sculpture of the Philly Love Statue!

And we went from the joy and fun of that event on Friday, to the heartbreaking funeral on Tuesday of a good friend of Kevin and Timmy.  Their friend Vince (who was part of the small group that I attended the Solid Sound Festival with last month) passed away, and we found out after the wedding reception on Friday.  I had only met Vince at Solid Sound, but it was completely obvious during those 3 days at the festival (and, honestly, within about 5 minutes of meeting him) what an extremely nice and good guy he was, and how in love him and his wife were.  Here's a picture of our group from the Solid Sound Festival, with McGee on the end (I think you all know him...), Timmy next to me (for those of you that haven't met him), and then their friends Ben and Sarah, and Vince and his wife Kate are on the end.

This weekend McGee and his family are heading down the shore (that's the lingo over here for going to the Jersey Shore... But the part of the Jersey Shore they're going to is NOT like the terrible TV show, don't worry).  We were debating if I should go too and we would board Guinness for the weekend (I felt bad about doing that since I've been away from Guinness for 4 of the past 5 weekends...), but it turns out that Guinness kinda decided it for us.  It turns out that the little goober has picked up a case of Giardia, and we're quite sure that he got it from the dog park.  He's always drinking the nasty water out of the nasty dog bowls that they have there (even though we bring him fresh water... He'd much rather drink the nasty water), and he's also always trying to eat the mud out of the massive mud puddles there.  Yes, our "special" boy likes to try to eat mud.  We try to stop him every time and dig the mud out of his mouth (having a puppy is oh-so-glamorous...), but we know he's swallowed atleast a bit... And who knows what's growing in that nasty mud (I'm guessing probably some Giardia...).  So our little guy is on a few meds for about a week, and then he'll get tested again to make sure it's gone.  There's definitely no boarding places that would take him with Giardia though (he could easily infect other dogs), and I'd kinda like to keep an eye on him with the new meds too.  Here's some new pictures of Guinness, with his awesome new orange collar!  We've had to get bigger sizes for his collar and his harness (he's growing so much!), and he's 42 pounds as of last week.

So, it looks like I have a weekend to myself, plus Guinness of course.  I'm trying to decide what I should do!  I'm thinking I'll get some good food to make for myself (maybe some stuff McGee doesn't like??!!), and have a relaxing girly weekend.  I'm hoping my friend Colleen will be able to come hang out!

Whoops...

I think/hope that I've figured out how to have these posts emailed to everyone now!  This post will be the test... Haha :)

So... I have always been a very clumsy person.  I always thought I would outgrow it... But I'm 32 now, so I just don't think it's going to happen.  This was demonstrated last Tuesday when I was coming back from taking Guinness for a walk.  We always go to the stairwell (instead of the elevator) so that we can take him up the 5 flights of stairs to our apartment, because it's a great workout for him and will help to tire him out.  I was in the stairwell with him and was bending over to take off his harness (it's really hard for him to run up the stairs in his harness), and I was attaching his leash to his collar.  He was kinda backing up as I was making the leash switch, and so I was walking with him while I was bent over... And then when I was all done I went to stand up really quickly to get him excited to go up the stairs (it helps if he's excited to do it), and as soon as I stood up... BAM!  I hit my head SO hard on this metal pipe that I'd never really paid attention to.  It made this LOUD "Donnnnnng!" noise, and definitely scared Guinness.  My whole world kinda faded for a second and I was so dizzy for about a minute.  I had to just stand there and wait for everything to stop spinning.  I could not believe how hard I hit my head.  Here's some pictures of the pipe:

I slowly made my way up the stairs with Guinness, and the whole time I was trying to judge if I was ok or not.  I decided that I was ok, and I tried to just keep ice on my head and I took some Ibuprofen because I could already feel a headache coming on. As the day went on, I could also feel a good-sized dent on the back of my head.  This definitely did concern me a bit, but I felt fine besides the headache.  The next day, my head felt less dented and I still felt fine except for the headache that just wouldn't go away.  But, I hit my head REALLY hard, so I figured a headache was to be expected.  Well, by Thursday night, my headache was SO bad... It was just getting worse and worse.  Friday morning I called this Teladoc service that my insurance offers, where I can call a physician for a consultation and advice.  The doctor was very nice, and calmly told me that it sounded like it could be a slow brain bleed... so I should go to the E.R. and get it scanned.  I was sure I was ok to drive, but McGee insisted on driving home from work to get me and take me to the E.R.  The E.R. was very nice and I got in a room within a few minutes.  They hooked me up to an IV (somewhat unsuccessfully at first... I have a very ugly bruise on one arm) and gave me fluids and drugs (thank goodness McGee drove!), and they did scan my head and there was NO BLEED!  Yay!!!!  But they said I had a concussion, so I needed to take it easy for the next few days.  They also gave me a prescription for Naproxen for my headache.  The headache is still kinda hanging on (a week after the injury), but I'd say it's usually only a 2 or 3 now on a scale of 1 to 10.  My dent is completely gone, but my head is still very sore if I put any pressure on it (even if I try to just lay face-up at nighttime... I have to turn my head to the side).  I think it'll just take some more time to feel 100%.  And you can bet that I'm super-aware of that pipe in the stairwell now!!

Here's a picture of my bruise (it's lovely shades of green now...), and then to make up for how ugly that picture is I'll post just a few cute pictures of our handsome Guinness!!  His colors are changing so much... He's getting lighter and lighter, so I'm not sure if that's just his summer coat, or if that's just what he's going to look like as an adult.

And he still likes to try to sit on our laps!!  He doesn't fit at all anymore though... He usually ends up sliding off within a minute or two, and then he gets frustrated and tries to find a new comfortable position on our laps.  It's an endless cycle... haha :)

New Blog! My trip home, and update on Guinness!

Well first off, I've decided to start a new blog, because the other one I was using decided to erase all of my photos... I'm hoping it'll return them, but I still don't like that they're gone right now.  Plus, I think/hope that with this blog, it can just email any new blog entries to my friends and family, rather than people having to stop by this website!  We'll see how that works...

Anyways:  Life has been busy!  I went to visit my amazing friends and family in CA for about a week, during the hottest week NorCal has seen this summer!  Apparently we broke a record for the most days over 105 degrees... Sooooo happy I was able to be a part of that record ;-)  It was so awesome to see my family and friends.  While I was there, I went with my mom and nieces to FairyTale Town!!  I haven't been there for atleast a decade.  It was extremely hot, so we only lasted about an hour early in the morning.  Cassidy looooves going on the slides, and Addison is starting to get into them but she isn't 100% sure about them yet.

I've come to the conclusion that I have the cutest and sweetest nieces in the world.  We also all went to Sausalito for a nice Sunday afternoon to escape the heat for a bit!!  The weather was SO beautiful there, and we were enjoying the nice cool breezes and sunshine.  We went to the Marine Mammal Center, and it was very cool but we were bummed that we didn't get to see more of the animals there.  It makes sense why we can't see them, but it was still a bummer.

And I got to celebrate July 4th with my family!  That hasn't happened in many, many years.  We had a lovely BBQ at Brad's house, and all of the food was AMAZING.  Brad's quite the griller, and Amanda made delicious macaroni salad, and my mom made homemade ice cream!  We ended the evening with some fireworks!!  It was SO good being home.

It was hard being away from Guinness for a week, but McGee did a wonderful job of taking care of him while I was gone.  He's now about 5 and a half months old, and he's almost lost all of his puppy teeth!  The whole teething process has been pretty horrible for him I think... His mouth seems to be bugging him quite a lot, and we keep finding spots of blood on his bedding (he loves to chew on his bedding/towels) and toys.  We're not sure how much he weighs now, but we think he's definitely over 40 lbs.  We also ended up scheduling a make-up solo class for him with his Puppy Class trainer, and I think the solo class was really great for him.  The teacher was SHOCKED at how much he's grown in the past 3 weeks though.  She'd thought that his full size would be about what he is now (so did we), but there's no way he's even close to done growing.  When the class was over, she put a graduation cap on him (he did not enjoy it... and I'm quite sure that'll be our one and only time putting any sort of hat or clothing on him), so I had to snag a few pictures.

That's all for now!