Another snowy day...

Well, last week we had another super snowy day... I'm getting quite sick of this winter.  BUT, since it was oh-so-snowy, and since Guinness had oh-so-much energy, I took him over to the dog park so he could run around in the snow a bit.  I got some great pictures of him jumping up to try to eat the falling snow.  It always cracks us up when he does that, because he really chomps his teeth a lot when he jumps up to catch the snowflakes.  And wow can our boy JUMP!  He really gets some air.

Here he is contemplating the snow... See how deep it was? 

Here he is jumping up towards me

He really got some air on this one!  

He's really going after those snowflakes!  Chomping his teeth the whole time. 

He's quite good at standing on two legs... It's not so great in the kitchen!  

He had so much fun running around!  It was still snowing pretty hard at this point.

We're still not sure which day we're going to move into the house... This weekend is definitely out, so we're keeping an eye on the weather to see what other day is good.  I can't wait!!  

Happy News!!!

We have some great news!!  We found a really awesome house to rent, and today we received notification that our application was approved!!  Now we just have to officially sign the lease (and fork over some money, of course), and the place is ours for a year!!  We're so excited!!

We're hoping to move February 1st (when our lease starts), but we'll have to see if that works out.  It'll be within that first week of February sometime, for sure.  Here are some pictures of the house!

This is the backyard!  And it's bigger than it looks too.  Guinness is going to be able to run like crazy!  

This is taken from the living room, so you can see the dining room area by the kitchen.  

Here's the kitchen!

And here's the living room.

I can't wait to get out of this crappy apartment and move into the awesome house!!!  Yayyyyyy!!!

On another note, we are getting a TON of snow today!!  They're predicting as much as 13 inches for today, and the storm is supposed to get worse as the day goes on.  Soooo... It may just be me and Guinness tonight!  The roads might be too crazy for McGee to drive home, so he might need to spend the night at his work (he brought clothes, food, etc... so at least he's prepared!).  

Here's Guinness watching the snowstorm!

I really hope everyone is doing well!!  

Bark Box!

My friend Lindsey gave Guinness an awesome gift for Christmas!  She gave him a subscription to this cool company called Bark Box.  They mail your pet a box of goodies once per month!  We just received his first Bark Box today, and I'm SO excited about it!  And so is Guinness!!

I've given him a few of the Barksters treats (they're sweet potato and beef), and he LOVED them.  I think he was a little afraid of them at first because they're really crispy (like pork rinds almost) so he wasn't sure what to make of that, but after he tested the waters with that first one, he can't get enough! 

And OH MY GOODNESS does he love the squeaky football!  It squeaks like crazy, and it seems to be really tough too!!  He's going nuts for it.

His tail was wagging like crazy!

This picture cracked me up.  He likes to push on the football with his nose too, and make it squeak with his nose!  He's also tried laying on it to make it squeak, and jumping on it too!  

I don't think I ever shared the awesome gift that Lindsey made for me for Christmas!!  She knows I've got California Love!!  It's really cool, and those silver dots on the outlines are nails, and then all of the lines are this metallic thread that's intertwined around all of the nails!!  It's so super cool.  She's a crafty girl!  

I've started working on Lindsey's birthday gift (we make our gifts for each other).  I was 8 months late with her last birthday present (doh!), and I did a post in October about that.  So, I'm REALLY hoping I'll be on time for this birthday... I have a little less than 6 weeks right now!  Wish me luck!  I'll share my project after it's finished and already received by Lindsey (since she reads this... Hi Lindsey!).  

Nothing new on our rental house hunt... I'll keep you posted!!  I'm really hoping that we can move on February 1...

McGee's First Hockey Game

For Christmas, I bought Kevin tickets to go see his first hockey game!  And the game was this past Saturday.  I tried to find a good game for us to go see, and I thought for sure that the Philadelphia Flyers would slaughter Tampa Bay's hockey team!  I mean, what does Tampa Bay know about hockey?!?  So I thought that'd be a great game for McGee's first hockey game, because I wanted a suuuuuure win.

He was excited!!

Our seats were pretty high up... But we could still see great!

Welllllll.... It turns out that Tampa Bay might know something about hockey.  Maybe.  The Philadelphia Flyers lost 3-6.  It was quite a bummer....

Sad face!

And then on Sunday, we watched football all day, and rooted for the 49ers (they won!!), and my Chargers of course.  McGee made me some "Chargers Juice" for good luck during the game, and it had rum and blue curacao and some other stuff that I can't remember... 

Chargers Juice!

Sadly, the luck from the Chargers Juice did not work... and they lost.  It ended up being a really exciting (aka STRESSFUL) game, but they lost.  I'm happy they got to the playoffs though!!  Now I'll root for the 49ers to take the whole thing.  And I always always always root for the Patriots to lose (I hate Tom Brady and the Patriots).  

Our house hunting is continuing... We just went and saw another rental property today, and the backyard was amazing.  The rest of the house needed some work though... and the doors didn't look very safe.  It was super close to McGee's work, but that's kind of a good thing (commuting) and a bad thing (safety...).  There are some shady neighborhoods right around where McGee works, but the hospital he works at is in a very safe part of town.  I can't wait for our house hunting to be over... I'm ready to settle into a nice house!  I'm SO sick of our apartment complex (in case I haven't mentioned that recently...).  

Guinness is 11 months old!

Our dear boy turned 11 months old a few days ago!  I can't believe how close he is to 1 year old.  He's pretty much fully transitioned to Adult dog food now.  He is shedding like a mofo right now... In fact, in that picture above you can see little tufts of his fur by his back leg that are popping out!  We were starting to get kind of worried by it (since it's Winter and all...), but he still has TONS of thick fur, so I don't think it's thinning or anything.  Oh, also in that picture above you can see that he fully hops up on our ottoman now!  He barely fits... If he grows any more, his butt won't fit on there.  

Yesterday I had a very not-fun day with poor Guinness... By the time McGee got home from work, I was at the end of my rope and kinda lost it crying a bit.  It was SO cold yesterday (this was the day when it reached a high of like 15 degrees, and the low ended up being -2 degrees), and Guinness's poor paws were not doing well with the really freezing temperatures and all of the salt all over the sidewalks (the salt can burn their paws).  I was trying very hard to keep him off of the salt, but it's literally impossible.  So, that resulted in pitiful limping by poor Guinness after a few minutes outside... We'd only stay outside long enough for him to go to the bathroom (no walks at all yesterday! Poor guy), and then we'd head back inside and I'd clean off his paws.  It was so sad every time I had to take him out.  

And then to REALLY top off the day... After we got back from one trip out (about 30 or 45 minutes before McGee got home), a black dog came running down the hallway on our floor and attacked Guinness. It was snarling at him and growling and biting at him... I saw the owner start running towards us when he saw his dog coming after mine.  I was yelling at the dog and trying really hard to get Guinness away from it, but it wasn't working too well since the other dog wasn't on a leash.  I was trying to put myself between the dog and Guinness... probably not bright, but that was my instinct.  I wish my instinct had been to drop-kick the other dog!  The owner finally caught up to his dog and pulled it away from Guinness.  He apologized and said that his dog is "usually friendly".  Poor Guinness was just standing there next to me, very confused... He really seemed like he didn't understand what just happened.  We've thoroughly checked him out and he seems fine, except for a small wound on his leg.  Our poor little guy... We're keeping a close eye on him, and we've been in touch with the owner of the other dog (he's the friend of our new neighbors... We HATE our new neighbors, by the way).  He assured us that his dog has all of his shots and everything, and he gave us his vet's info (he uses the same vet as us, so that's handy), so we double-checked that his dog is thoroughly up-to-date on his shots.  And the owner promised to keep his dog on a leash from now on. Ugh. 

Sooooooooo today we went house-hunting for a rental to move into.  I'm SO over this apartment complex.  Right now, we're hoping February 1 as a move date, even though our lease here isn't up until mid-March. We saw one house today that we like a lot (in Flourtown, PA) and we also saw 2 houses that are a definite "No".  We're hoping to look at a few more this week, and then decide.  I'll keep you all posted!  

I hope you're all staying warm!  

Happy New Year!!

We had a very chill New Year's Eve this year, and it was great.  We just stayed home and ate a bunch of appetizers, and I drank champagne and McGee drank beer.  We watched movies and spent time with Guinness, and I think we were asleep by 12:30!  I may have been more like 12:15, because I had to take 2 Benadryl due to a small allergic reaction I was having (I'm quite allergic to band-aid adhesive...).  It was a really perfect evening though (aside from that allergic reaction thing).

All 3 of us slept quite late for us (9am!!  Yay Guinness!!  And yay Benadryl!), which was great except that we had to catch a 9:54 train into downtown Philly.  So we quickly took Guinness out and fed him, and got VERY bundled up to head into town.  It was around 25 degrees for most of our day outside, so the warm clothes were necessary!!

When we arrived into town, we found a good spot to stand and watch the Mummers Parade!!  It's a parade held every New Year's Day in Philadelphia, and it's taken place every year since 1901.  I don't know much about the parade, except that there's a competition in different categories, and there's 3 or 4 categories.  There's "Fancies" (these were my favorite) that had very elaborate costumes, "String Bands" which are awesome bands that put on fun costumes too, and I don't remember the other category or categories.  Two of our friends (Timmy and Kate) joined us a bit later in the parade, and they brought red solo cups so we could drink the bottle of champagne that McGee brought!  Here are some fun pictures from the day!!

I think these guys were shrimp or lobsters or crayfish or something?

My favorites were the Nemo hat people!  A lot of them carried frog umbrellas too.  If you look closely in this picture, you'll see the RV in the background is handing out beers to the parade participants.

It's a baby crayfish (or whatever) asleep in a stroller!  Too cute.  

Look at the fun frog umbrellas!  And that beautiful Philadelphia skyline.

A fun crocodile thing!  I liked this "Fancy".  

A peacock!

A circus themed group.

This cop near us started smoking a cigar a bit later in the parade.  He also didn't mind that we were drinking champagne out of red solo cups.  

Aladdin in the background!  

After the parade, we walked back to Timmy's place where he and his roommates were throwing a New Year's Day party!  There was more champagne and 2 kegs, and lots of yummy food, including these delicious chocolate cookies with Rolo candies baked into the middle!  It was really great to spend some time hanging out with Timmy and Kate.  

After a few hours a the party, we headed back to our shit-hole apartment to hang out with our dear Guinness and spend some time taking down all of our Christmas decorations.  Our apartment is officially de-Christmased!  I'm sad the holiday season is over, but it was definitely a great one this year.  

Oh, fun fact for all of you people in warm-ish locations:  It is going to be TWO degrees this Friday.  They've been going back and forth between 2 and 4 degrees, but either way it's completely ridiculous.  I hope everyone is having a great 2014 so far, and staying warm!  Happy New Year!!