Feedback, poop, and graduation!

Well, it's been awhile since my last post. A few things have changed. I finished up at Original Mike's on Tuesday. And in true fashion, my power in my office was shut off that day on accident. Sigh, oh how ridiculous the OM is. It's strange really, because although I spent a large amount of time there, it hasn't really set in completely that I am free!! I have been able to sleep in the last two days...well sleep in until Penny and Scooter are ready to eat at 8am! It has been nice.

The feedback from the news of "the move" has been okay. I think most of our friends understand why we are leaving, but many of them still don't understand why we are choosing Bakersfield. I will miss a lot of things about Orange County, including many of the people I have met here. Ever since I moved here in August 2004, I have wished for the best of both worlds. But I had to make a choice and Bakersfield is going to have to be it...for now. I don't know what is in store for us, but I'm hoping it's something great. We are taking a small day trip up there on Monday to check out places to live. We have 3 places lined up. It doesn't seem like a lot, but when you have dogs, the choices are LIMITED. So, we are keeping our fingers crossed that one of those places works!

On other news, Penny has a new fun little habit. I know it is gross to talk about, but in a way it's kind of funny too. Only funny now that I can look back on it! Well the other day I came home and saw some poop on the carpet in the living room. I knew Penny had an "accident." She is still learning, so I wasn't that mad. But then I noticed it wasn't fresh AT ALL. So, I thought, that's weird. Then looked over and saw more poop. Then I saw some on the couch! At this point I was completely disgusted and reaching for the disinfectant! It seems as though Miss Penelope Pie Puplington enjoys the occasional piece of poop! How gross is that? Why oh why would she want to eat that? Well it hasn't stopped there. I have to constantly watch her. She hasn't brought any more inside yet but we are pooper scooping as soon as a deposit has been made! Today I found her "stash" and disposed of it! So gross.

Enough about that. Hopefully I will have some more pictures up. We went to John's sister, Jamie's graduation last night. I of course took no pictures with MY camera! She graduated with her BA in Business Marketing from CSU Long Beach. It made me really glad I didn't walk at my college graduation. She only had 800 grads or so...mine had like a couple thousand. So not interested!! But seeing Jamie graduate was pretty cool. What a great accomplishment. The speaker said something like they were in the top 25th percentile of the country's population because they graduated. Most people clapped. I just thought, wow, how sad. So many people don't go to college, let alone graduate. Although its a great thing, it's really sad that they are ONLY the top 25th percentile. Shouldn't there be MORE people going to college and graduating!? Our country has no educational values. And it's just getting worse. Instead of focusing on educating our kids, who by the way are the future of this country, we are more focused on updating the status of Paris Hilton's jail sentence or whether Lindsay Lohan is in rehab AGAIN at the age of 20. It's ridiculous and exhausting.

I have said my piece for the night! Maybe next time there will be more pictures and less ranting! We shall see! Congrats to Jamie Horn! She's all done with college...bring on the real world!

The News

So...I finally posted "the blog" on my myspace that announces THE MOVE. It was actually a bit difficult to figure out what I wanted to say. People are finding out that we are leaving Orange County and just about every single person has something negative to say about BAKERSFIELD. But strangely enough, none of them have even ever been there. DRIVING THROUGH DOES NOT COUNT. Anyway, I got tired of explaining WHY. And mind you, I have plenty of negatives about Orange County but I will only name two:

1. Expensive.
2. Traffic.

I don't really even have to go past that. If you are the type of person who likes to go to bars and nightclubs every night and just party all the time, then of course Bakersfield is NOT for you. It isn't exactly known for the night life. However, if you are just looking to buy a house, start a career, get married, and start a family...then Bakersfield IS for you. And I think that's where I am heading...much of a surprise to me and YOU! I never thought I would be this person I have become. But I like it.

And don't even get me started on it being HOT! Dude at least in Bakersfield everyone has a pool AND air conditioning. I am still shocked that people in Orange County don't have air conditioning! It reaches 100 here too! Geez. And nobody has a big enough yard for a pool, so forget that. And besides, Bakersfield is only really hot for maybe 3 months. Then its perfectly fine!

Hopefully between this blog and the myspace blog, people will at least stop asking "why?" I am starting to feel like a broken record...and its only been 3 days since the news broke! AH!!!

Lessons Unlearned...

So, as you might remember, my sweet puppy Penny decided to break into the food bag one night and eat herself to sleep. Well as a remedy we put the Beneful bags (Scooter and Penny have different bags of food) in the pantry. Well the pantry is pretty tiny. They were both about 3 days away from running out of food so I bought 2 new bags. Well there just wasn't enough space in the pantry so I decided to put one bag behind the refrigerator again. I thought, well its sealed so she can't knock it over and climb in. WRONG!!! Today I come home to find the little princess has torn a hole in the bag and chowed!! She looks huge! You can totally see the extra food in her tummy! And of course she just wants to lie down cuz she doesn't feel well.

So morals of this story:

1.Penny is smarter than I thought.
2.Never leave a bag of dog food within reach of Penny.
3.Don't eat so much you want to barf...which I'm waiting for her to do!

This is the hole she chewed in the bag.



Doesn't she look miserable? This is how she looked when I found her.

A blog of few words

I don't have too much to say today. But I did snap a few super cute pictures of my kids. I decided that everyone else must want to see them too!!

Penny loves the sunshine! She goes outside every day and lays out! I think she hates being so "white." Maybe she wants a tan!



I was able to get this one of Penny playing in the Pup Tent! She usually runs out too quick! Not this time.



Last but not least...my handsome pup Scooter. He poses for pictures. It's actually quite funny how much he likes to have his picture taken!

Two Hotdog

Well yesterday we were in Bakersfield (we as in John, Scooter, Penny and myself). It was a very quick trip. The main reason I was going home was to get my hair done. Kassi Bolinger does my hair and she did a super cute job yesterday too! I really like the new do! Anyway, while I was home I had to get in some family time. Well, the grandma and grandpa came over and with them was the adorable Jaden. I couldn't believe how big she had gotten in just the 2 months since I last saw her! Well she immediately wanted to play with the dogs. Many of you don't know that Scooter is TERRIFIED of children...well small people in general. She kept trying to play with him and he was running for his life! Meanwhile Penny wanted to play with everyone! So I was talking to Jaden which is mainly me talking as she has a limited vocabulary. I asked her how old she was and her response is quite possibly the cutest answer to ever come out of a child's mouth with regard to their age. She said "Two hotdog." I kid you not. "Two hotdog" was her response. I thought it was just her being silly so I said SHOW me how old you are. She took her two index fingers and held them up while saying "two hotdog." My grandma explained that on her birthday this year she got to have a hotdog for lunch. So now she associates her age/birthday with hotdogs. Very strange but VERY cute! I wish I had a picture of her yesterday, but I was having too much fun to grab the camera.

To all those I did not get to see during my 8 hour stay in Bakersfield...I say to you...soon friends...soon.

It's begun!

Well, this may not be good news to any of you, but its GREAT to me! Miss Penelope or as we call her sometimes, Penny, started going potty outside! Yay! She is going out the dog door all by herself and making pee pee and poo poo!! She is quite funny about it. The way we got her to start doing it was by shoving her out the dog door when she started sniffing and we wouldn't let her back in until she went potty. Once she did that we would give her treats. Everytime she got a treat, we had to give one to Scooter too so he wouldn't feel left out! But then that little puppy got smart. She literally went outside 15 times on Monday to go pee pee. Then she would run inside and put her paws up on the table where the treats were. So, I realized both her and Scooter would get so fat so fast with all those treats, that we started giving them crunch (dog food) each time. That seemed to do the trick. Now she pretty much just goes when she really has to. The really exciting part about it for me is that she is only 12 weeks old! We got Scooter when he was about 15-16 weeks old and it took him close to a month to be trained. Yay for Penny!