Wedding #2 2009 - Chad & Jaclyn

June 27, 2009

Chad and Jackie had a beautiful wedding. Her colors were perfect for summer, Nectar (I think that's what she or Chad called it) with greens and oranges. They had the reception at the Whitemarsh Country Club and the dining and dancing area was decorated perfectly.

The groom and I.

The bride and I.

Megan was my date, er, arm candy for the evening.

Rachel, Me, Megan.

Jess being Jess.

The guys.

I had a great time at the wedding, drinking and dancing with friends all night long. We continued the party to Dave & Buster's and then another bar before turning in for the night.

Wedding #1 2009 - Big Pete & Alycia

Their wedding was great! The ceremony was beautiful, Alycia's bridesmaids wore black, very classy.

Shawn and I (obviously)

The girls (and Bam-Bam).

The guys.

Pete and Alycia went to Jamaica on their honeymoon hence the tropical leis.

Us being goofy and little intoxicated.

A little side story for everyone.

The reception was all but over and everyone was hanging out and enjoying a couple more drinks before the place kicked us out. I was sitting at my assigned table minding my own business, when Crack! Out of nowhere something hit my brow bone millimeters above my right eye. Immediately I covered my eye and put my head down on the table, I wasn't sure how badly I was injured, all I knew was that it hurt like hell. I was hesitant to uncover my face because I thought I was going to be covered in blood, however, there was no blood, hardly even a mark to show for my SEVERE pain. Well I quickly came to realize that Andy (my namesake) threw a miniature chocolate bar as hard as he could trying to hit Goody or someone near me, but it hit me instead. Now, I may have acted a little over the top soon after it happened, and I may have yelled for Shawn at the top of my lungs, and I may have held ice on my eye for the rest of the night so everyone felt bad for me, but c'mon, I just took a chocolate bar in my eye traveling at a very high velocity.

Strange Foam

I noticed the other week that there is this strange stuff in the garden. It has only popped up in the flower bed with the day lillies. It's so weird because it'll show up one day, almost growing for a day or two and then wash away with rain or just disappear. The stuff is airy and light, kinda watery, I think it may be some sort of mold. The mulch we have that the builder put in is not high quality, so that may have something to do with it, I think. I want it to go away forever, it looks gross.

New Cole Pictures

eight-seven

A lot of people in our neighborhood have watched Cole grow over the past few months. I get comments like "he's getting so big" or "look at those paws" but more often than those is "how much does he weigh?" Up until two days ago I was guessing his weight and apparantly I'm a really bad guesser. I was saying around 60-65 pounds. Mark weighed him yesterday and he's 87 pounds! He'll be 8 months old next week and he's gotta a lotta room to grow.

Cole waters the lawn too!

If you've read my blog at all then you probably know that Cole is so helpful around the house when Shawn is away. Cole now knows how to water the lawn. He doesn't even need my help to unravel the hose, he does that all by himself. In fact, I found Cole with the hose halfway across the yard! I guess he saw a spot that was a little dry. Cole must love watering the lawn because every time I let him out he goes straight for the hose and starts watering. To conserve water, I moved the hose inside.

Floods #1 and #2 of 2009

I wish I would have taken pictures from the first flood because it was WICKED. The flash flood brought tons of debris from the corn fields and it was all trapped by our fence. So that wouldn't happen again, Shawn cut off two of bottom sections of the wire so that the debris can flow right through. WELL.......Cole is very determined. I take that back, Cole is a contortionist! He managed to wiggle himself underneath the fence where Shawn cut the wire back a little bit. Not only did Cole break free from the yard. This happened right before I needed to leave for work (perfect timing). So I'm chasing him around my neighbor's yards and to make matters worse, he was running after the neighbor's German Shepherd, but this GS is not so nice. Cole wanted to PLAY, Cody wanted to KILL. Somehow I got a hold of Cole and nicely dragged him back to our house. Anyway, I needed a quick fix until we can install the invisible fence. Mark came up with the idea of weaving a cable through the bottom of the wire and pulling to taught so that the wire itself is not flimsy for Cole to crawl under. First, I'll show you pictures of the second flood of 2009, then the pictures of the cable we just installed.


You can see that the cable takes up the slack of the wire fence. Hopefully, since now that the wire cannot be pushed far in either direction, Cole will not be able to crawl under again. Keep your fingies crossed!

Hello from Cow!

Shawn did this so I took a picture. Apparently Cole and I have similar tastes when it comes to stuffed animals because if Cole makes it upstairs, he goes straight for Cow. Cow has survived a few dog bites, not to mention tosses down the stairs and spikes on the floor compliments of Shawn.

Going back in time

I have a bunch of pictures from the past couple of months, so I'm just going to post a few.

I've been wanting to get Cole a bed for a while. We knew we would have to buy the biggest bed, but they are so expensive in the pet stores. My mom came across one at Costco and when I took a look at it, it was perfect. It was big and gusseted, which is what I wanted for Cole. The best part was it only cost me $19! Some large dog beds can run in the hundreds. It didn't take Cole long before he used it, and now he lays on it when we're watching TV.

Cole goes swimming, or at least tries to! Cole really likes to play with water, but he would not jump in the pool. Coaxing would not work, so the lifevest went on and Mark just pulled him in the pool. As soon as Cole was in the pool he froze and wouldn't move. When he tried to swim, he was very uncoordinated and probably would've sank to the bottom of the pool if it wasn't for the lifevest.

Puppies will be puppies. When Shawn and I picked Cole up at my Mom's after Pete and Alycia's wedding my mom met us in the driveway and told us that "cole was hurt". My mom explained that he was running around the pool area and slipped or tripped and ripped (did not try to rhyme) the pad on his left front paw. She said he was okay, but he limps. My mom tried to wrap his paw, but he didn't want anything to do with that. Cole definitely didn't seem to mind the injury, but he was obviously favoring his paw. He limped for a few days and we held off walking him for about a week, but now he's back to normal.

My Green Thumb. I'm not big into buying a lot of annuals for my gardens, I'd rather spend the extra money and buy perrenials. I would like to fill the gardens with different colored and shaped shrubs and leaf-plants (as I call it) so that for most of the year my garden will look the same. I bought a burgundy leaf plant and two purple Salvia plants to add to my garden. I did buy a few annuals to fill my hanging basket, a great wedding gift we received last year. For our anniversary, my dad and Lori bought us two planters to put on our front porch. I think they look great.

Last but not least. Shawn's dad made us a raised dog food/water bowl thing. Since we have so much stain left from the cabinet, we stained the dog bowl thing to match the kitchen cabinets. Now, Cole doesn't push the water bowl across the kitchen floor and spill water all over the place.