Doggie beds.

So my wife and i had the advantage of having some time together yesterday.  We traveled around and got some more shopping done that we've been wanting to do.  We had hoped that our lot would be cleared by now, but to no avail.  A couple of drive-bys and now i'm sure the neigbhors are getting suspicious.  Won't they be surprised when the bulldozer comes.  The most interesting thing happened occured after we got home from petsmart.  Since animals are allowed into petsmart, we always try to take moby with us since he absolutely loves going on car rides.  We needed a new bed for him.  We spent all this money on this doggiepedic bed hoping he would absolutely love it. After all it's a doggiepedic, who wouldn't want to sleep on the doggiepedic bed.  The commercials even said dogs would have more energy!  Not that we are concerned with moby's energy level.  Almost all greyhounds sleep like 20 hours out of the day.  However, we saw the infomercial and of course we had to have it.  We are so gullable.  At first we thought moby liked it.  He slept on it at first.  He would even sleep on it if it were in his crate.  However, he would wake up and scratch at it trying to fluff it up which of course didn't work very well. Since the doggiepedic has a refund available, we decided to return it and get our money back since moby would rather sleep on our bed with us then sleep on his bed (see previous post).  Don't get me wrong, we actually thought it was quite entertaining to have him sleep on our bed, but he needed another bed.  Seeing as how his other one was destroyed when it was left in his crate after we left.  Moby has a little bit of separation anxiety.  Any by a little bit i mean he destroyes (chews up, tears, and scratches) anything with any type of fluffy material in it.  So off to petsmart we go.  The funny part is trying to get moby to try out the beds.  We mostly have to pick him up and lay him down in order for him to try it.  Except for the exact bed we got him last time.  He totally looked at it circled like twice and laid down like he normally does.  He does have some expensive taste, it's the most expensive bed petsmart has for his size, but what can you say, he loves it.  So homeward bound we go.  After we laid it in the living room, he feel asleep on it and didn't move for like hours that night.  And the really interesting part is when it was time for sleep, we dragged it into the bedroom and he totally fell asleep on it and didn't even try getting up on the bed.   We even tried to call him to come up and absolutely no response from him.  I forgot how much room there is on a queen size bed when you don't have a 80lb greyhound sleeping with you. 

Update and new suprises.

Wow, It's been a while since i've updated this.  The reason is that things have been incredibly busy and a lot has happened.  First, working 60+ hours/week has taken it's toll on my available free time.  I'm not complaining at all, it's something i totally agreed to do and am the one to blame.  In fact, I'm just glad i have that opportunity right now considering the house, and the baby on way.  I didn't realize how little free time i would have when i did sign up for all this overtime.  The good news is that my wife is pretty much doing the same thing. Needless to say we are both very motivated and definitely trying to prepare everything coming this next year.

Christmas came early this year.  I of course couldn't not buy my beautiful wife a christmas present.  I did get her something that we would eventually have to get anyways so it kinda is a christmas present, but yet knida not.  I ordered a vera bradley diaper bag and a ditty bag for all the future dirty diapers that we'll be carting around.  I ended of giving it to her early because i just can't keep something like that secret for long plus i wanted to see her reaction.  She absolutely loved it.  I item needed for the baby down, only 299 items left to go!  My wife of course had to go out and give me a gift since i got her a gift.  Since i gave her my gift early she had plenty of time.  So what did i get?  The complete season of Lost on DVD.  How cool is that?  We absolutely loved that show, and now we can have a LOST marathon.  I know some people hate that show or don't understand it, but what can i say we are totally geeks.  We even have a little darma sticker on the back of our Element.  Totally Geeky.

Thanks to my wife, the new item that is totally funny is our dog moby.  Since we pretty much sleep alone, she allowed our 80lb huge greyhound to jump up on the bed and sleep there.  Now first off, if anybody has a greyhound they will confirm, these dogs aren't the most graceful animals.  Being able to run at 45 mph has it's drawbacks.  Can't exactely stop on a dime and turn like a maserati.   In fact sometimes just walking can be difficult for him.  Our greyhound tends to run into things at times, walls, furnitur, glass sliding doors, and even people when your least expecting it.  But when it comes to jumping up on our  bed, he has the gracefulness and poise as an olympic skater.  He seems more like a dainty 5lb Chihuahua then an 80lb behemoth.  His gracefulness totally amazes both us.  However, his gracefulness goes away when it comes time to lay on the bed.  BED HOG!!!  Not only does he lay completely on his side, he completely stetches out his legs.  Then wuth his back up against you, he pushes his legs into the bed to give him more room.  So soon your at the edge of the bed, and he is taking up the more than half of the bed.  Then he flips over sometimes so that his legs are laying on top of yours.  SPOILED.  The good news is that he is sleeping better on our temperpedic bed to the point that he doesn't care about the alarm going off anymore like he used to.  However, if we knew that he was going to do this, we would've gotten a king size bed.  We didn't realize how bad it was until last night.  After a very long time (next paragraph) we both laid down.  Now with two adults, there isn't really enough room for essentially another adult (aka moby) in our queen sized bed.  That didn't stop him though.  He jumped up on the bed and laid completly on my legs.  How that was comfortable for him i have do idea.  But he didn't mind, and actually neither did i at first.  At some point i woke up because both of my legs were hanging off the side of the bed and moby was taking up the entire bottom of the bed where my legs shouldve been.   Of course my wife (who also tends to be a bed hog when i'm home and actually sleeping with her) was almost in the middle of the bed.  So i got up walked to the other side and asked her to slide over a little bit.  She woke up and told moby to get off the bed before sliding over.  He got off like he always does, paced a little and then let out a sigh as he laid down on the floor.  In case we didn't hear it, he let out two more huge sighs to let us know that we was on the floor.   Talk about spoiled rotten!!  That lasted a whole ten minutes before i found myself wedged between my wife and moby who gotten back up on the bed and wedged himself beside me between me and edge of the bed.   I just dread what is going to happen when we get another greyhound.

Since both of us worked christmas essentially, i worked the eve into the day and my wife worked the 24 and 25th during the day, we were able to enjoy the 26th to ourselves.  From back before thanksgiving, we planned on going out shopping since Ty will be with his dad over winter break and that is the only day off we have together while he is gone.  The main goal of the day is spend a few hours at babys'r'us to pick out everything we are going to need for the baby.  Then of course finish christmas shopping.  The one advantage of having Ty go up north for christmas is that we can take advantage of after christmas sales for christmas shopping.  However, that advatage will soon be gone.  The day began like every other day begins when we plan on leaving.  Moby freaks out and gives us those puppy dog eyes to guilt us in staying home.  It never works.  He always knows when we plan on doing something like this.  Then off to breakfast and off to our shopping adventure.  Best buy, target, then Babys'r'us.  Registering at Babys'r'us was quite fun.  It would be wonderful to be able to buy everything we want and need and not have to pay for anything of it.  I guess that is the point of registering at these things.  That of course isn't the reason we registered.  Since we are starting from essentially scratch, we decieded it would be nice to have a list of everything we absolutely need since it'll probably be us buying everything.  It took quite a few hours to get everything registered but it was fun and exciting.  From there off to the mall up in sarasota for lunch and more shopping.  Wow.  I felt like i was back up in virginia on the day before christmas.  It was a cattle call.  Makes me appreciated the less congested less busy area of north port/port charlotte.  From there, a quick visit to our house site where new and exciting changes are happening.  First off, we have the survey paper in hand to see the layout and all the trees that they intend to keep.  Surprisingly, it's all the ones that we want to keep.  Yeah!  In addition to, there is a port a potty on the corner!  Just like a nurse, getting excited about poop.  The good news is that means they are starting soon.  Supposedly, the lot is going to be cleared this coming week.  Very exciting.  From there it was off to dream land.  We traveled around looking for things we would love to have for the new house but can't really afford at this time.  We found some awesome things.  We have our new living room set, ty's bedroom set, and a new bedroom set picked out for us.  Now if only it were free!  It's wonderful to dream sometimes.  Back to reality and off to walmart for some groceries and more christmas shopping.  It's going to be a good christmas this year.  An exciting day.  And now, back to the fun of working with ACLS all day tomorrow.  Yahoo!  I'm just glad i don't have to do that but every 2 years.

Greyhound...

Moby our greyhound is an awesome dog.  He is a racing dropout, actually he never raced.  Personnally i think it's either because he is so big or else because he likes to stop and smell the roses and by smell the roses i mean pee and poop.  Since we've gotten him back in February, it's been fun.  He is quite a couch potato though.  He's quite entertaining though.  He sleeps in our room at the base of the bed or else in his crate next to our bed.  Whenever the alarm goes off to wake up, he jumps up waits like a minute then starts barking.  Trying to bop him on the head to hit the snooze button doesn't work because he just runs around the bed to the other side and keeps barking until you actually get up.  He then wants to play for the next 5-10 minutes and then it's time to eat.  Once fed, it's time to sleep again.  All in all he probably sleeps like 20 hours out of the day.  It's been said that greyhounds don't make great gaurd dogs but i guess ours didn't get that training.  Even if the neighbor is out late (like last night), he'll jump up and have this deep growl bark like something is wrong.  With all of 80lbs, and a deep bark, he doesn't seem like the type of dog you would want to mess with particularly if your the fed ex guy.  For some reason, he really doesn't like him.  I think its the truck more than the person because the ups and mailman he doesn't have a problem with.  And now he is sound asleep on the couch like normal.

And then there was four...

So the news is out, some may have not heard so here it is.  My wife is pregnant.  Very exciting.  The funny part is how we found out, or should i say how my wife found out first.  She was totally a pee on stick aholic.  There would be days where she used four or five pregnancy tests.  We were definitely trying in the fact that she came off the pill back in june.  However, we weren't trying in the aspects of writing everything down and we weren't going for the ivf route.  The even funnier part is the fact my wife was convinced i was completely sterile.  The years of skydiving, rock climbing, and very deep diving supposedly cut off the circulation long enough to incapacitate my boys.  Even more recently, the amount of cycling i would do wasn't at all beneficial either.  According to everything my wife was reading on the internet, anything longer than 30 minutes in he saddle would obstruct blood flow and cause sterility.  The 1 to 3 hour bike rides was way past the 30 minute recommended time.  Well this all just proves one thing.  I'm not sterile like she thought.

We found out the news on Halloween.  I had gotten dropped off at work the night before and rode my bike home like i try and usually do on the weekends down here.  It was a great ride like normal.  After arriving home i was greeted by my wife who had this extremely huge smile on her face.  I knew something was up but not quite what.  I was trying to get all my equipment out of my pockets (cell phone, ipod, wrench, tire inflator, and wallet) and was being dragged into the bathroom.  With an even bigger smile she pointed out to the every so slightly positive pregnancy test.  I mean it was like a 1 dot line.  But definitely positive.  So what do rn and people that have connections in the medical field do?  We call the hospital and see if they do a test in order to "calibrate" their lab testing machines.  A needle stick here, a little blood there, and ten minutes of nervously waiting and we have a result 206 for HCG levels.  High enough to be positive, but low enough for implantation to have occurred like the night before.  Ill take it either way.   So the 40 week journey has begun.

Christmas and Things

So it's that time of year again... Christmas.  It's totally weird because growing up in northern virginia and living in pa, around this time of year things started getting colder, occasionally a snow shower could be seen as leaves changed and everything turned bleak and cold for the winter.  However, in florida there is an odd eerie feeling seeing people decorate their houses with Christmas lights wearing shorts and t-shirts.  The temp is like 70 degrees and the trees are still green.  The good news is the grass has stopped growing so i don't have to mow it every day so it doesn't take over the house.  Which i might add is the problem during the summer months when it rains everyday and you can't mow the grass because it's too wet.

As for Christmas gifts this year, my wife agreed that we wouldn't get each other anything since we bought (sort of) a house and are looking forward to moving in sometime in april or may.  Personnally, I think it's because my wife loves the gifts i get her, just hates the way i give them.  For instance, there is this ring that she absolutely wants to get from jared's that matches her wedding ring perfectly.  I've always wanted to get her that ring and will do someday when i can afford it.  So a few years ago i got my wife one of those digital picture frames.  Instead of just giving her that gift and letting her do all the work, i spent one night picking out and loading pictures on a memory stick for the picture frame.  In a fit of brilliance, i found one of our wedding ring jared box's.  I of course placed the memory stick inside the jared box, wrapped it up and placed it under the tree.  Seeing the size, shape, and weight of the box, my wife incorrectly assumed i had finally gotten the ring for her.  She was exstatic as she opened the gifts.  I of course made her open the digital picture frame first.  She loved it but was definitely looking forward to the next box.  The excitement overwhelmed her as she opened the box thinking the ring was inside.  Excitement turned to extreme puzzlement quicker than moby runs when a drop of water falls somewhere on his skin.  "What is this?" my wife says in a confused voice.  "Why it's a memory card for the digital picture frame?"  She loved it.  Everybody she told about my little stunt laughed and agreed with me saying it was a great idea.  She didn't find it humerous at all..., at first.  Then of course there was that one time i bought her a new wallet.  Instead of wrapping it up and giving it to her, i took her old wallet and transfered everything while she was sleeping one night.  The look on her face when she opened her purse and found the new wallet was priceless.  The advantages of being on opposite shifts when i'm awake and she is sleeping in the middle of the night should becoming apparent now.  As for this year, we'll have to wait and see if we stick to our agreement.