Camp Ground Cemetary

Not far from our house is a small civil war cemetery. It's so close we can walk to it. It is one of my favorite places to walk Cove too, especially in the fall when the leaves are changing...

It is so old most of the headstones are too weathered to read and falling over...

There is also a huge fallen tree that no one has cared to get rid of...

For some reason that cemetery feels really peaceful.

On the way home we made Cove take a picture by a fire hydrant that matched her scarf...

I guess not all dogs like fire hydrants, because she sure doesn't look happy ; )

so...

Things HAVE been going on in my life. I can't wait to start sharing all the dirty details SOON. Until then, you get this picture...

It's Cove rolling around like a crazy dog on the new carpet downstairs. Who'd of thunk a dog would love a little plushness so much. I mean, she really has had only hardwood floors to lay on until now. I guess she is making up for lost time. Silly pup.

Oh Cove

Don't you just love when your dog does something absolutely adorable. I come home from my rotation, let Cove inside, and go through the mail in the kitchen. I walk in to the living room after going through the mail and find Cove laying like this:

My sweet puppy dog decided the blanket I always put over the seat cushions (hey, when your using a I-don't-know-how-old hand-me-down couch with cracking leather you try and make it look as nice as possible) just wasn't good enough for her- notice blanket laying on floor. She decided to pull up her doggy bed, which normally lays on the floor by the couch, right up on top of the couch.
She's a thinker!

A Little Fun from Last Weekend

Brandon was in a fishing contest last weekend. It was part of the corporate challenge competition at his work. He has to win the try-outs (another fishing tournament in itself) in order to compete in it. Well, him and his partner Matt beat out some old timers and woke up before the sun came out for a little fishing action on Smithville lake. The weather was cold, and the fish didn't bite so well. In fact, they only caught two fish.
See fish #1...
And fish #2
(I am sure Brandon would like for you to know that he caught both of them even though Matt is holding up his fish, which looks bigger, for the picture)

Well, what do you know...there 2 bass got them 2nd place metals at the tournament! Most of the other teams were only able to catch crappie. It takes a lot of crappie to equal the weight of one bass. They got 2nd place by the weight of their bass.

See them supporting the Honeywell shirts....

Brandon also got his fourwheeler running. He said I had to take a picture of it running for my blog, since I showed it before it was running.

He wouldn't slow down, so I only got crazy blurry action shots...

We also took Cove to the Lake last weekend. It was her first time going to a real lake (we have only taken her to the pond at Bass Pro Shop). Let's just say she is going to be a water dog. It only took her a minute on the dock before she jumped right off without us knowing it! Good thing she knows how to swim.
Here she is shaking off the water after Brandon helped her back up on the swim dock...

Rotation are keeping me busy...real busy. That's okay though because I am learning a lot. I may become a weekend blogger at this rate.

Did I tell you I chopped off my hair? My sister took pictures, so I will share. She has been out of town all week, so I will forgive her for taking so long to get them to me. Hopefully I will see her tomorrow.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend...please take some time to remember the ones that made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedoms we enjoy today.

Brandon's Worms

Yep, my husband keeps worms...for fishing that is. Gross, right? He goes out after it rains and him and Cove hunt for worms to fill up our old coffee containers. They stay in our basement until the next trip to the lake where his family keeps a whole worm farm.
Brandon was carrying his worm containers up from the basement tonight to catch his latest worm victims, when he saw something he thought was a large spider move in the sack. He made such a loud sound he woke up poor Cove who started barking. Luckily, it wasn't a spider. I would not be able to sleep tonight thinking about large spiders crawling around our house.

Instead, it was this little harmless frog (right next to the hole in the bottom of the sack). Or maybe he is a toad? I really don't know the difference between the two. He was small and cute. Brandon said they make good bait. Don't worry- I told him he better not, or there will be consequences...

Where's Cove?

Is she soaking up loving from Grandma Leslie?

Keeping her momma from studying?
Army crawling under the bed in the guest bedroom?

Sneaking in a nap on our bed after playing with ducky?

Or watching pappa play baseball on his iTouch?

No matter where Cove is, she sure is adorable!

Mud and Poo

The joys of having a puppy are never ending. Cove provides us with constant attention and affection. We decided to take her on a walk around the Bass Pro shops walking trails over the weekend while the primer Brandon had sprayed on our basement ceiling was drying. Cove loves a new adventure, so she was as happy as could be in the new terrain. We spent sometime throwing a stick in the lake and having her fetch it. I have a feeling she is going to be a great lake dog after we master the word "come," so she can play safely off the leash. While we were down by the lake I was being extra careful not to step in the squishy mud. I was doing an excellent job keeping my shoes clean too, right until Cove stepped right on top of my foot with her muddy paw...she would! Oh well, I knew it was too good to be true....
After her play time in the water we set off on a walk/hike through the woods. I snapped a picture of Brandon with our little lady. He had just pulled a treat out of his pocket. We also took this picture of me and Cove on a big rock. Too bad I was wearing black and she blended right in with my jacket!
We hiked through the woods for quite a long time before making our way back to the paved trail. After we got back on the paved trail Cove kept wanting to cross over in front of me and go over to the grass. Since we are trying to train her to walk properly on the leash, I kept moving her right back to the middle of the paved path. I did this several times when Brandon stopped to look at some animal foot prints in the dirt. I stopped to look at what he was looking and seconds later there was a nice, warm pile of poo siting right in the middle of the path...gross! Poor Cove probably thought she better just let it out on the concrete, since I wouldn't let her get to the grass. Almost at the same exact time our friend Marcie's mom came up the trail with their dog. Perfect time to run into someone you know! Oh well, it was good seeing her even if we had to remind her not to step on the poo we hadn't had the chance to move yet ; )

My Crazy-Busy, Productive Week of Spring Break

This title is about the best description I can come up with to describe how my week of week of Spring Break was for me...well technically over a week. Since I only have classes 3 days a week, I got a whole week and a half for Spring Break this year- wahoo! Unfortunately, the time flew by way too fast, and I am sad to say I am back in St. Louis again getting ready to hit the books for a therapeutics exam on Wednesday ) : Looking on the bright side though, here is a quick run down of all the things I was able to accomplish on my spring break:
Decide on colors to paint our master bedroom and living room/dining room/kitchen area
Paint, Paint, Paint all these rooms plus 2 hallways and 2 bathrooms
Cooked dinner for my parents and Grandma Leslie (luckily they still ate even after I spilled the entire taco bake onto the stove door as I was getting it out of the oven...they are way too nice!)
Finally frame the LESLIE pictures my sister gave to us for Christmas (picture coming soon!)
Eat lunch with the Dad or Mom or Dad&Mom just about every week day (Mom and me managed to get Chinese twice!)
Spend lots of time playing with our loving puppy Covey and even taught her how to catch apple slices in her mouth...we our working the way up to her catching frisbees
Got my TB test required for rotations...negative once again-praise!
Made it to a wonderful church service where we got to catch up with an old friend from high school
Replaced the 2 ugly light fixtures in both of our bathrooms with much more modern/trendy ones (pics coming soon!)
Made a trip to St. Louis to move the majority of my furniture home to put in the guest bedroom
Got the ever cool UVerse installed in our house the day after it became available to our neighborhood thanks to my dad having a little inside push ; )
Made it to my own birthday party over an hour late...oops. The cookie cake was delicious though!
And finally, held an Open House for family to see the newly painted walls- this was the first time most of my family had even seen our house...

So here are some pics to get you started with the painting progress:


These are 2 colors from Benjamin Moore (Edgecomb Gray and Shaker Beige) that I thought would look nice for the living area. I decided to go with a lighter color than either of these called Elmira White...then after painting a bathroom and hallway decided to go with an even lighter color from Dutch Boy paint called Whitetail deer (My husband and my father in-law who are both deer hunters loved the name...I love the color!)

And these were the colors I was trying to chose between for the master bedroom. I ended up going with the top one, again from Benjamin Moore called Buxton Blue. I went great with the pillows I told you guys about earlier that I purchased from Etsy...pics coming!

And so the taping and painting began. We started Sunday night and didn't finish painting till Friday afternoon. Boy did my back start hurting by Friday! I had no clue what a job I was in for. It didn't help that our textured walls required just about 2 coats of paint to finally fill in all the little holes with color.... Luckily Wal-Mart can match any paint color, so I was able to get the colors I wanted at much cheaper prices than the hardware store, especially after my good'ole discount!

Of course, I took any help I could get. There would have been no way I could have finished everything I wanted to get painted in 1 week without all my helpers. This is my dad touching up the Whitetail Deer color in our living room. In case you are wondering about the desk, we use Brandon's computer as our tv in the living room....it's our sweet flat screen tv...kind of lol.

My mom was a huge help. She was over every day helping tape and edge...sweet thing! This picture helps show the subtle difference between the new paint color and our white trim, which is just what I was wanting. It makes things a little bit more home-y, yet keeps it feeling bright and open...

And here is Brandon's hard-working Dad. He did all my top edging, and let me tell you, this was one tough job having textured walls AND ceilings. I tried to edge the hallway ceilings and he had to come over and fix them! He has an amazingly steady hand.

Thanks so much to all my amazing helpers who came over to paint or clean this week (Mark, Jacque, Dad, Mom, Kara). I couldn't have done it without you.

For those of you who haven't seen our house, sorry these pictures aren't much help in showing you what the finished walls look like. You will have to stay tuned for future posts. Don't worry, I won't keep you hanging too long! I am calling it a night tonight though; I am going to enjoy what is left of my birthday today by going to bed early ; )

She Gets It From Her Momma

I thought this picture captured Cove's love for the sunshine perfectly. Just like me, Covey loves to lounge in the warm sunshine coming through the window. What is even cuter is that she actually picks up her bed in her mouth and pulls it over to where the sunshine is. I must admit that her bed is not the only thing finding its way into her mouth lately. Let me say that the puppy chewing desire in her is definitely in full force here lately. We have been able to detour her from damaging our furniture though with that Sour Apply spray you get at the pet store. I highly recommend the spray to anyone out there getting a puppy! We also use it to spray in her mouth when she starts to chew on our clothes. Now when Brandon picks up the spray bottle she knows exactly what is coming and stops chewing... well, sometimes she likes to test us and will give it one more chew....cantankerous little lady! I still love her little chompers though : )

The Ducks Are Coming

Wouldn't it be terrible to not teach a dog bred for bird retrieval how to hunt ducks?! Well, Brandon decided that Covey needed to learn how to retrieve this weekend.

This is Covey Saturday morning, waiting patiently to retrieve her duck...she loves her poppa!
She would bring it back and lay it down to get her treat...what a champ!

Ok, she wasn't this perfect at first! Here is a video of her Friday night during one of Brandon's first attempts to teach her duck hunting. He even makes the gun sound...cracks me up everytime ; ) Also notice how he lets her know, "The ducks are coming!"

A Tribute to Gpa Heegn

We went over to my parents house last night for dinner. On the coffee table my mom had a small collection of my Gpa Heegn's sketches she had rounded up over at my Grandma's house. I have always known my Grandpa was a bit of an artist, from his detailed Easter egg decorating skills. My mom explained to me that her dad frequently sketched small pictures on scrap paper when he was waiting at job sites (he was an electrician that would have to wait for other construction teams to finish up before he could start wiring). My mom had already purchased a frame and some black tissue paper, and was planning on framing some of her dad's artwork for him. This is kind of a bitter-sweet tribute, as my Grandpa has lost the ability to walk, write, and even eat after suffering multiple strokes. I absolutely loved the idea, and helped put this collection together last night as she was washing up the dishes after dinner.

Something else that I learned last night is that my Grandpa would always write "This is a new pen," when he would pick up a new pen. She came across one of those scrap pieces of paper as well, so we taped this piece of paper to back of the frame. The fact that he even signed the paper makes me smile even more.
Just for kicks...Here is my sister's cat, Molly, trying to sneak up on Covey while she was sleeping. Notice how Cove sleeps all stretched out- silly pup!

Great idea to put together this collection of artwork mom! Thanks for letting me help, and teaching me a few things I never knew about my grandpa...

PS- dinner was delicious too : )

Our New Addition

Brandon and I adopted our first puppy together this week. This little girl is an 8 week-old laborador retriever. We came across her at PetCo last Saturday. She had been rescued by the Linn County humane society and was living with her foster mom who brought her upto the store. We instantly fell in love with her, and officially adopted her on Monday. We named her Covey (precounced like a lake "cove" with a "y"). She is not yet house trained, but we are hoping to fix her of this quickly. Lucky for us we don't have any carpets in our house for her to make a mess on. I am not sure how long it takes for puppies this old to learn how to let us know when they need to go. Today she has only made one tinkle inside, so I am very happy! Right now the sweet little pup is curled up at my feet fast asleep. Here is a picture of her and Brandon after Mike and him came inside from pulling Brandon's motorcycle engine back out of his bike. Mike kindly donated his water bottle to her toy collection- she loved it! I have been busy reading up on puppy training this week, since I don't want to teach her any bad habits we will have to break later. I have never trained a puppy before, so wish me luck!!!