Update on Poor Puppy Parenting

There has been a recent breakthrough in the poor puppy parenting realm that I thought I should report. Previously I posted an entry about when we discovered how our sad little puppy spends the 6 hours during the day while we are at work - whining and crying and pacing. It was quite pitiful and made us feel like terrible parents.

Well, the other day I came home from work and Dakota wasn't laying in front of the door as usual. I found her in the guest room ( a MAJOR "NO" room, as we keep all our souveneirs in there and she has been known to chew them if not supervised). We always keep this door shut but it, apparently, came open that day and Dakota was just laying on the rug smiling up at me like, "oh, are you home already?" She hadn't ripped or chewed anything - she hadn't even knocked anything over!

So after that incident we thought the key to our dog's happiness might just be more rooms. We sat Dakota down and gave her a stern talking to about the big responsibility we were giving her and that she would only have the privilege of the other rooms in the house if she proved herself mature enough to handle it.

Since then we let her roam the kitchen, dining room, living room, office and guest room while we're gone. She is still restricted from our bedroom (she won't stay off our bed) and the bathroom (she can't resist the tempation of Q-tips and toilet paper in the garbage can) but the rest of the apartment is hers.

This change has made a big difference. Dakota is SIGNIFICANTLY less spastic and uncontrolled when we come home. She's still happy to see us but she no longer makes the high-pitched puppy weeping noise while flailing on the groud as though having a seizure. I guess our little ADD puppy is just (*sigh*) growing up. :)

Quick decisions ... really quick.

I think being able to make big decisions quickly is a prerequisite of being a young couple. Mar and I have made three MAJOR decisions in this past week.

I (Matt) have been looking for a job for the past two weeks, because I decided to work full-time and just take night classes for my M.S. degree. I just wasn't getting into the research I was doing. After a two week search netting two interviews that didn't develop into anything, I was starting to get a little discouraged about my decision. Then I called an engineering design consulting firm on Sunday, interviewed on Monday, did a second interview Wednesday, and accepted their offer on Wednesday evening. You can check out the previous products they have designed at http://www.bleckdesigngroup.com/ in the portfolio section. They have some pretty cool stuff on there!

Then we needed a car, since I would be commuting now. So we went out Thursday and bought a certified pre-owned 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid. Here's a picture, it looks silver, but it's actually "metallic blue". We found someone to take over our lease in our current apartment last week, because we decided we wanted to move into Boston to shorten our commutes. We hadn't found a new place to move into, although we had gone into Boston to look at apartments twice. Then Saturday we looked at three places, and the last one was just perfect. So we filled out the application and gave them a check right then and there. We're moving into the North Side of Boston in two weeks!

Did you catch that schedule? Wednesday new job, Thursday new car, Saturday new apartment. What a relief to finally get it all settled though!

Snow? boarding

The following account recaps our journey to Loon "Mountain" ski resort last weekend. Marilee won free lift tickets in a radio contest, so we decided to go check out the East Coast version of snowboarding.

This picture is what we first saw when we pulled up to the ski "mountain." Where's the snow, and what's with the train, you may ask? Apparently the train was for transporting people between lodges, and the snow part will be explained later.

This is what greeted us as we went up the chairlift. Once again, the lack of snow was concerning. I probably wouldn't even have gone up the lift at all, except we had seen some glimpses of snow on runs off to the side.

Ahhh, that's the stuff. There was actually "snow" on the runs after all! Apparently the way it works over here is that they have huge water pipelines running up the sides of the runs, and they mist everything with water vapor when it freezes at night. So the effect is that there is a 6-12 inch layer of ice, covered with about 1 inch of ice shavings and slush. It actually didn't make for bad riding, except when you fell. This picture is Marilee, who was turning both directions and doing extremely well! But she was REALLY sore for the next few days, and had bruises all over from falling on the ice. I don't think it would have been worth $69 each for lift tickets, but we had fun going for free!

Christmas break

I realize that in order to keep the locals happy we had better post some pictures of our Christmas break. It was Sooooooo great to go back to the Northwest and visit our family and friends. We started with one night at Christy and Larry's house in Bellevue, then we took a one night trip to Newberg, then we bounced around some more in the houses of Marilee's family in the Seattle area over Christmas. Here are the prime pictures:Matt and our niece Danica, the newest addition to the family, whom we hadn't met until this visit.

Marilee and Sasha, our niece who we had seen briefly on the day of her birth, but not for 6 months!

Luke is intently studying the present that we brought for him, which he REALLY wanted to open AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

Marilee and our lone nephew, Luke.

Marilee and Elaina, who is now 6 years old, and missing her front teeth!

Christmas Break part 2

Two days after Christmas we left Seattle to visit Matt's family over in Idaho. Marilee had only a short 5 days there, but Matt got to stay an additional 6 days. So great to see old friends and family, and AFTON, our other adorable niece, proudly pictured below being COOL, as usual.

This shows the final length of Matt's hair, as he cut it all off shortly afterwards, for religious reasons. Everyone was saying he looked like Jesus, and he just can't live up to that kind of pressure.