Really it has been a crazy life lately

Time has flown by recently. Every part of life has been hectic.

October has been a busy month for my Tastefully Simple business. It's been great - I'm glad to have be busy with Tastefully Simple - it's fun seeing my business grow and I find that I enjoy parties more and more with each one that I do. Plus, the few extra bucks I make certainly do help!!

Our law firm has been crazy busy lately, which is great - always good to have job security. Most of the staff has been working 50+ hours lately, which is unusual for so many of us to be so busy. My weekends lately have been spent at the office on Saturday and then working from home on Sunday. Right now, we have a temporary reprieve, but in about 3-4 weeks, the workload is going to pick back up again and we'll all be working mass overtime all over again. Oh well - it's a good time of the year to be earning extra money from OT!!

Makayla has been doing well - as well as can be expected. The steroids have had her feeling a little better. However, her appetite has become insane. She is constantly hungry. In fact, she gets a meal around 2 a.m. so that she can make it through the night. And she's been drinking more and more water, which means more and more potty trips. Needless to say, I'm exhausted because I only sleep about 2 hours at a time at night since Makayla is up so much. But, I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm just thankful that Kayla's still here with us and feeling as well as she is.

We had our family photo shoot last week and it went so much better than I expected. We should be getting the proofs any day now and I'm cannot wait to see how great the pictures turned out.

And last but not least, Grace is headed to the vet tomorrow. She's having some trouble with her back legs and we need to find out what's going on with her. We always knew she'd be the next one to give us major health issues, but were so hoping to have a little reprieve between handicapped pugs. As of right now, that's not looking like it's going to happen. Cross fingers and paws that we can figure out what's going on with Grace.

Because I'm a glutton for punishment!!

We've scheduled a photo shoot with Lori Skalitzky Photography in a couple weeks. I really want to get a photo shoot with Makayla while she's still up and mobile and feeling good. So Lori will be coming out to our house for an outdoor photo session in our backyard. And for fun, I decided we should try to get a family photo out of it - we'll see if Grace cooperates and gets close enough to be in the same photo as Josh!!! If we do manage to get a nice family shot, I'd love to have a gorgeous 16x20 portrait to put in the living room with the pugs' portraits. And hopefully we'll also end up with more beautiful pictures of the stooges.

Or, I'll have a lot more gray hair by the time the shoot is over!!

Reality Check

Nothing like a trip to the vet for a little reality check. We took Makayla in for a checkup tonight because her leg spasms are still continuing and she's not sleeping more than 2 hours at a time through the night. We're going to try out Prednisone and see if that helps with the spasms, and if it does help, we will probably keep her on it long term. Here's the reality check - I asked Dr. Pat if we should be concerned about long term Prednisone usage. That's when he said we don't need to worry so much about long term side effects because, in essence, we're at the stage where we are more concerned with quality of life rather than quantity. Who knows how long we have left with Sissy - but we're going to make it the best we possibly can for her. So here's hoping the Prednisone works and we can get the spasms under control.

Chicago, here we come!

Have I said how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE Chicago??? It's such a fun, fast paced, neat city. Friday morning I am dropping the three stooges off for a weekend at Auntie Mary's house (thank God for Auntie Mary, since no one else in their right mind is willing to take care of these three crazy dogs for a weekend!) and we are hitting the road. We being me, Josh and Josh's dad, Jeff. We're taking a few days to escape life, do some sightseeing, a little shopping and just relax and enjoy the Windy City. And although I know Josh isn't looking forward to the 3 hour drive, I know he's stoked to be driving in downtown Chicago once again - that city is made for a crazy ass driver like Josh, so he feels right at home there!! We'll be sure to take lots of pictures and post when we get back.

Another reason pugs are better than kids!

Yet another reason pugs are better than kids - because they like to sleep as much as I do!!!! We slept in super late today, got up and ate some breakfast and decided to lay back in bed and watch TV for a little while. And where are the pugs? Happily laying in bed and on the floor, snoring like freight trains! And Diesel is even under the covers as he feels it's simply too bright to sleep on top of the covers - he just can't get a good enough sleep!! See, kids don't do this stuff - they need to be up and moving around - too busy for me!!!

Random Saturday Thoughts

First, I have to thank my favorite cousin, Sara, for the picture she sent me last week - I have yet to get it framed and hung on my art wall, but I promise to do that soon and I will post a pic of it once I do.

It was a fun day of scrapping - working on two pages to submit for the Milwaukee Pugfest scrapbook contest to benefit pug rescue. Wow - it's hard to be given a theme and requirements to scrap. I've never done it before and it really makes you stop and think about what you're doing. I do believe, however, that I have finally gotten off to a good start and will get them finished yet this week. Which is good because they're due by Labor Day. And thank you to Mary for helping inspire me!!

Ah, yes, the reasons I don't have kids - Karaleigh (Mary's granddaughter) is one sweet little girl, but man that kid can wear a person out!! Just watching her run back and forth through the living room in her cowboy boots made me tired!! Oh, and she's very picky about the quality of stickers she uses - I tried giving her some of my stickers to play with and she never hesitated to give me back the ones she didn't like!!

And cannot forget my usual fireworks rant. Here's the deal, people. Fireworks are for the 4th of July. It's currently August 21 - long past the 4th of July, so if all the idiots can stop shooting off fireworks, I'd be forever grateful!!

Trip to Chicago next weekend with Josh and my FIL. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Chicago so am really looking forward to a fun weekend. Maybe we can manage a stop at the outlet mall in Kenosha on our way there or back - not that I have any money to spend, but hey that's what keeps Discover, Mastercard and Visa in business, isn't it?! Well, that and my vet expenses!

Have a great weekend, lord knows the warm summer weekends will be over before we know it.

Grace, the squirrel hunter

Yesterday morning I fed the kids and put them out after breakfast for potties. The twins did their business and came in, but Grace was nowhere to be seen. I called her a couple times but no Grace. I figured she was out in my flower bed happily eating flowers. So I put on my shoes and grabbed a flashlight (it's dark, you know, since they eat breakfast at 4:30 a.m. - thank you, Sis!) and headed outside. As I walked around the corner of the garage, Grace came running from where the fence meets the front corner of the garage. I went to investigate what she was doing over there.

And I discovered that Grace was happily gnawing on the remains of the ground squirrel that had been caught in the trap just outside the fence. She happily dragged the back part of the squirrel through the fence and chewed away!! Icky little girl!!!!!!!!

So, now I am happy to see her eat poop again instead of rodents!!