Porches and a Puppy

Turns out that Ava doesn't do well with blood draws. I took her in for her annual exam this past week, and we were advised that she didn't have a baseline cholesterol test on file, and she should have one. I tried to distract her during the blood draw, and she was mostly fine then, but afterwards, she almost passed out. With some rest and apple juice, she was cleared to leave after an extra 10 minutes in the office. I'm worried that she's going to be nervous the next time she has to have a blood draw (for whatever reason.) :(

On the plus side, her cholesterol levels are good! Hooray!

We had a pretty standard week around here...swimming, taekwondo (Ava's last class until this fall!), Summer Power, trumpet sectionals, and work. Nothing too exciting, which is a-ok. We're getting ready to put Scott and my dad to work by replacing our cedar front porch with Trex. Scott already ripped out the main boards, and is currently performing some clean-up. The Trex have been purchased, and the guys will be busy on Sunday putting it into place. We're pretty excited to see how it all comes together, and even more excited for the no-maintenance aspect of it. The porch was re-stained a few years ago, and looked great at that time, but we figured we'd be saving money to replace it with Trex at this point. It's going to be the same color as our 2nd deck, and we think it'll tie in the colors of the house, retaining wall, and columns nicely. I'll post before and after once it's all done.

Scott and I are heading out for an adults-only dinner on Saturday night, while the kids fend for themselves at home. We're looking forward to getting out for a bit!

Not many pics for this week, but look at this sweet girl. Ava loves taking pics of her where her nose looks incredibly long, ha!

Comments

Goodbye Sweet Spanky

This is a post that I'm not very excited to write. As you probably know, our oldest dog, Spanky, had struggled with health issues (ear infections, seizures) his whole life, and recently, his health had severely deteriorated. He hadn't been eating, his ear infection was so severe his face was swollen, he had a hard time getting up the stairs, and he very rarely wanted to play. Last week we got a few tail wags from him, and he ate a few bowls of food, but it was a 50-50 chance that he would actually keep the food down. On Thursday, we made the decision that if he wasn't any better by this weekend, we were going to put him down. I know Scott didn't want to make that decision as Spanky was a very special dog to him - he truly was his little buddy, following him around everywhere, wanting to be wherever Scott was, and howling his sadness whenever Scott would leave him. Throughout Friday night, it became clear that Spanky wasn't going to have a miraculous recovery...

Happily Ever After?

Lately, I've been adding to the Disney Princess movies in our collection. Last week I bought Beauty and the Beast for Ava. That was never a favorite movie of mine, but now that I've seen it several times in the last week, it's growing on me. I figure this is a good chance for me to catch up on some of the stories that I missed out on! Watching all of these princess movies has me thinking about fairy tales...why is it that it's always the evil stepMOTHER? Or the mom is dead, and no one has taken her place? Very rarely is it the father who is evil, or dead. This has actually come up as a topic in more than one conversation lately, and has me a bit intrigued. Fairy tales are often not very happy - and usually someone dies at some point. I was a giving an overview of Snow White to a friend of mine, and as I was going through the story, both of us were horrified at the message - mom dies, evil stepmother wants to murder her pretty stepdaugh...

What's Black & White?

It's officially summer in Minnesota. We've passed the 1-2 weeks where it's pleasant outside, and have moved into the hot and humid midwestern summer season. This calls for some FUN in the SUN! We were hoping that Ava would enjoy the water a little more this year than she did last year (I took her to several weeks of swimming lessons in a lap pool, where the temp of the water was just a wee bit too chilly. It didn't go well for either of us.) Plus, she has a new swimming suit I was anxious to have her try out, so at the very least, I knew she would look cute. :) So, Daddy decided to set up the sprinkler for her one night after dinner. This, too, did not go very well. Perhaps it's because he sprung the sprinkler on her without warning, causing her to run to me, with fear in her eyes, and very wet hands... After that, we never got her to come near the sprinkler (way to go, Daddy), and she decided to play with my potted flowers...with h...

Go, Go, Goers!

Search This Blog