Snow Much Fun!

Today is Logan's last day of his February week-long vacation, and we made the most of the last half of it. At the beginning of the week, Logan was working around the house- starting to put in our sprinkler system and grouting the bathroom floor (it looks great!). But the end of the week was all about fun.
On Friday morning we dropped Clark off at my parents' house to spend the weekend with them while we headed up to Tahoe to have some fun in the snow with our friends. We would have taken Clark with us, but this trip was planned before we adopted him, and the cabin we were staying in doesn't allow dogs. However, Clark did have some fun on Thursday night while we were packing. I climbed the ladder into the attic to get our snow clothes down, and he tried to climb up after me!On Friday night we enjoyed a quiet evening at the cabin watching The Iron Giant and drinking hot cocoa. Saturday morning we went sledding with our friends. It started snowing pretty hard while we were sledding and continued for much of yesterday and this morning as well.
Even in the snow, Logan represents his Indiana heritage!

I found a great scrapbooking store in South Lake Tahoe yesterday afternoon- I'll definitely be returning to it on future trips. We had drinks and dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe last night before returning to the cabin for some delicious cakes for dessert- courtesy of our resident pastry chef, Kirsten- and a fun game of Apples to Apples. It's a simple game, but always hilarious.
This morning we had some work to do clearing the snow off the trucks. Logan enjoyed getting to put his four-wheel drive to use all weekend. It was great not to have to put chains on every time we wanted to go somewhere. The street the cabin is on was covered in enough snow this morning that some neighbors took their kids for a ride, sledding behind their off-road four-wheeler. The kids were giggling all the way down the street!
The giggling kids looked like ducklings in a row.
Unfortunately, by the time we got everything packed up, went to breakfast at Heidi's, and tried to get out of town, the traffic back-up was bad. And it was made worse because of the constant and heavy snowfall, and at least one accident near the summit of Highway 50. But we were able to make the best of a bad situation by playing in the snow some more while traffic was at a complete standstill for at least 30 minutes. I even got to make a snowman, which I hadn't yet gotten to do this weekend.
We finally made it home around 8:30 tonight, after leaving South Lake Tahoe at 11:30 this morning. And now we're saving up our energy for the new week starting tomorrow...

Life with Clark

We've had Clark for two and a half weeks now, and things are going well. He sleeps through the night in his crate, doesn't bark all day while we're at work, and has fun at doggy day camp once a week. We took him to his first training class last week, and we're looking forward to the next one tomorrow night. We've found that he actually does like chasing things like frisbees and balls, although he doesn't always bring them back. And he loves to run- really fast- anytime he gets the chance at the dog park.
Here are a few more pictures we've taken of him lately. He always pays attention to the camera when we take it out, so it's hard to get candid shots of him.
This is Clark with his favorite toy, Toothpick the dog:
Our other news is that we've been working on getting ready to landscape the back yard. We rented a ditch digger last weekend so now the ditches are ready for the sprinkler system pipes. During this coming week when Logan is off work he's going to work on getting those in so that we can lay sod soon. It will be really nice to have something other than dirt and weeds in the backyard again, and also nice to not have so much dirt tracked into the house on Clark's feet.

We're getting ready to go to Tahoe for a few days in the snow this coming weekend. Clark will be staying with my parents, so we'll see how Bailey (their almost 10-year-old Yellow Lab) handles having a young house guest. I hope Clark doesn't drive him too crazy.

Lastly, here are a few pictures of the completed front porch. It was finished back in November, but I never got pictures of the painted final product up on the blog, and Logan's dad has been requesting some. So, here they are:

Where did the last month and a half go?!

Well, I suppose I was wrong in my last post when I said I might be blogging more over the holidays. I did have a lot to write about, but no time in which to write. In early December (right about the time of my last post, curiously enough), I received a huge new assignment at work that is taking a lot of my time and all of my patience. I am now in charge of scheduling all staff at the branch where I work. I make the monthly schedule, the weekly schedule, and the daily schedules. I have to make sure they're updated whenever anyone calls in sick, make sure there is someone assigned to cover the desks and phones each hour, and make sure everything shows correctly on our online scheduling blog. And I'm doing all of this on top of my already busy job of running the children's room, presenting the programs, and ordering children's audio visual materials. It has been a nightmare getting used to this new assignment. Lots of sleepless nights in December...

Christmas was nice. It was low-key this year, since we stayed in the area and spent Christmas Day with my family. I worked the week between Christmas and New Year's, but then I was off the following week. It was nice to spend some time just hanging out at home. We did take a few days to go down and visit Logan's parents near San Luis Obispo, which was a very nice trip. And we made it through a huge storm just after New Year's- the storm cracked a window pane in our guest bedroom, so we had to get that replaced.

Logan and I took a day-trip over to Pescadero, our favorite beach, last month when we were off for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. We drove over in the truck and Logan found a nice muddy area off the road where he could test out his 4-wheel drive. He had a HUGE grin on his face the whole time!

Our biggest news, however, is that we adopted a dog last weekend. On February 1st, Clark joined our family. We adopted him from the Humane Society, and he's already stolen our hearts. He is the sweetest little guy, and has such a happy personality. He's about nine months old and weighs about 40 pounds. We're not expecting him to get a lot bigger. He's part Chesapeake Bay Retriever, and we think part Pit Bull. He loves to go to the dog park, play with his squeaky toys (especially the green dog from Aunt Katie!), and go for jogs with us in the morning and afternoon.

I will add more pictures of him when I'm at home, but here are a few to start with:

(this is the photo we saw on the Humane Society website that made us want to adopt him.)

Clark on the couch playing with his "Dirty Rotten Kitty" (that's what the cat's nametag says!)