Clark's new wardrobe

So I've never been one to think that dressing dogs is a great thing to do, but when we were in Old Navy tonight and saw these dog t-shirts I had to get one for Clark. Logan wears knit shirts almost every day to work, so now Clark looks like Logan!

I forgot!

In the post I just sent out, I meant to include a picture of Clark and his play-date buddy from this afternoon. My friend Julie and her family just adopted a black lab mix named Mattie, and Clark and I went over to their house this afternoon so the dogs could meet. He's often unsure of the situation when he meets new dogs, but he and Mattie had a lot of fun together! You can tell from their smiles that they had a good time.

Catch Up

Once again, no- I didn't fall off the face of the earth. I tend to think that the little things that keep us busy aren't interesting to other people, so I don't update the blog as much anymore. But we've had a few big things happening lately that might be of interest, so here it goes:
On Logan's spring break last month we started our last major house construction project. We had an old structure in the backyard (below) torn down to make way for a new hobby room. While we were at it, we had a new sidewalk poured too, and a cement slab for a plastic garden storage shed too. When Logan's parents arrived to stay with us and work on the hobby room with us for the week, the skies opened up and it POURED for the first few days. So by the time they started working, there was mud everywhere in the backyard. But, amazingly, the frame went up pretty fast.
Pretty soon there were walls, and it was starting to look like a real building.
Logan wasn't too fond of being up on the roof with the tar paper and shingles, but seemed glad to be done with work this particular day:
Logan's dad did a fantastic job designing the building, and it turned out just like he had planned. He and Logan are a good team!
All the while, Clark the "foreman" kept an eye on the workers, and made sure they stayed on task.
Nailing down shingles with a fluffy cloud in the background:
Aside from helping with the tar-papering and siding, my job was to make lunch for the workers each day. I got pretty good at making grilled cheese paninis by the end of the week.
Here's the finished project, aside from paint.
Logan and I worked a few afternoons to put drywall up in the hobby room. Now Logan has started working on taping the seams. With any luck, we'll be ready to texture and paint in the few weeks.
We have had some time for a little fun lately too. We've been taking Clark to dog classes almost every Saturday. While it's not always fun (since it takes a few hours of our Saturday), it has been really helpful for Clark. He's come a long way, and it's nice to see his progress.

We also went to see our goddaughter Chloe perform at Sunnyvale's Hands on the Arts festival last Saturday. She was so cute in her green tutu, and did a great job performing in front of a large crowd:

Later that afternoon, we went to have some good BBQ, see the San Jose Giants play, and celebrate our friend Ross' birthday. The Cacioppos joined us, and Logan taught Chloe about the finer points of baseball, while she told him about the Disney princesses. An educational afternoon for everyone! That's all for this time. I will try to put out another post pretty soon, which updated pictures of the hobby room and the new plants we have in the yard.

January in retrospect

I can't believe that January is over, and we're on to February already. Shortly after my last post, we enjoyed a really nice evening with our friends the Trassares, who were visiting from San Diego, as well as some local friends we don't see often enough. We had some good pizza at Jake's, and then went back to our house for dessert and conversation. It was so much fun to see everyone.

We also had a great weekend at our friend Ann's house in Novato a few weeks ago, when we got to see her house for the first time.
On New Year's Eve, Logan's mom and her boyfriend flew back home to New York. We drove them to the airport, and I had to get a photo of Logan, his mom, and her dog before they left.
I finally managed to find time to use my breadmaker over the vacation too. I have owned it since we got married, but had not found the time to use it until now. It doesn't take long to load the ingredients, but it requires me to be home for several hours to take the bread out when it's done, and my vacation days allowed me to do that. I made a plain loaf of French bread, but would like to try something fancier next time!
We've also been doing lots more training with Clark recently, to help him gain confidence and learn to cope with his fear when meeting strangers. We found a great training program in the area (www.dogslife.biz) and have a wonderful trainer who really understands how dogs think. We've been working with him on clicker training, and he's learning really fast. I even got him to the point where he's comfortable sleeping in his pop-up crate, which means we can take this smaller, portable crate on trips with us now, rather than lugging his big one along. Yay!
Our big new for this past week is that Logan had surgery to correct a deviated septum, which means that he will have much less trouble breathing through his nose now- as soon as he heals. The surgery was on Friday, so I've been home for the past few days taking care of him. He's feeling much better now, but is looking forward to getting his nasal splints out at his post-op appointment this Friday. Clark has been very concerned about Logan, and is never far from him these days!
Speaking of Clark, today (February 1) is the second anniversary of his adoption. It's hard to believe we've had him two years already. He's come a long way from the rambunctious, insecure puppy he was when we got him, and he'll keep improving for years to come.

Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one (post, that is...)

Our lives haven't really been sufficiently interesting these past few months to warrant posting much, which explains my long absence. We're busy all the time, but it's just little stuff- nothing too important.
We enjoyed another nice Thanksgiving dinner at our house last month, with Logan cooking a perfect turkey for the fourth year in a row. Logan's parents drove up to join us for the weekend, and Clark was especially happy to have them as house guests. More people around means more laps for Clark to sit on! We tried to take a family photo before Thanksgiving dinner. It took three shots before we finally got one with Clark sitting still and not licking Logan's dad's face.


The weekend after Thanksgiving was our annual tree-cutting trip into the Santa Cruz mountains. It was so cold up there that day that it actually snowed a little when we reached the top of the mountain. So we quickly found and cut down our trees.
A photo with my mom, Clark and me:
Our tree- in the house and decorated with the train at the base:
Clark and Auntie Katie at Grandma Adams' birthday celebration:
I made a chocolate cherry cake for Grandma:
Logan's sister sent Logan a really nice "Christmas Survival" gift- a Mario Brothers game for the Wii, peppermint Pop Rocks, glittery reindeer antlers, and an awesome homemade Mario mustache ornament! Clark not-so-gracefully models the mustache below:
A closer view of the antlers and mustache:
A few days before Christmas we took a short trip with Logan's mom and her boyfriend to Cambria, which is about three hours south of Santa Clara on the coast. We enjoyed visiting the elephant seals, which gather on the beach in San Simeon this time of year to have their babies. We saw a few newborns, although it's still early in the season for them. This big male was making his presence known:
On Christmas Eve we went to Logan's Aunt Marcia and Uncle Louie's house for a big family dinner. We enjoyed a wonderful mix of Puerto Rican and Norweigan foods, and everyone had a chance to sit on Santa's lap when he stopped by for a visit:
On Christmas morning we had breakfast and present-opening at my parents' house. Clark doesn't quite open presents on his own very well, so Logan helped him unwrap this treat from my parents:
The Sunday after Christmas I made breakfast for dinner and we had Logan's mom's family over to our house. We enjoyed seeing everyone again, and I had fun making a few batches of my great-grandmother Harris' sticky bun recipe for the meal. Maygen and Logan are always happy to see each other:
I was remiss in taking many photos at the meal, so this is the only group shot I managed to get:
We hope everyone had a great Christmas, and that 2010 has great things in store for you!

Dorothy Gayle and Freddy Krueger go trick-or-treating...

Halloween came and went quickly this year. I enjoyed presenting Halloween storytimes at the library again. My co-worker Jenny took some photos of the kids dressed up at storytime.
The twin boys who dressed up as skunks last year came as spiders this year. Very cute!I also took in some pumpkins from our garden again so we could have a "Guess the Weight of the Pumpkin" contest for the kids and teens. Below is the teen pumpkin- it ended up weighing about 35 pounds. Not huge, but not too bad either. Maybe we'll get a bigger one next year.
The kids pumpkin was much smaller- only about 14 pounds. It's funny how some kids have no concept of how much things weigh. I had some 2nd and 3rd graders guessing that it weighed hundreds of pounds!
The Friday before Halloween we had my parents over for pizza and pumpkin carving.
Being a new fan of pumpkin, Clark watched us closely and picked up any pieces we dropped.
We gave him his own pumpkin on the floor to play with, but he was more interested in my camera.
Logan likes to make scary pumpkins. But Clark wasn't scared- he kept licking the pumpkin's eyes.
Mine was supposed to look scared...
I told my parents they looked like American Gothic when they posed with their jack-o-lanterns.
We tried to make the pumpkin look like it was scared because Clark was eating it, but it didn't turn out so well.
All lit up...
On Halloween morning we went to watch Chloe's ballet class. The girls were all so cute, but at three years old they don't follow directions too well yet. As we like to say- "It was like trying to herd cats."
Chloe and her friend Faith pose after the class.
That evening we had a great dinner at Mandi and Geoffrey's followed by trick-or-treating with Chloe. She was dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. She stood still for Mandi to braid her hair.
Geoffrey loves Halloween- especially scary things. He tried to put on his Freddy Krueger mask to go trick-or-treating, but Chloe was too scared. So he settled for wearing the shirt and hat.
After the trick-or-treating, Logan advised Chloe on which candy to eat. She very generously offered to share.
Now, a week later, we're at work on another house project. We've whittled them down over the past five years, and we're nearly done with the whole house and yard. It's hard to believe we've owned (and worked on) the house for nearly five years now. This week we're working on the front yard. On Saturday we went shopping for sprinkler parts and plants, and on Sunday I dug trenches for the sprinklers while Logan put together the system. Here he is soldering the new pipes together:
Dad brought his newly painted truck over for us to see on Sunday afternoon. It's at least fifteen years old (can't remember what year), but it looks brand new now with the new paint job. Clark was so excited to see everyone.
Here's the yard with the trenches and new sprinkler pipes.
Today (Veteran's Day) Logan and I were both off work, so we spent the whole day working in the yard. We built a circular planter around our tree...
And planted several new plants, including a row of lantana along the sidewalk.
It was nearly dark when we stopped working tonight, so I didn't take photos of our most recent progress. I went and got two truck loads of tanbark for the yard, and we still need at least one more. But that will have to wait until the weekend. Back to work tomorrow...