Birthdays, parties and good-byes

Yesterday was my birthday..I officially became 30-something. Not sure how I feel about that at this point...but seeing as though I still like to have fun..I don't think I am old yet. ;-)

For my birthday, I travelled up to Fredericksburg for a farewell dinner...we are saying good-bye to a good friend. Aubry..if you don't know her you have seen her periodically on my blog as well as gyeong's. She is a good friend but is NOT 30something, and therefore must forge on to the next stage in her life. She is moving to Sante Fe, NM in a few weeks. We will all miss her terribly but we definitely know she is doing the best thing for her. So a few of us went to the Melting Pot for a fondue farewell. She will have fun and now we have a reason to head out and gamble with the Native Americans. ;-) But it was a nice way to spend my birthday as well. Jason is taking me to see Blue Man Group here in Richmond next Tuesday.

Good LUCK, AUBRY!!!!!!!

On the party front, the Alfano's came over for dinner on Saturday night with their 3 greyhounds, Tristan, Jo and Sara. Sara is their newest addition and she is the very beautiful and rare blue color. Tristan wears a diaper...he has the Hank disease. ;-) We had a lot of wine and great food..and then...it got interesting. I will have to let a few pictures show you the progression the evening took..

Brian wasn't passed out on the floor..although it does appear that way...he was wiggling around which lead to Dante running over to attack him. I think this was after Jason kicked him in the head (by accident) when they were wrestling around. Boys... OH..and yes for those of you who have met Brian..he did cut all his hair off. We had a lot of fun though. Other than that our weekend was lazy. On the adoption front, Amanda and Kenney have decided to adopt Blue (see blog entry a few weeks ago). So they now have Ana and Blue! I am sure there will be all sorts of pictures from them.

Hank moves on and we get new stuff!

Hanka-Stanka...he is so cute. Sadly...he had a few home possibilities that all ended with returns for various reasons. None of the reasons were his fault (or the potential adopters) but he just didn't work out. And on top of it all, we couldn't get him to stop marking our house. So..he had to be packed up and moved to doggie boot camp for a little while. Such a sweetie..if only we could have kept the pee-pee outside. He was just a man that knew what he wanted...everything...everything was his (including at Dante one day!).

Good luck, Hank! Find a forever home soon.

But in other news...we were busy this weekend. I am quick on the tax thing and since we still use the federal government as our savings account (how stupid is that when you say it out loud), we had a nice tax return burning a hole in our pocket! So first stop...BIG ASS GRILL!!!

Jason is very happy. We had been cooking on a very small hand-me-down grill for a year. So now we have a 5 burner, 60,000BTU mega-man grill! ARH ARH ARH. ;-) I am sure I will get all sorts of tasty treats as time goes on! He spent all morning in the 20 degree weather, putting it together. This will mean we will have tons of cookouts this summer with tons of dogs running around. woohoo!

We also have been dealing with the stupid rubbermaid storage shed left by the previous owners. It was a bit trashy to say the least and we BOTH HATED IT! So a very nice contractor man woke me up at 7AM this morning to start on our new storage shed. He braved the 17 degree morning to build it for us..but he was getting paid. ;-)

So now we have a place to store all of our stuff. But as a plus to this new addition, we got to tear down that nasty rubbermaid trashy thing. AND it is recyclable! So Jason got to have a therapy season with power tools!

He had fun. Now we have tons of recycling and trash..and a great new area of the yard for a patio and fire pit!

Offical Cult members

Well..it is official. If anyone had any doubts about our committment to those skinny dogs...they will be dispelled at this point. The surprise i have been alluding too is here. Kristen and I got greyhound tattoos this weekend! We had just gotten them the day before these pictures were taken, so they were still a little red.

Kristen used an image VAGA sells on a T-shirt. It turned out really well!

I went with a running image, but found one that didn't resemble a greyhound bus. I can't wait for it to heal up and for the weather to get warmer! Kristen also got an apple tattoo in memory of her mom.

It was a lot of fun! I am a weinie and got a little light headed during the process, but I made it through and am very happy with it! Other than that excitement, everyone hung around to watch the big game on Sunday. So that meant a lot of dogs hung around too! Kristen and Gyeong have a foster, Chatham Blue..who is the black male you see in this picture (check out Gyeong's blog for more pictures of him). He gets to go to his forever home in a few weeks. We made a bunch of chili and hung out with a few friends.
Of course all the dogs got to run and play. Even though it was freaking freezing! They still had fun. Even the princess Stella got in on the fun..notice her brother, Lucas, is standing guard in case anyone tries to take the stuffie.

And I still have Hank but he is now known as Zeke and will go to his forever home on Feb. 17th. We all hope it works out. He is a good boy but a handful. We are on the 2nd large bottle of Nature's Miracle since fostering him. ;-) And I got my new laptop and I am loving it! Much faster and lighter than my last one. So next weekend we are travelling to my parents' house to set them up with wireless internet and get them set on my old laptop.

Stay warm!