Safety First!

Lance had a mandatory safety motorcycle ride today with his unit. They have a short briefing on motorcycle safety and then go out on a ride together. I was allowed to go along as a passenger with Lance. We rode 100 miles to the coast to see USS North Carolina, a decommissioned WWII battleship. A 200 mile round trip motorcycle ride sure does make one sore, especially in the heat and humidity out here. They had a short reenlistment ceremony on deck and then we had a quick hour to see the ship. Lance and I nearly ran through the decks to see as much as possible. Since we've been on a few historic ships we were already familiar with a lot of it. We still had fun but the ship did not have air conditioning, it was very hot!

On the way off the ship we looked down in the water and saw quite a sight. A wild alligator was relaxing in the shallows. I've never seen one in the wild before, now I'm afraid to go swimming. We all stopped for lunch and then headed back. About 20 riders went on the trip. I have to admit cruising down the highway in a group was awesome. Lance has a nice shiny bike, but the seats definitely leave a lot to be desired. My feet started hurting on the way back too. I think a good soaking and massage are in order. Still, it was worth the trip.


Lots of Bikes


Reenlistment ceremony on the deck


Driving the ship


Say hello to my little friend



Lance aiming the big guns, hopefully Buffy isn't standing there when they go off


It's hot!! But motorcycle safety requires long sleeves


Apparently his name is Charlie

Pick a little talk a little.

My social butterfly. Buffy at church with friends.

Oops

No picture to go with this, but I have a few minutes while Lance is at work and thought I'd note how ridiculous I am sometimes. Last night I laid down in bed and set my alarm clock for church. My exact thinking was that we need to leave a half hour before church. I then set my alarm for exactly a half hour before church. Excellent work. This morning I got up and started getting ready as usually. I was sitting eating my breakfast with wet hair when Lance came down and asked what time church started. I looked at the clock and realized church had started 10 minutes ago. Needless to say we were a bit late.

And speaking of last night, we had wanted to go out to see a movie but I still wasn't feeling well. We went to the grocery store for some milk and Lance ended up throwing a few extra things into the cart. Back at home I sat in the yard with the dog for awhile. When I came back in the house Lance had set up candles all over the living room, had a movie ready to play and a tray full of shrimp, cheese and crackers, and apple cider. Fun date night, especially when you're not feeling too well. Just wish we had of bought more apple cider, that was yummy!

My new ride. Boom baby! I found this at the PX. There's something wrong... no helmet.

Ups and Downs

Well this week certainly has been interesting. I still haven't been feeling the best and Lance spent some very long hours at work recovering from their field exercise. Roxy had a great time laying down in all of Lance's camping equipment. I think she likes Lance. A rather significant event happened this week. Our baby birds grew up and flew away. We ended up having four baby birds. They hatched right after Lance left and flew away just a couple days after he came back. I'm glad he got to see them before they all moved on. I took a picture of the last little bird in the nest before they were all gone.

Last night was both great and tragic. Lance and I finally had a chance to go to our church's Raleigh Temple. We had a nice drive up and enjoyed the service. Afterwards we stopped to get some Mexican food for Lance and Italian custard for me. A great date night.

Unfortunately on the way home we hit a dog with our car. We were coming home late at night and we hit a small black pug, completely did not see him. We pulled over and freaked out for a minute before deciding to go back and see if he was dead (which I was sure he was) we could at least check for tags to alert the owner. Lance ordered me to keep my eyes close and got out to check the dog for tags. The dog was still alive (he went under the middle of our car) but had on no tags. We found an emergency vet in the area and took the little pup there. The vet rushed the dog into the back to stabilize him and then informed us that he had some older injuries from neglect. Since he wasn't our dog but we brought him in I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into financially. Luckily we had the option to turn the dog over to animal control and they would assume responsibility for him. We waited for an hour before they came and we could give them our info. I have no idea if the little dog survived but I'm very glad we went back to check on him. At least he didn't have to stay in the road for very long.

Not really how we wanted to spend our weekend. Now we're both tired and have an energetic pup at our feet. Our trainer should be here soon, it will be the first time Lance has worked with her since we started training while he was gone. Maybe next weekend we'll get to do something more fun and exciting like going to a lake or the beach.

It's finished!

Lance is awesome and finished the fence today. Roxy is loving it!

Happy Father's Day!

A very Happy Father's Day to our wonderful dads! We don't have children yet, but Lance has been amazing at supporting our little furry family. I didn't want him to feel left out so Kayley and Roxy helped me put together a card and some gifts for him. Kayley gave him some Swedish Fish, Roxy gave him some candy Nips and I gave him some chocolate kisses.

Of course to really start the day off right we went to the emergency room at the hospital in the middle of the night. I had some severe abdominal pain and thought it would probably be best to make sure nothing crazy was going on. They found an infection which could be causing the pain and prescribed some meds accordingly. I still hurt but now it's manageable and will hopefully be gone soon. Lance is planning on finishing the fence today which will be a big help since dog walking for me is out for the immediate future.

Here's our Father's Day card from the pets:

Fenced in

Lance got back last night, yay! I let him sleep in then it was back to work. Super hot day but Roxy is driving us crazy inside, she needs a yard!

River Walk'n

Today I decided Roxy needed to get some real exercise. She gets very loud when she doesn't get her energy out. After work I took her down to the river walk for a while. Luckily it was only around 90 today, which felt refreshingly cool after the last few hot weeks. Roxy did ok with the Gentle Leader (her head halter) but she starts her leash training with our dog trainer tomorrow. When we adopted her she only weighed 19 lbs. Yesterday the vet weighed her at 34 lbs, she's getting big!

Bug Attack

The bugs out here are ridiculous. Got a huge bite on my face while I'm at the park with Roxy. Can't wait to get home and put cream on it. I even wore pants and extra bug repellent since the bugs keep chewing on me.

Radio Tower

This is a taste of what i do.

The Babies are Here!

I decided to check on our bird family in the hanging plant and was excited to see that the eggs have hatched. Before hatching we counted 6 eggs. The baby birds are so fluffy and I didn't want to disturb them for long so we don't have a count on how many have hatched. Kayley usually does not go outside in the front, but she sure wanted to check out the basket I was holding. We'll have to keep these cute little guys safe.

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Monday, Monday (dah dah, dah, dah dah dah)

Well Lance is gone for a bit, just me and the puppy. We spent almost 2 hours at the park (our self proclaimed dog park) this morning trying to get all that puppy energy out. The last week we've bumped into a very nice lady and her dog who actually come in the park and play with us. most of the other residents tend to walk their dogs around and never come in to play. Her dog is smaller than Roxy already, but they still have fun. Roxy hasn't finished all her rounds of shots so we're avoiding the real dog parks until she's better protected from diseases. I can't wait until we can go to the city park. We've gone by there before and there's always plenty of dogs playing. Roxy sure does love playing with other dogs. She's also doing well with her leash training. Yesterday we went on a five minute walk with almost no pulling on the leash, which is a big step for Roxy.

I've been up since 4am, which is ridiculous, so I'm thinking a nap would be good about now. With a nice quiet house maybe I'll be able to get some organizing done and take a car full of stuff to the thrift store. Decorating would be fun too, I'd love to have some curtains and maybe a picture or two up on the wall. Our downstairs walls are still all bare. Now I just need a quick rest before I dive into the cleaning.

Clean up on aisle four

we just spent time and some money replacing our laundry room door so we could put a cat door in. The idea was to let the cat in to her box and food and keep the puppy out. well apparently we were gone a little too long on saturday and puppy used some cirque du soleil moves to get into the laundry room and the recycle. We caught her too late for any meaningful discipline and luckily she didn't destroy anything important. Yesterday we used some landscape fencing to make the cat door opening smaller. That should keep her out.

We signed up for this

We've taken over the neighborhood run down baseball field and turned it into a dog park. Thanks to Roxy's energy we're here both in the morning and evening. A guy was out marking underground pipes in our yard this morning. I'm hoping that means we can put up a fence soon. Then maybe we'll only have come out here once a day, which in this heat would be a blessing.