Doggy Play Date!

 

Meet Beau, my 3 year old Weimaraner!  My sister and my parents dog Trixie also joined us yesterday for Beau's first trip to a dog park.  He's done the doggy daycare thing and whatnot, but I was prepared for this to be an experience.  And by experience I meant for my sister and all the other spectators, as I expected to be running around screaming at him.  Unfortunately he doesn't get off his leash much when we're outside because we lack a fence for our backyard and Beau tends to get distracted by his nose and stops listening.  So I was envisioning an escapade where I got more of a workout than the dogs did.  We had also planned on getting the dogs in the water for their first time.  I was ready for the worst!

Being a Weim, I wasn't sure how he'd react to the water.  He does pretty good in the shower, and he's supposed to be a decent water dog, but at the same time we also use a spray bottle full of water to punish him and he's terrified of it.  We also have to yell at him to stop drinking because he'll chug it and then puke.  So the picture in my head was of him drowning while trying to drink the lake up.

The adventure took place at Raccoon River Park yesterday.  We decided to get the water fun out of the way first and found a tiny little beach area and interrupted some gentlemen fishing nearby (whoops).  Both dogs approached it curious, but my sister and I ended up having to shove both of them in.  Luckily Trixie is a little dog, so we put her in a life jacket and pretty much threw her in.  She swam!  Swam... back to the beach.  Immediately.  She was pissed and didn't want to be wet.  Beau would only go in as far as I would.  So I rolled up my pants and went in to about my knees, which took Beau up to about his chest.  He didn't like it either and kept leaning on me and stepping on me.  I almost lost my sandals a couple times, but at least he didn't knock me over.  We tried to play with some toys in the water, but my smart dog just pawed at them and pushed them under water.  He wouldn't even grab a tennis ball because he didn't want to get his face wet!  And when he did move he would stomp really awkward and splash all over the place.  The water wasn't really the kind of water that I even wanted to be in, so I didn't get him to swim :(  Beau and Trixie were both more than excited to get away from the water.

We figured it was smart to do the water thing first so they had time to dry off before getting back in my car.  Again, I was picturing Beau sprinting off like a Gazelle and air drying in 2 seconds.  Wrong.  Beau is not a mean dog.  Anyone that knows him knows that he is such a wuss.  But other people see a 90 lb dog and get nervous, understandably.  Its a dog park... so of course there are dogs off leash.  One runs up to the fence immediately and Beau about rips my arm off to go see it.  I always find myself trying to convince people that hes harmless, but my special boy looks like a rabid wolf because hes drooling so bad and tugging on me because hes so excited (it doesn't help that I'm not really that strong).  When the owner finally took the dog out we went in to find the park completely empty!  I was so excited and immediately took his leash off.  Again... not what I expected at all.  Well, I expected him to not listen to me, which was true.  But he spent the whole time with his nose to the ground!  I even took off running myself to get him to move and he didn't even notice.  Trixie was the same way.  Neither were interested in the toys or us.  So we leashed them up and walked them around the rest of the dog park.  Suprisingly he got tuckered out and slept well for the rest of the night :)  I'd say it was a good first visit!

I Cook AND I Bake. Take That Rachael Ray.

I love Greg.  Thats what my boyfriend told me to write when I said I didn't know how to start my blog.  Well I do love my boyfriend, but thats not what my blog is about.

I'm finally loving summer with the humidity gone and the temperatures a little lower.  Its almost like fall, but with all the summer food you can enjoy.  Our garden is full of so many ripening tomatoes and peppers, I can't wait to start enjoying them.  My coworker was nice enough to share some of her zucchini out of her garden and I've been experimenting with them a little bit.  So for our dinner tonight we had a pretty amazing meal.  Not the prettiest on a plate, but soooo tasty.  Thanks to my boyfriend we had homemade breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches and some delicious peaches and cream sweet corn, and I prepared some baked zucchini fries.

 

Now you think that we'd have no more room left after all this food, but if you knew how delicious the cupcakes were that I made you would understand how you could make room.  I had made some yummy red velvet cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting for my co-workers last day and I saved a few for Greg and I to enjoy :)  If I could I would make enough for all of you to enjoy, so I'm insisting that you try this recipe.  They're so easy!  You won't regret it!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

1 package red velvet cake mix (2 layer size)

1 package jello chocolate instant pudding (3.9 oz size)

1 package cream cheese, softened (8 oz size)

1/2 cup  butter or margarine, softened

4 cups powdered sugar 

1 cup thawed cool whip

 

-Prepare cake batter and bake as directed on package for 24 cupcakes, blending dry pudding mix into batter before spooning into muffin cups.  Cool.

 -Beat cream cheese and butter with mixer until well blended.  Gradually beat in powdered sugar.  Whisk in cool whip.

-Spoon frosting into large plastic storage bag and seal.  Cut off a small corner of the bottom of the bag and use to pipe onto cupcakes.  Keep refrigerated!

Lets Go For A Ride :)

I know its strange to write my first blog about a bike, but there's a lot going on and this is the most recent thing to happen since I created this blog.

I grew up on a farm, so my love for the outdoors has always been there.  Then after living with my boyfriend in Colorado for two years I got an even greater appreciation for being active.  He always had an interest in bikes and learned a lot about how they work.  So for my birthday one year he put together a vintage beach cruiser for me and painted it seafoam green to my request :)

Moving back to Iowa admittedly sucked a little bit.  A lack of green belt paths to bike on, and less people with an appreciation for being outdoors (being in a car doesn't count people!) made it a little less exciting to get out on my bike.  But I went to an estate sale about a month ago and found an old 1970's Schwinn in an awesome yellow color... bell and all!  I bought it for 40 bucks and brought it back to have my boyfriend fix up the breaks and clean the whole thing.

We took it out for the first time yesterday and the good news is I didn't hit any cars or do anything embarrassing (that anyone would notice).  You should probably know that I've never ridden a bike with hand brakes, nor have I ever had to shift a moving object before.  I get really nervous on a bike anyways... so I should have taken a shot of tequila before I got on this thing.  My boyfriends advice when I asked him about shifting and how and when to do it.... too complicated to type.  So then I got the response "oh, you'll figure it out".  I'm still figuring it out.  I was more worried about braking when there was a mini-van plowing down the street.  Almost rolled off into a ditch, but I got it under control... no worries :)  I think I might want to go back to my other bike already.  Now if the weather would only cool down, I might actually be able to run errands on this thing!