We love our kitties too

I feel like over the past few months all I have done is post pictures of the puppies we have been sitting. I don't want people to think we are dog crazy people or that we have forgot about our two kitties.  Bailey, our older kitty with breast cancer, had a "bad" day yesterday and was in a real funk. Despite giving her medicine for her pain, she was still really grumpy and she hasn't been eating well lately. For Bailey this is a huge change because she is a real fatso and a pig. Alex keeps telling me that it is going to be her time to go soon but I just don't want to believe it. She is the sweetest thing ever and seeing her run to the door to greet me when I come home from work at night always make me smile (even if it is only because she knows she gets feed when I come home.)

The cancer center at CSU said she would likely live about 3-6 months after her mastectomy, since there was evidence that the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes.  So I guess I should feel lucky that she is still with us a year and a half later. But I sure will miss her when it is her time to move on to whatever is next. I'm not sure her daughter Bree will know what to do without her around.

With the puppies out of the house for the first time in weeks, the kitties have gone back to sleeping on the bed with us at night. Both Alex and I have realized how much less sleep we get when they hog the entire bottom of the bed. We are constantly trying not to kick them when we roll over in our sleep. I think maybe we just need to get some backbones and kick them off the bed.

Bailey sits here in the mornings while I do my hair and put on my makeup - waiting anxiously for me to go down stairs and feed her.

Bree's favorite way of looking at the world.

slow week

We are taking a break from puppy sitting this week, so there isn't too much to post on the blog this week. I have been working a lot and Alex has been studying a lot. We did get some possibly good news this week. Alex got offered a position with an engineer at CSU. He wants Alex to design some computer chips for him and in return he will pay Alex's tuition for his masters in Biomedical Engineering. They don't have any stipend money but money for tuition is better than nothing.

On a different note, it has been so warm out here lately (high 60's) that Alex and I bought some flowers to brighten up the house. They are just so pretty I had to share a picture.

The down side of puppies.....

This past weekend Alex and I learned about the down side of having so many puppies in and out of the house all the time. After having so many "accidents" on our living room floor we decided that we needed to clean our carpets. Well, in an attempt to save money we decided to do it ourselves. UGH! We rented a rug doctor and Alex vacuumed while I boiled water for the next run. It took us all day but boy do our carpets look and smell better. We had dusty this past weekend too and of course she and the kitties had to help so it was a fun family affair.

Best Buddies

Leo and Gardner have become the best of buds this week. They won't leave each others side and they even snuggle up together when they sleep. Its so adorable. Leo goes home tomorrow and we are really going to miss the sweet boy.

These aren't the best pictures but it is the best I could get without waking them up. And you know what they say, Let sleeping god lie.

Leo was very interested in Alex's valentine chocolate.

Rose Buds

So ..... No pictures for today's posting, trust me, you wouldn't want to see them. The puppies were playing outside today when Alex realized that they were eating the wild rose hips on our rose bushes. Well....you wouldn't think this would be a horrible thing, but as it turns out, wild rose hips cause EXTREME diarrhea in dogs. Did you know that? We sure didn't. Alex spent his afternoon cleaning up doggie doo doo and keeping the puppies hydrated. He learned that puppies can shoot diarrhea as far as a foot and a half away from their backsides. I think we are seeing a wet-dry vac and a serious carpet cleaning in our future. We love our puppies, they bring us so many things to laugh about.

Teddy Bear

In the world of Guide Dog Puppies there are only certain toys that are allow. For example, Kongs and tug toys are allowed, but large stuffed animals are not approved toys. Leo the Non-GDB puppy we have right now sleeps with a big fuzzy stuff bear and tonight Gardner came running into the living room after having stolen Leo's bear away from him. We had to take it away from him of course, but I couldn't help snapping this picture first. He just looked so cute.

Two Puppies = Twice the joy?

Alex and I are either crazy or we just love having puppies around. This week we have the great pleasure of having two puppies in the house. Garnder is with us again for a week or so. We love him so much! It is really going to be hard to see him go back for training. The other puppy is an adorable golden retriever  that is 5 months old and belongs to a work colleague of mine who went on vacation. Leo, is so incredibly sweet and calm and he and Gardner are having so much fun playing together.

As we got ready to go to sleep last night, the puppies were all snuggled up together on their fuzzy blanket. I was trying to get a picture of how cute they looked all snuggled up and sleeping when in walked two very brave kitties. The puppies must have Kittie ESP because they both woke up an started staring.

Here are a few clips of the puppies running around the house. Hope you enjoy them.

Alex and I did a brave thing tonight. We gave both puppies a bath at the same time. Having learned a valuable tip from other puppy raisers, we put on our swimsuits (so certain human body parts would not get licked or sniffed) and we put both puppies in the shower and scrubbed them up. We learned a couple of things:
1) The fur from two puppies getting a bath simultaneously will quickly clog the shower drain.
2) Two people in a shower washing two puppies are bound to bump their heads together, multiple times.
3) Wet marble floors are very slippery especially for wet dogs trying to shake.
4) Wet puppies that are so excited they have to tinkle in the house get really cold when they are made to go outside to pee instead.

A three day getaway

I was off on Friday, so Alex and I decided to sneak away for a three day ski weekend. The only problem was that we had Gabrina for the Weekend. So we decided to take her with us. We arrived in Dillon around 3pm on Friday and headed out to Keystone for some late afternoon and nighttime skiing. We left Gabrina in her Crate in the hotel room as seen below. However after about 2 1/2 hours on the slops we got a call form the hotel asking us to come back to our room and control our puppy as they had had complaints of her barking. So. . . we rushed back and indeed, Gabrina was expressing her displeasure with being left in the room.

So on Saturday we decided that Gabrina needed to go with us to Vail for the day. We took turns being with her and skiing. She went to Old Chicago with us tonight and slept like a baby under the table the whole time. Below is a video I took on my old digital cameras. I was just goofing around and trying to see if this function worked and I thought it was kind of cute.

Alex and I had a great time at Vail today. We spent almost the whole day on the black runs and boy were we exhausted by the end of the day. I took a couple of really bad falls but thank goodness I didn't hurt anything serious. My pride was hurt a bit but that and the bruises will heal with time. I was goofing around with my old camera and took a couple of video clips of Alex skiing. They are not that great but you might enjoy looking at them anyways.

The First one is Alex going really slow acting like and airplane on a nice easy Green Run. I quickly found that it is really difficult to record him skiing and ski behind him myself. But If the motion doesn't make you too sick it is kind of fun to watch.

The following video is taken with me standing at the bottom of a very steep black part of a run. It doesn't look that steep in the video but it is. I didn't realize that the camera did sound so that is why I didn't say anything.

Where is Mystery?

Last night I was getting ready for bed and Mystery was hanging out in the bathroom with me while I was washing my face. When I finished drying off my face I couldn't find Mystery. I asked Alex if she was with him and no Mystery. Long story short I eventually found her in Alex's closet. One thing you have to know about Alex's closet is that he doesn't believe in hangers, drawers or shelves. He believes clothes are best organized by large piles on the floor. When I walked in his closet this is what I saw. Can you find Mystery in the picture below?

Yep...That black spot in the middle is the top of Mystery's head. She had climbed into the pile of Alex's clothes and gone to sleep.

When I called her name this is the look I got.

She then ignored me and went back to sleep. She is just too cute!!!

The simple joys in life.

Some people say that having children reminds us of the simple joys in life. Kids say what they think and do things often without thinking if they should. We don't have kids to remind us of this but we have PUPPIES........ I was on my way out the door this morning when Mystery (our current 5 month old black lab) reminded me of the joy of stairs. We were walking down the stairs and she was right next to me when all of a sudden she intentionally threw out her front legs and her back legs and went skidding down the stairs on her stomach. She went flying off the bottom step, skidded across the tile and then jumped up wagged her tail and ran in the living room to get a toy. She was so full of joy. I had woken up with a horrible migraine for the third day in a row and yet as cruddy as I felt I laughed from the bottom of my gut and went off to work with a huge smile on my face. We should all remember to slide down he stairs on our tummies more.

So sweet.

Two of my nurses at work have birthday's on Friday. They asked me if I would make them brownies and/or a cake so I decided to make both together. I baked two round pans of brownies and then put them together with fudge icing and iced them like a cake. We will see how it tastes.

Another Beautiful Day at Vail!

Vail has gotten over 30 inches of snow in the past week. We just had to get up early and take advantage of all that fresh snow. We have been so busy that we haven't gone skiing in a few weeks. And again we had fantastic weather. It's not always so clear and sunny in the high country. We've just gotten really lucky that every time we go it's clear as a bell. It was cold today but the sun made it warm a bit.

Alex fell on a black run, you should have seen the snow he kicked up in his tumble....very impressive. And he fell so hard that he broke the brake on his ski and had to go all the way down the rest of the mountain on one ski, which is a very long way at Vail. The funny part was that with the break broken, the ski took off by itself down the mountain and I went chasing after it. It was quit the scene I am sure. It bounced off a few people and eventually came to rest about 500 yards after its start. The good new is that we were able to patch his ski to make it usable for the rest of the day and miraculously Alex wasn't hurt.

Below is shot of each of us about to head back down the same black Alex fell on. We had a great day and came home to very happy kitties unaware that a puppy was about to arrive for another week at the Kaplun family lodge and spa.