august review & a new family member

august recap:
there was not so much going on in august other than eating a lot of ice cream and not really wanting to run (but i did run since i wanted to eat all the ice cream). i volunteered at the finish line of the Rev 3 Maine half ironman which was SO cool (what a great company, anyone wanna get me a job there?) and reached the 1,000 mile/year milestone, which was also pretty cool.

run: 128 miles
bike: 68 miles
races: zero
bowls of ice cream: at least 50. win.

quote of the month: "we were here first."
current song obsession: tied between "it's time" by imagine dragons and "we are never getting back together" by taylor swift (i know, i know... but the beat allows me to run a half mile at 7:45 pace on long runs, so ill take it)

favorite pin of the month: http://pinterest.com/pin/261068109619989675/ seriously, i couldnt stop laughing. and then i started doing it to ironman andy. clearly he loved it (and thinks im slightly crazy).

(which we all know is absolutely true)

september is already off to a fun start... we had a yard sale this past weekend and made a few bucks. i could write a novel about the kinds of people that came and the ridiculousness of it all, and needless to say it was great people watching. (while i was hanging up the signs on nearby telephone poles a man stopped me to ask if we had any firearms to sell. seriously?) by 2 o'clock on saturday i was giving everything away to the little girls that lived up the street (i bet their parents were so excited for them to come home with all our stuff!) we ended up getting rained out on sunday.... we set everything up just before the rain started, covered it all with tarps and went inside to drink coffee. no one even drove by so a little before noon we loaded everything up and took it all to goodwill. goodbye ALL THE JUNK. it feels SO GOOD to get all of those boxes of stuff we never use out of the basement!

lets see, what else happened this weekend...

oh yeah. this:

our family of 3 became a family of 4

 

yes, after 6+ years, we FINALLY got a puppy! and we are fully in love, seriously.

 

the in-laws came down for the weekend to help with the yard sale and MIL mentioned that she had seen a facebook friend of hers post pics of new golden retriever puppies that are ready to find a home. apparently she had told ty about them last week but he didnt tell me (not surprising). so we looked at her page and saw these little guys that were left:

 

can we just have them both?

 

we looked at the pics of the parents (both darker red goldens), and emailed to inquire about age, price, immunizations, etc. weve been doing this process over the past few years and not finding exactly what we would like... but things just seemed to be working out right this time. we received an email back within an hour and the (my) excitement began. we knew it was going to be a lot of work and before bed we discussed many things that we were going to have to take into consideration. we ultimately decided that no time was really going to be perfect but that now was better than never. on saturday we emailed her back saying we would like to come and see the puppies on sunday and made plans to drive up. there were still a few things that we needed to ask about when we got there which would make for a long drive home without a puppy had the information not been in our interest, but when we got there and met the puppy and the mom, everything was just fine. (a couple had come and bought the blonde puppy on saturday, so all that was left was the red).

 

and he came home with us.

 

 

ever since we had wanted to get goldens (yes, we eventually want to have 2...) we thought we were going to name them stella (girl) and diesel (boy). but we thought of a few other names for this one just incase diesel didnt fit him. while we were talking to the owner before we took him home, she told us she had become facebook friends with tys mom because she and her husband had known aaron. her husband had cystic fibrosis and had passed away the year before aaron. she also told us that the puppies were born on july 6th.

 

aarons birthday.

 

not only did we know that this puppy was meant to be for us, we also knew immediately that one of the names we had thought of fit perfectly:

 

DUKE.

 

(and no his middle name is not "krzyzewski" or "battier", although i did try for the latter)

 

despite the first two nights full of crying and whining and a lot of barking, not quite knowing how to contain the puppy very well (we got some baby gates yesterday), and a very upset cat, we have welcomed duke into our home and our hearts. he is very playful and loving, survived his first trip to the vet, inhaled the cat food this am and promptly threw it all back up, and gets the hiccups at least 4 times a day. he sure is a lot of work but he is awesome.

 



being a puppy is tough work

puppy parents of the year

(he learned real quick that those boxes fall down really easily)

im gonna need a few of these to get through the next few weeks i think

um... is this furry thing staying with us for good?

the confrontation

 

 our sleepy little family