FIVE!

It's happened. I am the mother of a five year old.

It's crazy that Charlie is now five years old. I'm pretty sure that he was just 5.5 pounds a year or so ago.

This morning to celebrate we attempted a photo shoot. As you can see from the photo below, Charlie was not very on board with that and opted to start shredding the newspaper instead.

We attempted again during my lunch break after a long birthday walk.

Things went much better.

Until Charlie discovered that my "5" was made up of chewable cardboard.

The shoot quickly derailed.

 

 

Happy 5th Birthday Charlie! We are the luckiest people in the world to have such a wonderful pup.

Even the Mailman loves Charlie

Did you know that our mailbox is a basket?

I love it. But mostly, I love when I get fun things like notes, cards and invites in it. While the Red Plum circular that we got the other day didn't make me very happy, the treat that came with it certainly made Charlie smile :)

He makes friends everywhere he goes!

A Message from Charlie

If You Plan on Running a Half Marathon...

...it's good to have a team of supporters cheering you on. Charlie couldn't come to the race, but he did leave me the following note on our fridge.

He's so thoughtful :)

A Typical Dog Park Excursion

Charlie loves the dog park. If I happen to say d-o-g-p-a-r-k out loud, he will literally pace back and forth in front of me until we get into the car.

Normally, we find a ball and throw it around and loop around the park for a bit. And then it happens... we come to the area of the park where the stream is and I say, no water this time Charlie.

This is always what happens anyway :)

I was on such a roll!

I can't believe I haven't posted on here since January 24th! I was doing so well for the year up until then, but now I am back! Whenever I stop blogging for a while I always find that I miss it. It helps me to keep tabs on what is going on in my life and it's even more fun to look back on older posts to see how things have changed.

Plus, what else am I supposed to do with the bajillion photos that I take each year? :)

I'm blaming this hiatus on my new running hobby. Or more specifically, my 1/2 marathon training plan that kicked off at the end of January. I'm pretty new to this whole running thing, so it was a huge awakening to see all of the hard work that it actually takes to get into running shape.

Besides my training, I got promoted at work, went to Breck, ran a 5K with Dan, joined a running club, went on Spring Break to San Diego with D, and generally just started to get way more into health and fitness. Also Dan started doing yoga and loves it now! It is pretty much one of my favorite things to do with him at the moment.

It has been a busy two months, but I hope to start posting more regularly now that I am a bit more used to this whole health and fitness no matter what else is going on mentality :)

Four!

It's hard to believe that this little guy went from 5 weeks old...

...to four years old in what feels like such a short span of time!

We are so thankful for our pup. Happy Birthday Charlie!

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

We're back from spending Christmas in New York and slowly getting back into the swing of things. We're happy to have this guy back with us every day!

We brought with us a gift for Charlie from Grandma and Grandpa, which he has has been thoroughly enjoying.

I actually woke up to him squeaking it this morning. We had such a great time in New York and I miss spending time with my family already.

Walking the Talk

If you know anything about my working life, you most likely know that a good portion of my time is spent working on the advertising needs of a large utility client (said client will not be named in an effort to avoid Google alerting many of the people I work with on a regular basis). Regardless, a lot of our messaging revolves around the efficiency products and programs that this utility offers to their customers and the benefits that people can reap by investing in efficiency efforts. 

If you know anything about my personal life, which you do if you are reading this blog, you know that I live in a 106 year old home, with it's original octopus arm gravity-fed furnace, original (and completely beautiful) wooden windows, old appliances and many other idiosyncrasies that make this house one of the least energy efficient homes around.Suffice it to say our utility bills each winter can be astronomical.

So, when the opportunity presented itself, I decided to take advantage of a 2010 tax credit for adding insulation to your home and had blown in insulation added to the eaves in my house early this week!

Charlie was very involved in this process, so it's a very good thing that the guys who were doing it liked dogs. Here he is on the sidewalk outside my house right next to their truck. He took an opportunity when I wasn't watching to go through the open gate and help out.

So after a little bit of work to get the process started on our end, we are now looking at glowing R-values in our attic crawl spaces. Our actual attic is another story though. We need to have some old wiring removed before we can have insulation added there. However, in the short term I am giving myself a big pat on the back for actually doing something that I tell others to do every day! I think my own local utility will thank me, and hopefully in the long term my wallet will too.

It's a Bird... It's a Plane...

It's SUPER CHARLIE!

I woke up on Halloween and decided that Charlie needed a costume. So I spent the better part of the day making him a cape.

And a mask... which didn't work out very well.

His special power was extreme guarding, which he proudly displayed by looking out the front window for the better part of the night and appearing ferocious to all neighborhood children.

His friend Jake stopped by dressed as a bumble bee. This was of course the best photo I could get of the two of them.

I dressed up as an 80s Prom Queen for passing out candy, which was a big hit with the tweens that came to the door.

It was a much nicer look than the Zombie Audrey Hepburn get up I had to wear at work on Friday.

Yes, that's a mimosa in my hand. And yes, it was 10 in the morning. You'd drink too if you had to act like a zombie in front of your clients and colleagues :)

Because I can't help myself...

Found this site... Love of Goldens ...which pretty much puts my gratuitous photos of Charlie on this blog to shame. If you need puppy time I suggest just heading over there. It makes me want another one...

And of course I can't send you to a site all about goldens without featuring my own...

Summer Fun!

July was a really busy month for us. We had two weddings to attend and spent a few weeks in Michigan with family and friends. It was so much fun being back in the mitten. We are really lucky to have such a great network of people out there to hang out with. Since we drove out there, Charlie was able to tag along with us on all of our adventures. I'm pretty sure he had a better vacation then we did. Here he is at Dan's parents' lake house loving life by the water:

We had a great time too and can't wait to go back next year :)

Instant Puppy Tears Come from This Place....

 ... The DOG RUN! Yes, beneath all of this shrubbery is an actual dog run. It sits at the side of our house and really does not get much use because a) it looked like the above photo, and b) Charlie hates being locked in it. He starts crying and barking immediately and pretty much bothers the entire neighborhood. What can I say, he is a party animal and needs to be a part of the action. Here he is in the action while I tried to photograph the space...

Anyway, we finally decided to spend some time and take care of issue a, which resulted in a dog run that looks like this....

 I know It looks so much better! Charlie still wants nothing to do with it unless someone is in there with him, but with a house as old as ours, just crossing a project or two off of our list is good enough for me. I'd like to put some sort of ground covering down around this so we don't have a ton of weeds popping up, so I'm on the look out for something pet-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. Let me know if you have any suggestions.