FALL IN LOVE WITH MORE FREE TEMPLATES! CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR OWN SMITTEN BLOG DESIGN... »

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

A Snowy Graduation

I know I'm a little late on the post (and a couple more posts are coming on Christmas) but graduation was wonderful! It was boring (of course--what graduation isnt?) but exciting.


I cheated, and actually sat with a different major so that I could sit with my friend Jocelyn. I was paranoid that I would mess everything up, but there were no questions asked!

Joc and I walking up to the stage!


My parents came, and we went out to a great lunch after the ceremony.



My brother also came. It started snowing hard during lunch, but luckily we were able to snap a few pictures before getting on the road.


I don't think any of us realized how fast the snow was coming down. My parents headed home and were stuck in traffic watching cars slide off the road into the ditches. Luckily they were fine, but got stuck in Salem--basically the middle of nowhere. I called around to 7 hotels just to find one that wasn't booked...they ended up with a ''luxury'' suite (with a pink jacuzzi and all, haha!)


They stayed one night in Salem and then slowly headed home.



Needless to say, the dogs loved the snow. And it provided the perfect backdrop...if only it didn't make travel (and moving out) so difficult!! Close enough to a white Christmas for me!



So Sully and I are officially back in Richmond (until a job opportunity comes along) and both miss S and T. An upcoming visit it certainly in the works!




Monday, December 21, 2009

Blizzard '09

Well, it's Christmas break for Emily K. and I so the boys are currently separated. I'm a jerk and keep teasing Tucker with "where's sussie?!!". He gets all excited, looks around, then stares at me as if he wants to say "i hate you". He probably does but I think it's funny.

We were able to suprise my family and come home a day early. My mom was in tears - the good kind (I hope.) Tucker was as excited as ever to see Kellie. Kellie's our family golden who is 8 and thought she didn't like dogs until Tucker came along. As soon as he shows up she's a puppy again. We've had a few WWE wrestling matches in the living room since we've been home. Kel always seems to get the best of him. He loves her too - almost as much as Sully. He follows her around the house ALLLLL day. Rarely lets her get out of sight. It really is sweet, but she probably hates it.










We had a mini roadtrip to Richmond on friday to suprise my grandmother. More water works. Kinda makes you feel wanted. Tuck's decided he's a big dog now and likes to hang out the window. We had a few close calls with him almost falling out (you were right Emily K!) but were able to grab him. I'm blaming it more on Kristen putting the window down too far than him trying to escape. Not quite as bad as the Marley and Me scene but you get the idea. He got pretty frustrated when we were on the highway that the window wasn't down. He hit his head a good four or five times on the ceiling from trying to shove his head out of the closed window.




After he figured that out he then decided he wanted to ride like a person. Cutest 4-legged person I've ever seen.




Then my mom started getting nervous and I remembered the story Emily K. told me (a family friend was in a bad car accident and her dog was saved because he was in a harness) so we made do with what we had. Tuck didn't like it - suprise suprise.




It was good to be in Richmond - got some Christmas shopping done. I just had to promise to act suprised Christmas morning. We ate lunch at Phil's and I ordered a limeade- mmmMMMMmmm. That's seriously been the highlight of my time home thus far. Boring life.

Saturday night we headed to downtown Fred to watch a live nativity. It was really sweet - most of the children in our church's congregation were in it and they had real barn animals instead of the toddlers who refuse to wear their costumes and run screaming to mom about halfway through. It was outside in the marketsquare behind the church and there was a pretty good turnout. I forgot to bring the camera but it began snowing as soon as they started. It was perfect.

Kristen and I barely made it home in my little Jetta - it is not built for snow. We all went to bed early and woke up to over a foot of snow. Pretty? Yes. Practical for Virginia? Absolutely not. The whole town shut down and we were forced to slave away shoveling snow off of the deck. Awesome. Just the way I envisioned spending my Christmas vacation. Tucker wasn't sure what to make of it at first.




But soon discovered snow was frozen water so he LOVED it. He's hilarious. The pooy boy is practically drowning in the snow but runs full speed ahead and loves to dig his nose way down in it and flip up all the flakes onto his back. His nose has been permenantly white ever since. He also managed to fall down the stairs of the deck while helping. Watching him try to scramble back up to us was one of the funniest things I've ever seen.






It blizzarded (?) up until yesterday morning. I think we had close to two feet total - broke a lot of records around here. It kept the pups busy and gave me cabin fever. I was finally able to get out yesterday afternoon to go to work... but had to get a ride from my parents. It's like I'm 10 again. But if all goes as planned, the snow should stay through Christmas and there's some speculation of another storm coming Christmas Eve. I don't think I've ever had a white Christmas so that would be perfect for Tucker's first. (I act like he's my child waaay too much.)





I've also got a jump start on our doggie things with this little number. Tuck and Sul have a basket in Blacksburg where we keep their toys. Sully's still a little uneasy about it while Tucker will dig all the way to the bottom looking for that one teeny bone he wants. I think it's the cutest thing. So I decided to make my own version and got this. I'm pretty proud since I'm not creative. At all. Thus far, he and Kel both like it. I just hope the bow stays on then front...



Anyway, all is well here and I'm just enjoying my family, dogs, and the snow (when I don't have to shovel it). Hopefully I'll be able to drive sometime tomorrow or Wednesday to get out and see friends. Maybe then I'll have some more exciting things to blog about. But until then - Merry Christmas.


Monday, December 14, 2009

Bad Day in the 'Hood

My first post! Woo! I'll try to be witty but no real promises... writing is not my forte' what so ever. But here it goes:

The dog park. Well, I guess if I'm being honest it's really a field owned by VT that dogs and their owners have begun to take over. We're not really welcome and actually aren't allowed to park in the usual parking lot starting tomorrow.... but that's not going to stop anybody. Anyway, it's frequented by older townies and college students, like us. The dogs love it and we don't have to put forth any effort to exercise ourselves... it's really a win win all around. Emily K has been taking Sully since the late summer and now that I have Tucker we've been usuals too. There's a big group of us who tend to go around the same time and the dogs all get along. Sully chases Juno and Nahla, probably the two fastest dogs I've ever met, while Tucker attempts for maaaybe 5 seconds before realizing he's too fat and goes off to go dig in the mud.... he's such a social dog. WELL this past Thursday, all the usual suspects were there plus a few extras - Daisy, Sage, and Sofie. Sage and Sofie are two Newfoundland Lab mixes owned by a mother and daughter while Daisy is some sort of shelty mix who is owned by the mother's neighbor. The three come together and tend to just walk around the park on leashes because they have a history of being aggressive when they get together (caught on to where I'm going with this one yet?)

Sully and the gang were running through the corn while Tucker observed on the side, most likely daydreaming about either treats or eating some toilet paper. Emily and I were saying goodbye to two boys who had brought their dogs; one who is there everyday with us and the other we have only seen maybe once. It was getting cold so we were thinking of leaving too.....and then we hear screaming. We turn and Daisy, Sage, and Sofie are all circling Tucker on the ground while he is crying like I've never heard him cry before. We run over and the dogs begin nipping at him. All I can think about is getting him out without getting hurt - this has happened before with the same three dogs and we had talked about how you're not supposed to get into the middle of it because you can easily get bitten too. The three dog's owners rush over too just in time for two of the dogs to pick up Tucker by his ear and neck and start shaking him violently. Not to sound dramatic, but I really thought my dog was dead at this point. He's 20some pounds of fluff being thrown by 3, much larger, agressive dogs and I'm standing helpless watching it all unfold. All Emily and I could do was scream and scream loud. Out of nowhere the two boys who were leaving showed up to tear the dogs off of Tucker. It took a few moments but finally he was out and just ran away yelping. I picked him up and he would not stop this blood wrenching scream. I've never heard anything like it before.

So there I am, holding him, shaking, and not quite sure what to do. I began examining him, looking for blood, praying that I don't find any. His whole head and ear are soaked but I couldn't find anything (Thank God.) One of the three dog's owners came over just to say "Oh he's fine, he's just scared." Really, lady? My puppy almost died... DIED because your dogs picked on him. Call me dramatic all you want, but everyone seemed to be in consensus that it was a miracle he was ok. Emily and I ran out of there as fast as we could and met up with the two boys who had helped. In tears, I thanked them the best that I could. Seriously, Tuck probably wouldn't have made it without them. One of the two even was bit - Emily noticed that his finger was bleeding but he claimed it was dry skin. I hope I see him again to fall over myself thanking him.

Luckily, our neighbor is a vet in a surrounding town (seriously, how lucky? not only is he a really nice guy but a vet!). Since it happened after Tucker's usual vet was closed I decided to call our neighbor to bring him in. We drove for probably 30 minutes, which felt like hours to me, to get to his clinic maybe two minutes before they were scheduled to close. Tucker got a thorough check through and they found two puncture wounds - one on his ear and a deep one on his neck. Dr. Neighbor said he'd need stiches, so out came the clippers to shave his fur along with the wiggles from Tucker. I've never seen him want to get away from something so badly as I did that day. The poor, tiny nurse had to practically lay on him to shave the fur down. Once that ordeal was over Dr. N put some glue stitches - Tuck is so clumsy with his whole vision, I don't even want to see him try and maneuver around with a cone on his head. I felt terrible that we made Dr. N, the nurse, and secretary ALL stay late for our ordeal and to top it all off they gave me a discount on the visit --- they have got to be the nicest people ever. I paid, thanked them, and we headed back home.


Don't let it fool you... he squirrmed like NO other as soon as he heard the clipper noise

Neck bite :(


Sully was the cutest big brother ever. When the big dogs had Tucker, Emily K had to hold him back from getting in to try to save him. When Tucker was screaming in my arms, Sully was mimicking the exact same cry (so weird!) and then licked all over his wounds we were in the car. On the way back from the vet he sat vigil next to Tuck while he slept. Best dog ever.

Patiently awaiting Tucker to get cleaned up so he can sniff him


Nurse Sully



So thankfully, we're all still in one piece. I called the police to ask them what all I could do about this. Tucker's incident was the fourth is four months that we know about - who knows how many other there are with the same three dogs. All I can really do they said was to call the police if the dogs are let off the leash again and they'll take it from there. And what am I going to do if I see them again? I have no idea - I'd like to think that I'd go up to them and give them a peice of my mind... how do you not apologize for something like that! I didn't get a "sorry" or "let me help" or "is there anything I can do?". Nothing. I'd like to practice in my head some great speech I'll give them, but in all honestly I'll probably grab Tucker and spring out of there while calling the cops. I'm a baby - it's ok, I can admit it. But the great thing is that Tucker doesn't even seem phased by it! You can touch his bite marks all you want and he doesn't flinch... not even once. And we went back to the dog park today and he was just as excited as ever to be there. I'm just so thankful for the boys being there to break it up and that he's ok. Things have been just a crazy around here. But to end on a good note, I'll put some pictures of the boys just being themselves (we're just a little bit obsessed, no big deal.)
















Well, I guess that's really all I've got for now. I'll try not to post such a dramatic post next time... but other than that and finals, that's all that's really been going on in my life right now. But only one more final and three days stand between me and Christmas break! It's soooo close I can taste it!


Sunday, December 13, 2009

S is for Slacker

So the truth is that Emily S. (the S stands for slacker) is up to do the next post, but since she clearly is taking her sweet time I thought I'd fill in the blank. ((Okay, okay, I guess she deserves the break...we are in the middle of finals after all)) But she will be doing the next post (I promise) so stay tuned because it's scary...and sad, and you won't want to miss it.

So my post is going to focus on me. How lovely. I picked up my cap and gown on Friday...wow, is it ugly! I cannot believe I just spent over $50 on it. I told Emily S. I'm going to wear it from now until graduation (this Friday). I'll wear it to Starbucks...shopping...to the dog park...out to dinner...fabulousness. Just so that I can let everyone know that--HELLO!!! I'M GRADUATING!!!! Well that idea went out the window after about 15 minutes when my head started itching. Ew. So I'm truly looking forward to wearing it for 3 hours on Friday. I may have an allergic reaction, I'll keep you updated.

So apparently I am in complete denial that I am actually graduating. Not a good thing. Because that means
no job
no outfit (for graduation)
no plans for moving out of my apartment
no graduation party (that's a post in and of itself)
lots of anxiety

This transition is not so pretty. And the lovely weather isn't helping.
***www.weheartit.com***


I know that everything will work out. But for 5 blissful days, I'm just going to pretend that I'm not graduating.



Tuesday, December 8, 2009

A Second Introduction

The Emily's


I guess a second round of introductions is needed--'the owners'. We are both named Emily (K. & S.), and are both students at Virginia Tech.

Emily K.



I am graduating this December (eek!) and have yet to figure out what the next step is...
.am double majoring in Business Management and Psychology.
.am from Richmond, Virginia.
.have an obsession with jeans.
.would love to live abroad.
and
.love working with children.


Emily S.




She is a junior at Tech
.is majoring in Biology with a minor in Psychology.
.thinking of becoming a Physicians Assistant.
and
.is from Fredericksburg, Virginia.
.loves sushi.
.is barely 5 feet tall.
.would love to live in Charleston, SC.



Tucker & Sully

The Introduction



Tucker and Sully...two brothers from different mothers.


Sully




I adopted Sully on February 2nd, 2009 from Mercy Fund Animal Rescue, a small foster program in Marion, North Carolina. I knew he was a Tibetan Terrier/Cockapoo mix, but had no idea what to expect.

Sully is now a year old, and is a sweet, loving, mess of a dog. His hair is as uncontrollable as his spirit. He is terrified of strangers, but snuggly at home.


Tucker




Tucker is just the opposite--they balance each other out. Emily found Tucker, a Golden Retriever, at a breeder near Harrisonburg, VA. She brought him home November 7, 2009.


The hefty boy fears nothing, and gets into everything. He loves all people. He is incredibly easy going and is the fastest toy squeaker I know!
The two boys were meant to be together. Tucker is the laid back one, Sully is the watch dog.

They have inspired us to create a unique line of pet accessories:



Tucker & Sully. Stylish Pets. Sensible Prices.


They are best friends...and here are their stories.