Training Lucille

Lucy has been in our family about a month now I guess.  We love her. She's ours.  So far she is has been a fairly good dog, very smart.  She learned crate training quite easily.  It took about 3 nights of letting her "cry it out" and since then she has done awesome and now we don't have to get up with her at all... she sleeps through the night.  I'm teaching Lucy a few basic commands... she is good at "sit", is learning "stay" and "off". For being so young I think she is doing great on walks.  Cesar Milan has taught me the best way to walk her and she does great... she gets distracted if the kids are going on the walk with me as they always run ahead and therefore she wants to as well... but I think she is learning who is the alpha in this pack!  She also took to her bed very quickly.  Wherever we put her bed, she usually chooses to lay. 

All this being said, there are a few behaviors-- completely learned since being in our family-- that I am hoping to nip in the bud as soon as possible and therefore am exploring different training options.  The biggest problem is nipping.  Naturally, to play, puppies nip each other and when a puppy nips to hard, the other pup yelps and then ignores its playmate.  Well, this is a hard thing to learn in our family.  While I think she is learning how Dan and I will play with her, she doesn't understand as much from the kids.  The kids run around, try pushing her off of them when she nips (she just sees this as physical contact which she assumes is playing), and drop food accidentally all over the place.  Other behaviors we want to fix right away are begging (this just started and no doubt from food droppings), trying to take a chew dirty laundry-gross-, grabbing diapers-super gross-.  Of course, these are all things that puppies and owners go through in the beginning and while I feel like I can teach her to do things, I have no clue how to teach her to stop doing things.

We are in love with this puppy and our children but it is very difficult to be consistent with our commands when the kids are around... she is just so excited to have them play with her and frankly, the kids don't know how to teach her what's right and wrong. 

So, we are looking into training options.  We could do a basic puppy class-- which they've informed me the whole family is encouraged to come and participate... totally laughable!!  Can we say 'nightmare'?.  We could do a private trainer or we could do a sort of boarding school where she can go for two weeks to learn the basics and how to listen in a consistent environment. 

Maybe our situation is not unique but I sort of feel like it is in that we have several young children and a young pup.  So, I'm not exactly sure which training route to go, but I do know that we will be doing something.  We have years with our Lucy and we are committed to having a dog who will listen to us.

Here is Lucy with her two favorite toys... her rope and her bunny.  She seriously loves this bunny and frolics all over the house with it, pouncing on it and jumping all around with it.  The rope is a good tool for when she tries to chew on something... if we just replace her target with the rope, she is happy.  We love our puppy so much and want her life and our lives to be in sync so that we can enjoy one another and know what to expect of one another.  Hopefully we can find the right training for us all!

Uncle Pat is Home!

Uncle Pat is home for the summer!  Yea for us!!!

My children are so happy... pardon the undies...

We've got Green Thumbs!

Inspired by many, I decided that we should grow our own garden this year.  It has been a really fun project and the kids love it almost as much as I have come to love it!  I'm a complete rookie at it, but hopefully we'll get a bit of production from this years' plants.  I was originally concerned with remembering to water the plants each day, but they get quite a bit from our sprinkler system and I have my Ellie reminder... Ellie remembers everything...  Plus, the kids and I venture out every morning and look at all our plants together

to see what changes have taken place each day.  It's been wonderful to be able to show our kids how tending to and working on something can produce something useful.  It's a good lesson about the importance of taking care of something... you know, in addition to that dog we bought! :)

The above picture was taken Easter weekend shortly after we planted.  We planted about half already started plants and about half seeds.  As you can see from the below pictures, they've both done well in just 2/3 
weeks!

We planted quite a few things.  As mentioned before, I am a rookie so I wasn't too sure what spacing I should do with the seeds and plants.  From the bottom of the screen on the left up we have pumpkins, a row of herbs, carrots, broccoli, 2 rows of peas, corn, canteloupe, watermelon, raspberries and grapes.  The second picture from the bottom up are several varieties of tomatoes, peppers, squash, zuchini, eggplants, corn.  So, things will probably get crowded quickly.  Our next phase of gardening work to be done is making another bed along the back fence in our yard where we will transplant some of the larger plants like the pumpkins, watermelons, corn, and probably our ichiban eggplant.

We have lots of our vegetable plants flowering and we've even got some tomatoes growing.

Ever since I went to Daniel's grandparents house and they had several fruit trees in their backyard, I've been dreaming about my own backyard fruit trees.  I've dreamed of my children out harvesting all the fruit from the trees, collecting them in woven baskets.  I've dreamed of the children and I together in the kitchen together working to can all the fruit for our food storage.... all while the angels are singing praises from the heavens... Well, it's a dream, not exactly my reality.  Anyway, the dream was semi-crushed when I realized that we have a huge concrete slab underneath our entire yard.  Our actual yard dirt is only about 4-6 inches deep, not exactly suitable for tree growth.  So, after considering my options (like returning the trees, pawning them off to parents or giving them to friends) I discovered that we could grow them in large pots.  Sure this may not last us more than 3-5 years, but it is our now solution and all we've got at this point.  So, we'll see how they do!

Here is a closeup of our peach tree.  We've already got several peaches growing so that has been very exciting to see!

This is a closeup of the orange tree.  It is the smallest of the 3 at this point and I wonder how fast it will grow.  Daniel says that those green circles underneath the flowers are actually oranges, but I'm not sure they aren't just little buds or something.  We'll see, I hope my orange tree fruit comes to fruition.  Get it, FRUITION!  I am hilarious.

This is our lemon tree.  Oh lemon tree, I love you already!  Do you see that big ol' lemon growing already!?  Awesome.  And there are more little ones coming up behind it!  It is growing quickly already and that makes me happy as I hope its growth will reach all the way over to cover up that hideous utility box we have in the corner of our yard.  From what I've read, citrus trees grow well here in Texas, so I hope that's true.

Here are some of our strawberries.  We originally planted them in the bed with the rest of our plants but they didn't seem to be doing very well, so we moved them.  When we first got this plant it gave us a couple strawberries, but I haven't seen anything growing on it in awhile, so we will just have to watch and see what it does.

This is our newest addition... the TOPSY TURVY!  I've heard mixed reviews about it, but I just filled it up with strawberry plants this weekend so we will see how it grows... I already see improvements in the way the plants look since being put in the topsy turvy, so this might be a good buy after all.

Finally, these are just flowers that the kids and I planted together.  Well, we did it all together, but they got complete freedom to plant these how they wished.  I think our front yard could use more color, but I don't want to buy anymore flowers.  So, we are growing our own flowers!  Hopefully these turn out nice and strong enough to use in our front flower beds this year.

Well, there you have it!  Never thought I would be a gardener but I'm loving it and it is a good use of our backyard which isn't completely functional or safe for our kids to play in alone anyway.  I'm sure we'll update pictures in a few weeks to show you how we're doing as first time gardeners and certainly when we eat our first fruits of our labor!

Easter was awhile ago...

Easter was awhile ago, but I haven't posted any pictures as of yet.  So, let's all pretend that yesterday was Easter Sunday and I am completely on the ball with my posting... shall we?

We had a great Easter.  We had just got our little Lucy that week and we were also doing a lot of yard work, but mostly we were having fun and enjoying the holiday.  Ellie is our child that gets excited about any and all things related to a holiday so she always makes sure we make the most out of each holiday.

Here are some pictures of the kids dyeing eggs:

This next sequence of pictures is kind of funny.... mostly because I forgot my picture was being taken and because I am one who always wears my emotions on my face... it's obvious what I am thinking!-- It's frightening watching your child dip breakable eggs into a dye that will stain everything.

All in all, a wonderful Easter celebration!

LUCY

On Tuesday, Elise, Owen and myself drove an hour and a half away to go pick out a puppy.  Dan and I had discussed it over the years and we are now at a time in our lives where we want to add a pet into the mix.  I had researched years ago what sort of dog we should get.  I was partial to soft breeds like labs and golden retrievers, but we wanted a dog with much shorter hair that wouldn't be as big of a nuisance when it shed.  Plus, our future children could have the potential for some allergies.  Anyway, BEAGLES are great family dogs and they are awfully cute, so we decided to get one!

Our little pup, Lucy, is actually a mini beagle so she should weigh less than 20 pounds.  So, she will be a medium size dog.  Lucy is just over 7 weeks... kind of a young pup, but she was eating so great already that they felt comfortable selling her.  She has a wonderful temperament.  Lucy is all about the kisses and loves playing with the kids.  She isn't completely housebroken, but she has done a lot better than I thought she would!!  I have cleaned up WAY messier messes than what she has left.  Like I said, she is incredibly playful and doesn't mind being held by the kids at all.  She loves being around people and is just a sweet little puppy.

Lucy has two tags so they clink together and make a little noise.  We did this because sometimes she goes off under the couches or other places and we can't find her.  She is still a young puppy so sleeps a lot but at least with the noise her tags make we can figure out the area of the house she might be in.  Lucy is about 4 pounds right now.  We are working on crate training her, but this requires some tough love of letting her 'cry it out' and not running to the rescue as soon as she starts whining (sound familiar??  Yeah, you have to do the same with kids!)  All of the puppies are gorgeous so the way that I picked a puppy out was by seeing which puppy tolerated the endless holding of Ellie and Owen.  I think we did alright.

All of us love Lucy.  She is a great addition and we are working to train her the right way.  I've been watching "The Dog Whisperer" a bit and have actually learned a lot of parenting tips from my buddy Cesar Millan!!! :)  Turns out I need to be a better pack leader in my own home. :)  Dan loves Lucy too.  I thought it might take awhile, but I think he fell hard for her right away.  So, welcome Lucy to the family!