Puppy Life w/ Daisy

Meet Daisy our new puppy!

We have now had Daisy for 2 weeks.  She is a first generation Maltipoo, her mom is a Poodle and her dad  is a Maltese.  She is 10 1/2 weeks old and weighs about 3lbs.  A tiny little baby!  But I wanted a tiny dog and my daughter wanted a puppy so that's what we got her for her 7th birthday!

Puppies are hard almost as hard as a new baby!  They are playful and sometimes overdo it and you get bit.  They don't aways sleep through the night, ours wakes up around 3am and wines till you take her out to pee.  And they don't come crate trained or potty trained!  Here is what the first week of potting looked like:

Black asterisk are indoor accidents.  Some days we had a lot of accidents and others it was not so bad.  She is going like 15 times a day since her bladder is so small and after a week of writing it down we figure we would try timing out when to take her out so hopefully we can get the number between potty breaks to increase.  We have started with setting the timer to every 40 minutes when she is awake, of corse taking her outside every time she wakes up from a nap!  Now that week 2 is done and we are still having 2 to maybe 5 accidents a week I am thinking we need to limit her play area.  So I am now looking for a baby or pet gate pen thing on the cheap side so we can contain her in the kitchen area till she does better.

Daisy is also a chewer!  Our 9 year old dog we got when she was 4 months old was not only potty and crate trained she only chewed one of my shoes, one of my hubby's shoes and a hard cover book!  (at least that's all I remember, she was not a big chewer)  Daisy is chewing everything!!!!  Even rocks and the metal legs to our coffee table.  Ewww!  It is even worse the last couple of days since the younger two kids decided to encourage her to go up the stairs!!!!  There are a ton of little things in their bedrooms!  Daisy has pooped out two itty bitty toy pieces this week!  Not Good!  She is exhausting!

Speaking of exhausting...  

It is hard for Daisy to take a nap over here since someone always has to pick her up or start to play with her right after she falls asleep.  There are 5 of us and we all want a piece of her cuteness!!!  We try to keep her up till 10 or 11pm but she ends up passed out before than, wakes up at 3'ish in the wee morning and then is up anywhere from 6 to 7am, oh boy!  Here I thought I would be able to sleep in this summer!  What was I thinking... a puppy... I'm crazy... I need sleep!  As luck would have it my hubby is often up at 3'ish in the morning and will take the pup out to potty and have her lay on his lap (if he is on the computer) or chest (if he is watching tv) till she falls back asleep than put her back in her crate.  Yay! 

I am also having a hard time keeping her white fur clean!  She is so low to the ground and we take her out so often even when it is wet outside that she seems to collet dirt.  Then there's the light brown tear lines from her eyes that drive me nuts!  I was not necessarily looking for a white dog because I knew it would bother me but we ended up falling in love with her.  Any suggestion on how to help would be awesome.  Even though I want to bathe her every other day we are doing it once a week so we don't dry out her skin. 

Last but least I want to let you know how Lily (our 9 year old puppy) is doing with Daisy (2 month old new puppy)...

Well not so well, not bad, just not the wonderful lovefest I thought it was going to be!  Lily is ignoring Daisy, I think to show she is the dominant one.  I still have hope that they will be the best of friends after all it has only been 2 weeks!

Well that is it for today!  Thanks for stopping by!

~Love~Smile~Enjoy~Happiness~

~Ra~

Back on the Blog!

It has almost been a year but I'm finally back on!
It has been a long time since I have even thought about doing a blog post but it is time!  

Our year has been crazy and when I say year I mean the 2013-2014 school year!  Having 3 kids at 3 schools on 2 different school calendar has keep me on my toes!  My oldest finished his first year of high school, the middle child barely pasted his first year of middle school on a 9 week in 2 week out calendar, and the youngest finished 1st grade!  I am very thankful after 2 busy school years and no summer vacation between the two we are finally taking a break!  Summer Vacation!!!

Now we are almost half way done with our laid back, easy going, even lazy summer vacation.  I'm so not ready to go back to driving kids back and forth from 3 different schools!

On another note I still love the home we moved into last summer!  We never finished unpacking all the boxes because we did not know when we signed the lease if we were going to stay beyond a year but we love it here so it is time to unpack the rest of the boxes and finish putting the rooms together!  Everyone has their own room so the fighting has gone down.  There are so many birds, critters, bugs to take pictures of!!!  I wish I kept going with my picture a day goal I made last year but in a way I am still doing it just on Instagram instead!
Here are a few of my photos:

If you would like to see more of my pixs on Instagram chech them out at raboldt22.

Next post will be on the new puppy and puppy life!

~Love~Smile~Enjoy~Happiness~

~Ra~

Fight, Fight, Fight ~> Photo 39

It feels like it has been forever since I have been on here!  In my defense a lot has gone on this summer...  We moved, oldest child had Driver's Ed, youngest had summer school, and the one in the middle started school on the modified calendar at the end of July!  Plus we got sick!!!  So we did not really get a "summer vacation".

The move was crazy and we were really stressed out!  But now all the kids have their own rooms and hubby has a computer room!!! (No More Computers in My Bedroom and Living room!!!)  I think this a step in the right direction, we are no longer in a small cramped up town house fighting with one another about everything.  Now we have our own spaces, a place to cool off and relax!  We still fight with each other over stupid stuff (most popular fight is about doing homework and reading) but I'm not hearing the boys fight over who's mess it is in the bedroom (it was Cole's).

Next move will hopeful be us buying a house!
But till then I am pretty happy with this one!
(Just need to finish unpacking and putting stuff away!)

~Love~Smile~Enjoy~Happiness~
~Ra~

Humming Bird ~> Photo 38

Have you ever seen a Humming Bird nest?

I'm trying to think back to all the animal shows I have seen and all the animal/nature photographs in magazines and I don't recall seeing one so stumbling onto one in the yard is very exciting!  If you search the web you will find tons of pictures of humming birds and their nests but I never thought about searching for what one might look like till we saw this little guy flying in and out of his tiny little home.  I am quite curious on how it was made, what it is made out of, and did the humming bird make it?  I wonder if there are eggs in it!?!  How cool would that be to watch little humming birds grow up!  I really wish I could get a better angle on the nest to see inside it.  Oh well, this is a pretty cool find and snap shot!

~Love~Smile~Enjoy~Happiness~

~Ra~

Photo # 37 ~ First Day of Summer Vacation!

We are FREE!  Free as a bird!!!

Well for a little while since school is out for summer vacation and now we struggle to entertain the kids.  On the plus side I get to sleep in a little which helps since I am a night kinda of person not a morning one!  Lol.  

I did jumped right back into something I started last year, them waking up to a notebook at their spot at the table with a list of what I expected out of  them that day and this year Lila gets a "Chore Notebook" too!  And there was a smidge of grumbling but it was amazing how fast they went through it so that they could have their precious "1 Hour Of Game Time" (yes we are mean parents and crazy)!

(Lila's first chore list and she was excited to have one like the boys!)

I am also going to change the dinners the boys do once a week from they help me make a dinner they pick to me helping them!  I will also now include Lila in helping me make a dinner once a week which means she will pick out a dinner and have to get a shopping list together, go with me to the store and like her brother learn to shop with coupons and/or good deals, and then take those items and make a meal!  The boys have been doing this every summer for the last couple of year and I hope that they have learn enough to now be in charge of the kitchen giving me a little bit of a cooking break.  My goal is to have them more knowledgeable than I was when I went out on my own and they will be able to feed themselves without the help of the fast food industry.  

I just hope we get into a good grove over the summer, routines are very helpful and are very hard over here.  It seems as soon as we get into a good routine something throws us off, camp or the start of a new school year.  Once upon a time, before we had Lila and the boys were very young, we lived an apartment with pool and I was watching a neighbor's son over the summer, we had an awesome routine!  Now it seems I just can't  achieve the same consistent productive routine and it has been 6 summer since we moved from that awful apartment!  Lol!  So wish me luck!!!

It is going to be another very busy summer.  As the kids get older there is just more to do!  Jesse will be taking Drivers Ed, Lila will be doing Summer School, and Cole starts a new calendar as he start middle school.  I hope to add play dates and pool dates (and maybe a date night or to with my hubby since I loved doing that for my bday and want to do more with just him) and if we are lucking a camp or 2.  But we will have to wait and see as the dust settle from our 2012-2013 school year!

Thanks for reading my very long post today 

(if you got this far!)

And remember

~Love~Smile~Enjoy~Happiness~

(a daily struggle for me)

~Ra~

ThE BiG DaY ~> Photo 36

Today at 10:38pm (that's what my baby book says) I will be one year older!

(Cole on the big screen at the ball game that he and his school chorus sang at)

And I can't help feel a little exited about it!  Even though I know as an adult we really don't do much for a birthday, nice dinner out the weekend closest to it, for me fast food if it is on a week day so I don't have to cook.  Usually no cakes since in our house I am the one that makes them and since mother's day is so close to my birthday I usually don't get much for mother's day.

But this year has been a little different!  I already got my AWESOME bday gift and boy am I loving taking pix with it!  And my hubby went out and got me a couple of mother's day gifts, one from each kid!!!!  And what I asked for last year!!!  Someone is finally listening ;~)  Which also means I have to step it up for father's day this year!  Lol!

So even though I am using pictures that I have already posted on my facebook page and I believe that my facebook family and friends are probably the only ones that look at this blog they are awesome pictures to show my EXCITEMENT today!  Or at least this morning since by lunch I will be tired and by 3 I will be exhausted and by 5:30 I will be running around like a chicken with it's head cut off getting all the girl scout stuff together for the end or year party are are doing tonight!  And by 11pm I will be in bed wining that I can't fall asleep!  Just like any other day, Lol!

(He was so happy and excited to be on the big screen)

So right now I want to feel excited and happy that I am now 32!  We got to hang out with friends last Saturday and my bestie made me my favorite pie, Lemon Meringue.  She offered to make me a cake and I told her I did not love (like yes, love no) cakes so she was AWESOME and made it from scratch, I was just going to buy one in the freezer section of the Harris Teeter.  Last Sunday was fun too, Lila had a friend who did a birthday party at a bowling place.  And so far the week has been nice and slow, except for yesterday's killer headache!  This coming Saturday is dinner and a movie with my main squeeze while the kids go to the grandparents house!  That will be very nice!!!

I need to be off now today is a day I do have things to do, I both hate and love Wednesdays!

~Love~Smile~Enjoy~Happiness~

~Ra~

Photo # 35 ~> Crush!

Crush is our South American Red-Footed Tortoise that my hubby got me last year for my birthday. 

 (If  you want to read about my excitement in getting him last year click here!)  

We ended up getting him a month before my birthday since that is when he came into the pet shop and I always wanted a tortoise, have no clue why I did.  Today he seems happy, as happy as a tortoise can seem, it's not like a dog that wags his tail when he is happy!  Lol!  He loves his fruit and veggies, tomatoes seem to be his favorite along with some romaine lettuce.  He does not care for squash and that's ok we don't like it ether!  Lol!  I do need to measure him to see how much he has (or has not) grown this year.  It doesn't seem like much but than again they grow pretty slowly.  

As a pet he is pretty easy going and a joy to watch as he munches on clovers in the yard!  A tortoise is not a pet for you if you want a snuggly soft affectionate pet but if you want someone low key, slow, and full of wonder and mystery than I do recommend a tortoise.  

~Love~Smile~Enjoy~Happiness~

~Ra~