Our New Furbaby....

I would have posted earlier but this past week has been a bit chaotic as we have all been adjusting to having a puppy again (aka: lack of decent sleep due to the puppy crying for varying lengths of time in his crate at night).

Anyhow.... The day we actually got him did not go as planned. He was supposed to be on a flight that left Denver, CO in the morning and would then arrive in Atlanta, GA mid-afternoon, but apparently his original flight had a gate change and he ended up being taken to the wrong gate and therefor missed the flight he was booked on. By the time we found that out though we were already close to 3 hours into our 4 hour drive to Atlanta, so after talking with his breeder we decided that the best option was to put him on the only other direct flight that was coming to Atlanta that day--which would put his arrival time at 9:00...leaving us with 7 hours to kill in the meantime.

After brainstorming for a while, my husband suggested that we could go to the aquarium in Atlanta since we hadn't ever gotten the opportunity before while we were here in Alabama for flight school. The aquarium currently has a program (for the summer I think) that sounded pretty cool with discounted tickets from 6-9pm each (?) day. That put us at the right time since we were told it would take the airline 30 minutes to an hour after his flight landed for them to unload him and have him ready for pickup.

Since we still had a few hours to pass before we could go to the aquarium we went to a health food grocery store (our first opportunity to go to this particular store since we left Hawaii as there seems to be a lack of market for anything healthy/organic down where we are...bummer). After that we walked a bit farther down the row of stores in the shopping center and stopped in at a big-name pet store...Munchkin loves to see all of the animals and fish in those stores--it's like a trip to the zoo AND the aquarium to him, ha ha.

By the time 4:30 rolled around we realized we'd been looking at the clock in our Jeep and that it was actually 5:30 since the Jeep clock has to be manually set...we started to make our way to the aquarium and the closer we got to that area the worse and worse the traffic became.

To make a long story short, apparently there was a concert taking place that night very close to where the aquarium is and there were TONS of people there for it and parking was few and far between as well as ridiculously expensive. When we were finally able to make our way to the aquarium's parking garage we saw a sign saying that the aquarium would be closing at 6pm that night. Boy was THAT disappointing, lol.

We kept waiting to see that the flight had departed Denver, but they kept getting delayed due to terrible weather that was preventing them from being able to take off. The flight finally left around 8:30pm (Mountain Time) and it arrived in Atlanta around 12:30am (EST). Thankfully, the airline people had him off the plane and ready to be picked-up in 20 minutes or less, so that made our day/night a little shorter.

Finally getting to see our new puppy for the first time in person was a pretty exciting moment! After a quick water, food, and potty break for him it was finally time to head home. We arrived home around 4:00am CST and after getting everyone settled in their beds we all hit the sack--for about 2 1/2 hours, ha ha. The hubby and I were sooooooo glad to finally lay down and close our eyes--and we were just as glad when it was time to hit the hay again the next night. :)

So, all that to say that it was quite a long, drawn-out day in getting our new furbaby, but it was worth it. :)

Now to introduce you to....

PEETA

I'll have to explain more about WHY we chose that name in a bit...ha ha.

This was taken a few minutes after we picked him up at the airport. :)

Peeta is a Cardigan Welsh Corgi...if you've ever seen a Corgi before it was likely a Pembroke Welsh Corgi--the tail-less Corgi (Pems are what the Queen's Corgis are)--as Cardis are much less common here in the U.S. Corgis are a herding breed (I've come to the realization that I love herding breeds more than any other--probably due to the fact that I grew up with a Border Collie mix and an Australian Shepherd mix....)

He's ridiculously cute. (Sorry for the low quality photo...a lot of the photos I'll be posting today are from my cell phone--it's hard to wrangle my real camera with lens and lens hood along with the Munchkin and Peeta, lol)

This was taken the morning after we got him (or maybe I should say a few hours after we got home from picking him up in Atlanta, ha ha). Not to sound like I'm gushing or anything, but I absolutely adore how thick his short little legs are--and how big his paws are--soooooo cute.

He thinks he's dying of heat stroke if he's outside for even just a couple of minutes and it's very common for him to flop down like this on any cool surface he can find.

This picture makes me smile. Munchkin LOVES Peeta.

The treat ball Munchkin is holding is AWESOME. More about that later....

Snuggling.

Originally Munchkin had Peeta 'tucked in' under the blanket--he said Peeta would get cold because the fan was on. Then Munckin wanted me to read Peeta a Winnie-the-Pooh story.... :)

We were hanging out in the garage while the Munchkin and my hubby washed the cars. Peeta is wet in this picture because the Munchkin has just sprayed us lightly with the hose, ha ha.

He totally thought he was going to die from the heat. The fan was his best friend.

You can see his brindle coloration pretty well in this picture....

Buddies
(please excuse the mess...we are still in the process of remodeling and sometimes we run out of space to 'shift' things to).

I guess he thinks his 'toy box' is a super snug bed. ;)

He loves to sleep like this.

And this...I call this the road kill crash position, ha ha.

And this too apparently. LOL!

Soooooo, that's our new baby. :) I'll tell you more about why we chose his name later....

I'm back.... *maybe*

Soooooo, long time no write...not that I was doing very well at actually posting on a regular basis during the past two years anyhow, ha ha. I've been trying to decide whether or not I am going to keep this blog and try to start posting again--or if I'm going to delete it. I still haven't decided either way just yet, so in the meantime I'm going to do a trial run of getting back into blogging again.

The Munchkin and I moved back to Hawaii at the end of November last year--with the help of my mom, thanks Mom! :) The month of December DRAGGED by for me--as I'm sure it did for all of the other deployed soldiers' wives. ;) But, finally, on December 30th my hubby came home safe and sound. HURRAY!!! It has been wonderful having my best friend home again--and nice to not have to snuggle with a body pillow every night while I am sleeping anymore, ha ha. :)

We hosted a belated Christmas dinner at our house for a lot of the single soldiers in our company (as well as a couple of married couples :) towards the end of January. So. Much. Food. I think I made over 300-400 cookies in the week leading up to the dinner. I kept finding new recipes I wanted to try and figured it was the perfect opportunity to do so. ;-p Not to mention all of the REAL food we made as well. Let me tell you...it was super yummy--and everyone enjoyed it, so it was a success. Going into it we wanted it to be a blessing to everyone who came, and I think it was as one of the single soldiers commented on how it felt like it was a real family gathering. I hope seeds were planted that will grow and bear fruit at some point.... Can't wait to do that again with the single guys at our next duty station after we get established there.

Speaking of which...I can't remember if I've already posted about where we are going next or not, but just in case I haven't...we will be heading to Fort Carson in Colorado towards the end of October! We can't wait to have a snowy winter this year. I keep wishing it was fall already, ha ha.

In the meantime...we have already PCS'd (Permanent Change of Station) away from Hawaii. Man, was that bittersweet! We were ready to leave--having been there so long and not really being the island/beach/city kind of people, but after you live somewhere for a while it becomes a part of you and you have memories associated with things and places there. Letting go and saying goodbye--not to mention saying goodbye to the people you've come to care for there!--can be challenging. We did our best to wrap up our time on the island by visiting all of our favorite spots (like Turtle Bay resort--where we spent our honeymoon)...and eating our favorite local foods one last time. I am grateful we took the time to do those things as I truly think it has helped with the transition back to the Mainland (we experienced some culture shock immediately after arriving back on Mainland U.S. soil and for the following 24 hours at least--it was a very odd feeling while it lasted).

So, anyhow, that was back in May. After a bunch of driving here, there, and everywhere (or so it seemed, ha ha) during the first week and a half of being back on the Mainland, we ended up back in Alabama--in our own house. My hubby has a course to do here at Fort Rucker before we head to Colorado, so here we are. :) It was nice to be able to come back to a familiar house--though we've had to make quite a few updates/repairs since we've been here--thanks Dad for coming and helping us with those after the hubby started his courses!!!! Hopefully we'll be able to finish those up soon and get the house back on the market--and then *hopefully* sold.

Oh, one other bit of news...we are getting a puppy! Hopefully we will be getting him sometime this next weekend or the week after--we are still working on the details currently. We are super excited and can't wait for him to arrive as we have missed having a dog something fierce! It came down to us realizing that we were going to HAVE to get our next dog as a puppy in order to make sure it is socialized with all of the animals and situations we need it to be able to handle without aggression...I can't lose another dog after getting attached due to it not being compatible again for one reason or another.... I'll post pictures of our new little fella soon. ;)

So, that's what has been happening in our lives lately. We'll see how this 'experiment' with blogging again goes.... I can't make any promises at this point though. I'll just have to take this one post at a time. :)