National Dog Day

Social media told me its National Dog Day.....the way Smokey lives, I think every day is 'dog day' but I'll play along.   He can be a stinker, but he makes our days better...every day when I get home from work he is waiting for me, standing at the top of the stairs (note to self...photograph this sometime soon) and he is quite the snuggle bug when we watch tv....

I also realized that one year ago this week is when we moved out of and sold our previous home.  That was still the most stressful thing I've ever been through -- just now I found the emails we had to respond to ON closing day...our buyers (and their agent) were difficult to say the least.

First week of school is in full swing, and Kevin has seen his office!   yay!

easy leveling

My new home hack --- using yarn to make sure that staggered art work ended up even with each other.....way easier than learning to use a laser sight, and one less thing to keep around the house.

Taking this photo also helped me to have a 'during' and an 'after' photo.    For the before, just imagine a very empty wall....

I did not take photos of all the calculations I did to make sure that I had them mostly evenly spaced along the wall.....woohoo math!  Anyone who says they don't need fractions isn't thinking of how often they are used in everyday life.

celebrating Smokey

8 years ago today we met Smokey for the first time.....we had to wait a couple of days to bring him home so that we could spend the whole day with him (already had plans to attend nephew's birthday party).    There was a little bit of adjustment time, and we laughed that he'd growl at his reflection on the tv screen, and soon he was right at home.  

He can be a stinker, but we wouldn't have him any other way.  

Here's hoping we have many more years with him around.

I don't realize how much he's turned grey until I look at older photos of him.....we've all turned a little greyer over the years.

We may need to give him a treat or a new toy to honor the occasion, sort of his birthday with us :)

minions

I am definitely a kid at heart.  We went to see the Minions for nephew's 10th birthday and I think I liked it more than anyone, even the kids!


I especially like that one of the main characters was named Kevin.....I think niece got confused when we'd talk about character Kevin and she thought we'd talk about Uncle Kevin...


Can I please have a minion (or 100) ??

tuckered out dog

We had a great weekend at the beach with all of the Tuckers.    I think this photo of Smokey on the way home sums up how all 3 of us felt on our way home on Sunday -- tired, a little sandy, and very content.


We rented a beach house and went to the beach each day.  It was great to spend the weekend with everyone, and a great chance to 'unplug'.

Our niece even had a 'beach birthday' - we celebrated her 6th birthday at the house -- I got to write her name on a cake, and it was actually legible!

She liked the gifts we got her - a music CD that she would dance to, a purse, and shrinky dinks -- we didn't do any of the shrinking yet, but she enjoyed working on coloring them.   I have to admit the shrinky dinks were as much for me as for her.