3 months old

I'm home! I had an amazing time in NYC with my sister and bro-in-law. I will post about my trip later. I had over 200 pictures from my camera, so I need to sort those out!

The day I left, Grizzly turned 3 months old! Yay! And I'm going to talk about how awesome he is, so deal with it.

Maybe about a week after we got him, we weighed him and he was 15 pounds. Now he's 25! He's growing pretty fast. After not seeing him for a week I'm pretty sure his hair is longer and more out of control than ever, too. As you'll see in the pictures, the hairs on the top of his head look like little bean sprouts or something. And I love them.

A.J. said he wants to get him shaved/groomed, but I don't wanna. Not yet! I love his scraggly hair. He doesn't even have more than a baby beard, come on.

He's been so curious about EVERYTHING. Including our shower, so every once in a while he'll put his head in, and we'll just grab him and give him a bath. He doesn't hate it (yet?) He's finally tall enough to reach the water in the toilet bowl (he stares at it flushing) so now we have to keep the lid down. He's also tall enough to put his paws on my kitchen counters. Not cool. Curiosity=things getting eaten or ripped up when I'm not looking. Cute right?!

I tried to take pictures of me holding him, to show how big he's gotten relative to something besides the floor. That was difficult to get him to look in the mirror once I got my camera out. He usually does it all the time...and barks at his reflection. Haha.

He knows what "what's this?!" means, so he'll immediately come over and check out whatever I've got. So a while ago I showed him a spider crawling on the floor. And then, he ate it. He also loves eating...everything. Especially drawstrings and paper.

He also knows what "Look!" and "you wanna go?!" means. Not "go outside" or "potty", but he'll go when AJ says that. We've taught him to sit, lay down, and shake. And kind of stay. We're proud. He knows "no" and "down" too, but he doesn't always obey.

Grizzly thinks he's a horse...either that or he just recognizes that he's a large breed, and has absolutely no fear as far as large animals go. On our walks we go see the horses and he tries to kiss them. Or play with them. He noticed me feeding them grass, so now he thinks he gets to eat grass too. I let his leash go slack for just a second and he was already under their fence part-way and hanging out with them. He's lucky he doesn't get trampled.

Eventually Grizzly will be all tan with just a saddle-shaped black spot on his back. It's been fun to notice when his black ears, face, and legs have been losing the black. Unfortunately, black curly hairs are not fun to have laying around your house. 

He's still funny about going down the stairs. This time I got it on camera :)

Here he is at the top...laying down as he refuses to go downstairs on his own.

Then he growls and only gets this far–butt on the top, front legs on the first step. It takes him words of encouragement before he starts going again. :)


And then he just goes for it! This time he's not growling as much as he usually does, but he's still pretty cute, looking all bouncy and floppy. When he gets to the bottom he usually wants to eat me.

Sorry for the horizontal-ness...

Well, I could go on for a while but I know you're sick of reading about him today. To be continued!

That makes two of us

A.J. made it through 2 rounds of lay offs at his work. He started hearing rumors that the big company could be getting rid of the little company (the one he works for). But he didn't think that would happen anytime soon, because being the last welder, he had a lot of work to do. And then we thought the big company would hire him, but then we heard they were going to lay off 30% of their people.

Are you seeing where this is going yet?

The little company is dead. As of Friday morning, A.J. is out of a job. Two unemployed people under one roof. It's one thing to change your life to depend on just one person's income, it's another to both be out of luck. The times are scary.

We are hopeful that they will call him to work on a few things in the next couple of weeks (they said they would), but after that we don't know what will happen.

What we are depending on now is my new freelance project. I got it this same week. Good timing. Not that I'm getting paid anytime soon...

It seems like I picked a bad time to go to NYC. Hey guys, I'm going to New York City! I am still going. I'm just going to try not to spend too much. My sister has lived there for a few years and I'm FINALLY going to visit her for the first time. I'm really excited. And I couldn't pass up the great deal I got on plane tickets. AJ is staying home which is sad, and I'll wish he was there the whole time, but he'd probably get annoyed of my sister and I laughing at dumb stuff. I'll post fun stuff from my trip when I get a chance. Duh.

So anyway, that's our recent news. Sometimes life gets hard, but I guess when you're down the only way to go is up. (I think I said that when I got layed off..)

So if you guys hear of anyone hiring, you know, give us a holler.

I forgot to tell you guys about my super cute daughter

please see the post before this one

I know, weird right?

I think sometimes I forget to write about her on my blog because I'm so busy writing about her in my huge leather family journal that is meant to be saved for my posterity.

Her name is Lorynne (pronounced like Lauren but spelled cuter) Hiljay (our names together) Frisby. She is almost 2 and has like 3 blonde hairs, but we think she is adorable anyway. Unfortunately other people think she is a boy (it doesn't help that all her hair growth has been in her cute black eyebrows), so we've decided to pierce her ears. When that didn't work we gave her big drop earrings. Hello! Girl! When that didn't work, I found these hair clips that have hair extensions tied to them (genius) so I've started clipping them to her 3 hairs. It's sooo cute. AND we can change her hair color every day.

Some of Lorynne's favorite things include grocery shopping, Hobby Lobby shopping, and hanging out at Borders. At least I think those are her favorite things, because that's when we she meets new friends and gets to buy cool new things.

Even though she's with me most of the day, she's really a daddy's girl. In fact, they look alike too. Cute! Lorynne is always helping A.J. work on his truck. She stands and holds his flashlight while he fixes things. She especially likes his new maglite that weighs like 3 pounds. She loves heavy lifting! We just want to make sure she grows up to be a strong woman, you know? When her arms get tires, he just straps on the mini maglite to her cute bald head. Problem solved!

Not only is she a good helper, but she's a good eater too. Just like her dad, she can really wolf down a nice steak, medium rare of course. And don't forget the Devils Spit sauce! She likes it spicy, too. SO cute how much she and AJ are alike. She also really likes root beer floats, like me. Sometimes she cries when she spills while pouring mine, but you know what? You learn from your mistakes and you get over it. And don't forget my extra ice cream.

Anyway, I probably shouldn't write too much more about her, because well, my blog isn't private, and I don't want creepy people stealing her identity or worse. That's another reason I don't post pictures of her. She's not even included in our family photos, because you can just never be too careful. But we do have a really good drawing of her given to us by an artist that we know.

And the winner is...

Jenni!

Jenni said:
"Make up an imaginary child and start blogging about all of the funny/cute things he/she does/says all day long."

She left on a cruise today so she won't know she won, but I'll make sure she gets her Major Award:



I TOLD you guys it would be cool.

The other Jennie's was awesome too, but I just couldn't figure out how to videotape my raptor walk. Maybe some other time. And Megan's idea was going to get blogged about anyway, so it doesn't count.

Thanks for all your participation. It was pretty fun to read your ideas. It really came down to the amount of effort I felt like putting into it. So now that my writer's block is cured, stay tuned for the much anticipated imaginary child post!

This is HUGE!

A while ago A.J. got an e-mail from Netflix saying you could FINALLY watch movies instantly on your Mac . So the next day I went to the website...no evidence of that happening anytime soon. I seriously thought maybe I had dreamed that he told me that. Sad.

Well, today my dream came true! You can imagine, when you don't have cable, and your Netflix movies only come a couple times a week, that this news is stupendous! Hooray!


This does NOT mean my writer's block is over...you guys have to keep commenting on my last post. Get creative! It's getting pretty entertaining and I AM going to do something awesome/dorky for the winner. Promise.

Contest

I have writer's block.

I've been on here a few times, clicked "new post", and then just sat there. Do you really want to hear more about my puppy? Or what we ate for Christmas dinner? Or how I still don't have a job? Or my New Years resolutions? (I don't have any because I make excuses instead of reaching goals.)

Yeah, I didn't think so.

So hear I am unemployed, Hangin' with Mr. Pooper (Grizzly), my Christmas tree is still up because I can't reach the top branches to get the last 5 ornaments off, and I KNOW I'll feel like I did something today if I write a super awesome blog post (sad huh).

So I googled "blogging ideas". There were a lot. After 3 websites, I gave up because they are all lame, like "Make a post that incorporates in the title the word 'crossover'." Or "Dissect an argument in a post."

To my readers: What should I write about? Any pictures you'd like to see? Curious if I have any diseases or special talents? Want me to count my freckles? Want me to recommend something?

Whoever posts the best idea, I'll present you with a Major Award. It's gonna be awesome...comment away!

Snowed In

A.J. took Grizzly out for some "bonding time" today. Man to man. He doesn't want him to turn into a momma's boy from being with me all day.

He took him to his work ( but he's not working today) to show him to a friend that brings his dog, Oakie, into work, to let Grizzly play with him. Did that make sense? Anyway, Oakie is a blue Heeler, so not too much taller than Grizzly, but he's around 40 pounds and built like a tank apparently. Grizzly is 14.5 pounds at 9 weeks by the way, I weighed him yesterday. So, the two dogs start play fighting and it turns out our little guy was pretty tough! AJ told me Grizzly pushed Oakie over with his huge bear paws and got on top of him, then "showed dominance". Ha! What a proud moment for AJ. Oakie jumped in the truck after Grizzly got lifted onto the seat...guess he hadn't had enough of him. Griz is completely pooped. They've been home for an hour and he's still asleep.

We were all looking forward to the boy bonding today, but this winter storm is getting in the way. I was gonna finish some Christmas shopping and get things done I can't normally do with a new puppy at home. I'd rather not test out the roads right now. And the boys were going to have their adventures, too.

This is a few hours ago, now the branches are all super weighed-down with snow.



So now I'm stuck inside. My sister tells me her coworkers are obsessed with puppies right now, so here come some more pictures and videos!

He's chewing on a seed-pod thing. Cute face...



He's sleeping right here. This is not mid-fall, this was comfortable for him for a while.



These are of his new toy he found outside. Is it a pine needle branch or a flying porcupine?



My camera is weird and won't take more than an 8-second video, sorry guys.

There's a few things I wish I had videos of. One, is he's discovered the Christmas tree and the ball ornaments and especially the string of lights plugged into the wall. He does the funniest thing...he'll run around the tree when he thinks I'm not looking, try to bite some balls and then he'll steal a light bulb out of the cord. And he KNOWS he's not supposed to be back there. I'll yell at him, and he'll come jumping and running to me with the silliest look on his face.

Another thing, is our neighbors have this short snowman in their yard with sticks for hair, and arms of course. Well guess who thinks it's hilarious to steal stick arms and hair off the snowman? It's hilarious. But he got caught by them, so I probably shouldn't get caught filming it.

Oh, and he also learned how to come down the stairs by himself! This is huge for him. He's been really scared of going down even little steps, and AJ taught him how to come down the stairs. Grizzly gets all anxious and growls and barks and fidgets the whole time, but it's the cutest thing. He's growing up!