Furry family update

Shadow was up for her visit to the new vet this past Friday. The purpose of the visit was to hear the new vet's opinion on her previously diagnosed heart murmur. Lets just say the appointment didn't go as anticipated. Her heart murmur diagnosis went from a 1 out of 6 (mildest form) to a 3 out of 6. The vet said she thought it could be an issue with her aorta which would most likely result in her living only a few more years. Yep, that news pretty much sucked. This was also the point in time during the visit where I cried. Did I mention I have a strong attachment to this dog? Anyways, I had to leave her at the vet for some testing and when I got back, the vet recommended I take her to Texas A&M's vet school. There she could receive a diagnosis and we could determine if there were any applicable treatments.

On Tuesday I loaded Shadow in the car and headed to A&M, about an hour drive. The small animal clinic was amazing. I cannot express to you how awesome the staff were - every single one of them. After the tests, I was prepared to ask lots of questions but the cardiologist said that based on the tests, Shadow was in almost perfect health. What? Although he diagnosed her heart murmur as a level 4, it was the result of two slight abnormalities that do not and will not affect her ever. YAY!  Of course, I was not at all expecting that but we are so relieved that our sweet Shadow is healthy. Now, hopefully we're working our way back to the regularly scheduled program around here! :)

The swing of things

It feels like we're finally getting back into the swing of things. Of course some adjustment is expected when coming back from a two week vacation only to go out of town the following weekend but things were a little out of whack well before our vacation. We've both been very busy with work but we're finally getting to a point where working late only occurs once (or twice) a week. Hopefully things will continue to slow down on that front.

Although still cute, the dogs have also been somewhat out of sorts as well. Shadow's heart murmur continues to be a source of concern for us. Usually we can count on Gracie to be her moody but loveable self, however, she has also had some issues recently. As a result, we switched vets last week and Gracie was the first up for a visit. She had crystals in her urine and we're hoping after some prescription food for the next four weeks, these will disappear. Worst case scenario is that she has kidney stones and needs surgery. So we're keeping our fingers crossed on that one. Shadow is up for a visit Friday and I'm hoping we get some helpful information about her heart murmur. 

Other than that, for the first time in a long while we had time to do some cooking this past weekend. The husband broke out the smoker and smoked ribs and a pork butt. I tried my hand at a homemade ice cream recipe that was an epic fail. The base of the ice cream was mascarpone which was a little weird so that could have been the reason we didn't like it, but who knows!. The chocolate sauce that went with it was quite tasty though so we got something out of the try!

 

 

And of course we've been enjoying lots of tomatoes from the garden!  We've had pest issues with some of our other plants and found a newcomer among the parsley plants - big ole vicious caterpillars. But aside from those, the garden stuff is going well. The season is about to end here for tomatoes and we'll be sad to see that happen but we'll start working on the fall/winter seeds soon!

Europe Part 1 - Vienna

I know most people don't have time to view (or are interested in viewing) a thousand pictures in a blog post (I'm one of those people too). And yet here I am faced with that very dilemma - we have a ton of pictures that I could put on the blog but I'm pretty sure that would bore most people to death. In somewhat of a compromise, I will highlight parts of our journey over a few posts. I promise not to put a thousand pictures but be forewarned that these posts will include a few more pictures than the usual mess! :)

We began our trip in Vienna, Austria. I studied abroad with the Wake Forest University counseling program there for two weeks in 2007 and have to say that I absolutely LOVE Vienna. The European city where my Eiscaffe (coffee with ice cream and whipped cream) obsession began is bound to find a permanent place in my heart.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Vienna, a mix of strolling around the city with a little touristy stuff thrown in. Plus, as I mentioned here, we celebrated our 2nd anniversary heuriger style! Here are just a few pictures from our visit.

We totally saw two other tourists rocking NC State gear in Vienna (and took secret photos of them)!

 

 

The daily stuff

Blogging about Europe will take some time and unfortunately, I don't seem to have much of that these days. I'm behind on everything!! The hair balls or dust bunnies or whatever will attest to that! Why you ask?

For one, we flew to NYC for a wedding this past weekend - yes, less than a week after we got back from Europe. We only took two photos and they were of our lunch before the wedding. Oh well. The lunch was really good - check out Cafe Habana if you're ever there. We had fish tacos and grilled corn Cuban style (with mayo, cheese, cayenne pepper sprinkled with fresh lime juice) and both were amazing.

We've also been quite busy trying to maintain our ridiculous tomato garden. The rest of the garden has been pretty low maintenance which I'll update about later. But we've had a new pest problem with the tomatoes - leaf footed bugs (a lot like stink bugs). Every day after work we have to go to the garden and look for the baby and adult bugs and kill them. They are seriously a pain in the rear.

Regardless of the pest issue, we have TONS of tomatoes. We've given away at least a couple of pounds,

and we've eaten a couple of pounds too.

Plain tomatoes and caprese salad.

And pizza (with pesto made with basil from the garden).

We got a wine shipment from our wine club and enjoyed it with our pizza.

OH and then there are the ones in the fridge right now (I know that tomatoes lose flavor in the fridge but home grown tomatoes in the fridge still taste a heck of a lot better than store bought ones and this way we can eat them before they go bad).

Good thing we love some home grown tomatoes!! :)

Year 2!

While we were in Europe we celebrated our second anniversary. We had big plans of going to a vineyard overlooking Vienna, Austria, but weather got a bit in the way. We did make it to a few vineyards, tasting food and wine along the way. It was a really nice way to spend our anniversary.

 

Along our short tour of a few vineyards we discussed getting married, you know, the thing you do on your anniversary. I asked the husband when he knew he wanted to marry me. He said very early, within the first year of dating. I NEVER KNEW THIS. Yes, can you believe that?!? In the 6 years we dated before we got engaged I never knew that he wanted to marry me since early in our relationship!

I read over my post from last year and I realize a lot of things have changed in the last year. Living in Texas has improved quite a bit. I am still working on professional goals and living away from family and friends is still hard but things here are getting easier.

As I did last year, here are 10 things I learned this year!

1. We don't always recognize our own stress and this is ALWAYS when we are the least agreeable.
2. I really enjoy the time we have in the car together during our commute (as long as I have some coffee before any talking occurs in the morning) - its a great time to talk and when we don't commute together I realize how much I miss that quiet time together.
3. I like to talk out everything and the husband likes to spend time pondering ideas before talking about them - we are learning to adjust (somewhat) to this difference in communication styles.
4. I really dislike making decisions for two people - making them for myself is difficult enough sometimes.
5. Money stuff is hard even when you both have the same approach to money.
6. The husband is a hard core worrier about some stuff, and other stuff, not at all - it is taking some getting use to on my part. In my counseling education I've worked really hard on my own worrying and to now "share" someone else's is challenging for me.
7. It is hard work to create meaningful time for one another and I know it will only get harder.
8. The husband has had some awesome successes this year and it is awesome to share these with him and see his happiness with his achievements (both small and large). There is nothing quite like sharing in moments of happiness with those whom you love.
9. The husband makes piles of things around the house - clothes, mail, socks, shoes, candy bars from Europe (I could go on) and it drives me CRAZY. We are working on this (very very slowly) (and when I say we, it is mostly me trying not to be bothered by said piles which is NOT going well).
10. I really enjoy cooking together. It is one of the few things we both enjoy and make time for on a regular basis.

I'm increasingly aware of how lucky I am in life but especially with the husband. He is a great man and I look forward to many more years to come!

Being back from vacation

Coming back from vacation is always hard - going back to work, getting up early, etc. But I'm finding that I miss the little things from our vacation including this:

Cappuccino - our morning routine (and occasionally midday routine too!).

And this:

Nothing quite like relaxing in beautiful gardens while drinking beer!

We're back!

We are back from Europe! It was a truly wonderful trip of which I will surely write several posts in the coming days (or weeks as things seem to go pretty slowly around here).

And now, a quick happy birthday to my best bud since 6th grade. I had big plans of finding terrible middle school pictures and posting them on the blog but alas, I ran out of time! (I'm sure she's grateful for that)

Each of our friends brings unique gifts into our lives. Over the many years we've known each other, I've grown so much as a result of Jenny's friendship. I'm truly lucky to have her as a friend (even if she wore manatee t-shirts in middle school and never told me that my wolf t-shirt wasn't cool). :)