Day Eight

I think this is the last evening that you will be gone, I finally found the flight schedule and looks like you will be landing tomorrow night! Everything's great here, just hot is all! Looking forward to seeing you and hearing all about your trip, I bet you will be tired after the next day of flying and will probably enjoy having the weekend to rest. Love you bunches and see you very soon! xoxo

Gracie is having her first steak bone! OMG she LOVES it!!!! I think it is coming to bed with us, she takes it everywhere. She already tried to bury it in the pillows once! Well, sorry, I know you don't want her to have table food normally, but all the other dogs had bones, she HAD to have one too! xoxoxo!

Day Seven

Hope you are doing well, I was a little worried when I got the phone call at midnight and couldn't keep the connection. The only part of that conversation that made it through my brain was that you must be out of money! lol! Hope Paris is all you dreamed it would be. Me and Jim are getting ready to cook up some steaks for dinner, doesn't that sound good! I can't tell you the last time I had steak, mmmm. So all I gotta do is decide what to serve up with it, maybe baked potato and salad, keep it simple. Plus, it's still hot so I don't want to do a lot!

We tried really hard to keep Gracie up late last night in the hopes that she wouldn't have a magic internal alarm clock go off at 630am but apparently we were unsuccessful at that, she woke up then anyway. When she fell asleep last night about 1am though, she was soooo out of it, we were moving all around and rolling her over and she just didn't care at all, just like somebody flipped a switch and she was down for the count.

Gracie's having dinner now (see photo insert), she loves dinner time!

Day Six

Once again it's hot and probably going to be this way into the weekend they now say. The house is much cooler tonight, so maybe it wasn't as awful as the past couple of days, lol! I was at work, and thankfully had the office mostly to myself so it wasn't even freezing!

When I got home tonight I let Gracie into your room and she was so happy to hit the toy bin! She pulled out the water bottle of all things, played for a few minutes and then jumped up on your bed to fall asleep. I couldn't bear to move her, she looked so comfy!

She's doing fine and playing with Kota and Harley both like crazy, but I know she will be happy to see you when you get home! Hmm, I'm not sure what day that is by the way so I hope you will call again in a day or two. Love you sweetie! Oh, and I told dad that you didn't have internet access and not to worry!

Day Five

Another 100 degree plus day here today. My only relief was that I worked through the worst part of that but the pups are fairly lazy! Gracie seems to be the least affected, after all she has all those calories to burn after she eats. Kota is handling it pretty well.

I guess you must have had a long travel day, I hope you got some rest, and you should be in Paris

now I believe. Tomorrow is Bastille Day so there will be lots of festivities and celebrations around the city, that should make it even more enjoyable, and you were right, it is the celebration of the storming of the Bastille, I looked it up. So sort of like how we celebrate the 4th of July I think.

For tonight, I'm just gonna warm up some leftovers for dinner (sans the Chipotle sauce!), at least I don't have to cook, yay! I'll probably watch the Bachelorette (haha, I know you are laughing!), and look for classes that I might add. I want to get some sleep, I'm so tired for some reason, oh, but the memory foam we bought for our bed, OMG it feels soooooo good, I could just lay there for hours! Did I tell you that the night you left I barely slept at all? I don't know why, I think I was just watching the flight schedules to be sure all the planes were on time and I didn't know the last flight info so I thought I'd try to sleep, but then I woke up later and watched like 3 episodes of L.A. Ink (there was seriously nothing on). Isn't that hilarious!? So, I'm all up to speed now on Kat Von D just in case you want to know anything LOL!

I got as far as the nail salon, and then I must have had the slowest manicurist on earth, but she did make me smile when she asked me 'you wann flowa lady?' and they were playing techno music like from the Jackass movie that was making me crazy, it was like torture for 2 hours! I'll tell ya I don't have a speck of patience or energy when it's this hot! If I have to account for any accomplishments today, the list isn't going to look very impressive :(

Well, I did manage to make some homemade chile rellenos, I had been wanting to try to make those for the longest time! They were pretty good too, not as crispy as if they had been deep fried, I'll admit, but still good. I did make the mistake of opening a can of chipotle chili sauce and spooning that over the chicken (I made that to go with the chile rellenos) without tasting it, and OMG it was so hot! I won't make that mistake again, it was even hot to Jim who loves hot food, lol!

Day Four

Well, It's not even noon yet so who knows what the rest of the day will bring! I haven't even gotten as far as the shower yet, yeah, it's going to be a super lazy day! You can see that Gracie feels the same way ... Geez, I guess I have a lot of pictures of her sleeping huh. Just look at that cute little cow belly! But rest assured, she has her Crackie spells, this morning early she would just not stop, her little teeth have actually got me twice on my right hand, lol!

I'm going to look for a third class to add to my schedule today, see what is still open that will fit with my schedule. Since I only took the one class last semester I'm kind of afraid of overload though, you know how you are really excited to sign up for all the classes but when the work starts rolling in you wonder, 'what was I thinking!' ...

More to come later, that is, if anything interesting happens!

Day Three

Well, it looks like you are having beautiful weather there in Lisbon, but it's hotter than H-E-double-toothpicks here today! haha! I cleaned for hours, I'm still doing laundry and we went out to run a few errands (get gas for the BBQ, get a memory foam mattress topper, gas at Costco) and we ran out of gas in the Jeep! How funny is that! Papa had to bring us a can, LOL! I guess we just didn't pay any attention to the gauge in the Jeep and there's no light indicator or anything that comes on when you get low.

So we are just now cooking chicken coz it's been too hot to eat anyway, but have the fans on and the house isn't too bad now. Got my Jamba Juice fix and Gracie fell asleep on my lap when I started to write to you so I snapped her photo ... Isn't she adorable!!!?

Day Two

Hey, well, it's a hot one here today, beautiful by the coast but toasty inland, you know how it gets! Gracie had a good day and did lots of napping. She's barking at the cat as I type this, so whatever understanding the two of them had reached yesterday is apparently in the past!

I'm so glad it's the weekend, I've got a lot of stuff I want to get done around here, if it's not a thousand degrees that is ... tonight I think we are off to the bookstore just to get out and do something different. Hey did you finish reading Eclipse on the plane or were you too busy sipping champagne with your feet up? Lol! I can't believe how awesome that must be to fly first class, it would sure take a lot of the sting and anxiety out of flying though, being catered to and eating away watching movies, heck, I might even be sorry to arrive at my destination, sounds like a mini resort all in itself!

More tomorrow!

Yay!!! Looks like you have arrived at the gate at CDG and even 27 minutes early (I know, I'm sorry, but yes, I have been sitting here watching the flight update, I admit it!), glad to see you are on the ground before I head off to sleep and you still have one more flight before you are on the ground for a few days ... love you baby! Be sure to post something either here or on your travel blog when you hit the ground in Portugal! xoxoxo!

Day One

Ok, soooo, here we go then ...

I miss you!!! Oh, ok, I can already hearing you saying, "Mom, Oh My God, I know how to take care of myself!" =) but, you know I had to say it, I mean I had to I'm a mom after all ...

... Gracie had a great day! I was a little worried, I have to admit, when I couldn't find her when I woke up this morning, but shortly she appeared, poking her nose out from under the blanket. She slept like a rock ... unfortunately, Oz did not, so we were up by about 6:30am, which was fine because even at that I was still late to work!

Tonight she was the Spaz Queen so I took her out front on the grass. She loved it and ran around like crazy so hopefully she will sleep well again tonight. Her and the cat have come to some sort of truce today, maybe it's the heat, haha!

I followed your flight on United.com so I could see if it was on time, late, whatever (you know how I am!), and just to see that you all landed safely in D.C. Watching now to be sure you land in Paris on time which will be about 10:26pm PDT. A long day of travel and you all still have one more connection to catch before you call it a day ...

I'm at home having left over Panda Express (yum!), Jim is at a soccer meeting of some kind so I'm going to play online and see what's on TV (if anything!). Will be waiting to hear from you and am sooooo looking forward to your updates!

I'll try to remember to be on iChat tomorrow and next week at work in case you happen to log on! Be sure to give Henry and his family my love! Laugh and enjoy <3

Prequil to the fabulous vacation ...

Hi Alz! Hope you guys got some rest on the lonnnggg flight to Lisbon and are ready to hit the ground running ...

Gracie has graciously agreed to pose for photos daily in order to keep you updated. You may also find other random photos from home here from time to time, LOL, scary huh!

Looking forward to hearing about your first day once you have a chance to get settled. You all are going to have such a good time! Be sure to write down all the funny phrases (themes!) of the trip and to keep things for your scrapbook.

Love you Sweets!