Bon Voyage!

We are leaving for Paris tomorrow! We are going to spend a week seeing all the capital of France has to offer and, if I have my way, eating pain au chocolat at every meal.

I will blog every dirty detail once we get back and post loads of pictures, that is after I submerge myself in the royal wedding coverage. I still haven't convinced Daniel that we should take the Chunnel to London and join the festivites. We'll see if I can wear him down.

A fungus among us

So, we have to lovely dogs. One of these dogs is a 115 pound Weimeraner named Jack. Jack was a rescue dog that we adopted January 4, 2010 from the Weimeraner Rescue of North Texas.


Jack is a monster. He is huge, he drools and he lets out the most terrible smells. At the same time, he is the sweetest dog you will ever meet. He has to be in the same room as us and loves everyone. Plus he has the cutest stump ever, hence his personal theme song "Stump Shaker."




Since adopting Jack he has had a long list of problems that required medical attention. He breaks out in hives. He has fractured toes. He bites his nails. He is overweight. The list goes on.


We are getting used to Jack's issues, but one day he literally tore one of his nails in half. There was blood everywhere and it was like he knew this as he paraded from room to room. Now, he has bitten down his nails before to the point where they bleed, but this was different. We decided to watch it and see if it healed like it had in the past.


To make a long story a little shorter, we had both dogs groomed and the groomer cut the nail down even more. Cut to a few days later and Jack wasn't putting any weight on that foot. Then his toe ballooned to three times the normal size and it was back to the vet.


There are certain things you don't want to hear at the vet. What I heard that day was, "We'll pray that it's broken." We had previously thought Jack had a broken toe and the vet exaplined how horrible it would be for him to have to wear a cast and now we were hoping for that.


Turns out Jack had a nailbed infection that was fairly severe. I believe the vet's exact words were, "We'll do everything we can to keep from amputating the toe." Amputation.


This was about three weeks ago and now we are giving him twice daily antibiotics because the first round didn't work well enough. Plus, we get soak his foot every other day for 15 minutes. Have you ever tried to force a 115 pound animal to put its foot in a bucket for what feels like an hour? It isn't fun. But, it's what we have to do because a dog that big with a missing toe would be super depressing to see and deal with.

Remodels - Part 1

I have a love-hate relationship with remodels. I love the finished product, the shopping and the sense of accomplishment. I hate the dust, the clutter and all of the random people in my house. When you live in a house that hasn't been updated since the 60s, they are a necessary evil.

We have taken on two major remodeling projects in our home and are about to start our third. I decided to take a look back at the remodel that started it all. That way all of our friends and family can get a sense of why I complain am so vocal about all the work we have done and still have to do.

For our first foray into the remodeling world we decided to turn a bedroom and bathroom into a master suite. Here is a look at the before pictures.

It was super outdated and just didn't work for us. So with the help of a interior designer, we completely gutted both rooms, moved walls and started from scratch.

After two long, never-ending months, our remodel was complete. Here are pictures of the finished product.

A tale of two laundry hampers.

I have a tendency to make bold statements. For a conservative town like Dalhart, I am pretty outspoken and liberal. Maybe it's because I grew up in a big city where it takes a lot to raise eyebrows. Who knows. However, out of all of the bold, liberal statements I have made, there is one particular statement that brings more looks of shock and disbelief than almost all other combined.

I do not do my husband's laundry.

There it is for the world to see. We each do our own laundry at our leisure. If I want to wash a load a day, I do it. If Daniel wants to wait three weeks in between loads, more power to him. I never expected this fact to pit friend against friend and neighbor against neighbor.

Now this might be an exaggeration, but people get very upset when I tell them this fact. I look at it this way, my clothes are clean and generally germ free, even if they have been worn. Daniel's clothes are gross, smelly and since he has to go out to feedlots every once in a while, there is a chance that there is cow poop on them. No. Thank. You.

So, until a couple weeks ago we each had our own laundry basket. This would have been fine, but we remodeled our bathroom a year and half ago and both of our laundry baskets were, well, ugly and didn't match. Plus, Daniel would fill his basket and then have a mountain of dirty clothes next to it and I was over it.

Our old laundry baskets

So I've decided to take one step towards compromise. No, I'm still not doing Daniel's laundry, but we are sharing a laundry basket. Our clothes are intermingling, cohabiting, etc. Our bathroom looks much cleaner, but it still pains me to know that my Joe's jeans could possibly be exposed to bovine feces.

Much cuter!

We have to sort our clothes frequently since Daniel refuses to wear a pair of jeans more than once and he takes up a good 80% of the available space. But, I am sure people will be pleased to know that I am one step closer to sucking it up and doing his laundry. Honestly, I will probably never do his laundry, but we can pretend to apease the conservatives.

Here goes nothing.

So, this is our very first blog post. I (Heather) had this blog designed about a year ago. Seriously. I have been wanting to starting a blog for a long time and if you know me, you know that I have a lot to say about, well, everything. So hopefully this will be the place for me to say it and to keep our friends and family updated on what is happening in our world. I can't wait to see where this blog takes us!