Update on me and my babies....

Well as you can see I haven't blogged in a while. A lot has been going on. I got a job at Henry Ford Academy School for Art + Design. I am a teachers assistant for now working with Special Education Students and I teach one class of Cultural Linguistics. Next year they are going to hire me as their Spanish Teacher. YEAH!!! I am so excited. Spanish Teaching is what I have always wanted to do and I am getting my dream job right away instead of having to teach something else until a Spanish Teaching position opens up. It's really hard to get a Spanish Teaching position right out of the gate. So I am truly blessed by this opportunity.

I am still pursuing my Masters Degree in Bilingual Studies and Linguistics, but have decided to put it on hold for a bit. It's with a heavy heart that I make this decision, but it's for the best. I find that it is very difficult to start a new career and take two graduate courses at the same time. I find that my focus is not completely on either thing. SOOOO....I am taking a break for now. But I will definitely complete my task. I am going to start back once I have a year of teaching Spanish under my belt. That way I have a routine in place and it won't be so tiresome.

Changing the subject now....

My babies are doing absolutely wonderful. Some of you have asked to see updated pictures of them. Well this was their first trip to the groomer picture. They looked so different when they came out, I almost didn't recognize them.

Let me know what you think.

Swimming Puppies!!!

I know I don't blog as often as I should. I will try to do my best to keep this a bit more up to date. I wanted to share with you our latest "adventure" with the babies.

Cody Gigi

My husband and I have a little intex pool in the backyard. It's small and just enough for us to get wet. It's about 4 feet deep so it's not that small. Well my husband and I play volleyball and splash around in the pool. So with all that going on the babies start barking at us and wondering what's going on. Prior to this day, I had already purchase a baby pool for them to get wet in. So I already had it on hand. We decided that it would be a good thing to get them used to the pool. I was hoping they wouldn't be afraid of it since they are still puppies. So we put them in the pool. OH!!!! JOY!!!!!! They loved it. They are little swimmers. Cody seems to like it more that Gigi. I was so excited. They weren't shivering or anything. They were nice and calm in their little pool, just floating away. They swam a little and floated a little. This went on for about 45 minutes. It was great. Needless to say, they slept so soundly that night. Not a peep from them......They were exhausted.

Here are some pics.

This is them in their little pool. It's floats perfectly.

Here they are in the water swimming.

This is a short video of Cody swimming....I should have edited it a bit more before posting. Next time I know.....

Mi Familia - My Family - Picture Day!!!

Well it's been a while since I posted anything. I was trying to figure out what to blog about. So I decided I would write about my family and the day we spent taking our family "portrait", which consisted of my dining room and my camera on a tripod. I was so excited because I didn't use the flash nor any additional lighting other than sunlight and light in the dining room.

My family is small, but, OH! how I treasure them.

We had so much fun that day. We laughed and giggled the whole way through. My family always finds a reason to laugh at the silliest things. Here's a couple of my favorite pics...

It was kinda hard getting them to cooperate. "Work with me people, work with me!"

Eventually I got them to settle down. And these were great pictures. We never had a group picture of "All" of us together at one time. It was great. I am so happy we took these.

It was extremely special. My grandmother is now 80 years old and I wanted some pictures of us together. She's a special lady. I love her very much. We've grown so much closer recently than we have ever been and I love it. I am so glad to have her in my life.

I took these pictures and put them, along with all of the pictures she owns (I scanned them all), on a DVD slide show with music for mother's day. The video was 45 minutes long. I ended the DVD with these pictures along with a recording of my mother singing "You light up my life" accompanied by my grandmother playing the piano. It was recorded back in 1980. You should have seen the look on my grandmother and mothers face. It was priceless......

I love you grandma!!!

Life Goes On....

Well, We did it!! We got two new fur babies in our life. I am so excited and they are just adorable.

After the incident with Patches, we knew our lives needed to include a dog. So I found Gigi from a pet owner who's dogs had puppies. Once we got her, I knew that she was eventually going to have a companion. Eventually???!!!

Then I got to Petsmart that Thursday after I got Gigi do get some puppy supplies and I see this lady with 3 white male puppies. I asked her about them and turns out she was selling them. I knew that this was meant to be. Especially when she told me what day they were born, January 2nd. That was Gigi's birthday too. So, I took one of them home with me. You should have seen Gigi, she was so excited. Now they are inseperable. We called the little guy Cody.

So here is the beginning of our newest chapter in this epic wonder we call our lives. Here is a picture of them together. Gigi is brown, which will eventually be blonde. Cody is the white lemon drop maltese. What do you think???

New Chapter

It's been a month since I lost my last furbaby. My hubby and I had decided that we didn't need any more dogs. It was hard enough with the loss that we had just suffered. We figured we have four cats, that's enough. Well...let me tell you a little story.

One day hubby comes home with this dog. He is the cutest little thing. We was apparently lost in our neighborhood. He had no collar and was just as smart as can be. We nicknamed him Patches because he was white with black ears and a big black patch on his back. So we combed the neighborhood looking to see if anyone was looking for their dog. No luck. So we decided to take care of "Patches" and find his owner. He was very well kept. You could tell he belonged to someone. We were going to put up signs the next day. When the dog spent the evening with us in front of the TV and when we went to bed, he reminded me of what it was like to have a puppy around. He followed me everywhere and sat on the sofa with me, close to my shoulders. I missed that. For the last few years of my previous babies lives, we had to walk them down the stairs because of their little aching bones and stuff. And they didn't get around as much as they used to. So, it had been a while since I had that kind of companionship. Well, anyway, back to Patches.

The next day I took some pictures of Patches and made some posters. I was about to go out and post them but decided to take him outside to the back to do his business. Well the little escape artists got out. So there I am freaking out. "I lost someone else's dog!" So I jump in the car and start the search. I am driving around looking for a dog that isn't even mine. As I am looking for the dog and asking people if they have seen him, I ran into his owners. They were looking for him as well. I told them where he had escaped from so they took over the search. Patches, who's real name was "Teddy" is now safe and sound with his family.

After the episode with Patches, we decided to go ahead and get a puppy, I actually wanted two puppies. They seem to be less lonely that way, I think. Wait until you read what happened next. Check out the next blog. Meanwhile, here's a picture of Patches a.k.a Teddy.

Broken Heart of a Pet Parent

Well, I write this blog with a heavy heart. Many of you know that I am a pet parent. I have pictures of my "babies" on this blog. I had three gorgeous Lhasa Apso dogs that are now in puppy heaven. Let me explain a bit....

Pancho became part of my life in 1989. He happened to be walking down the street chasing some kids in my old neighborhood. He was all dingy and matted. When I called out to him, he immediately ran into my arms. I was in love. I had just lost my previous "baby" of 17 years a month prior. So the timing was perfect. I convinced my mom to let us keep him and she agreed as long as I tried to find the owner first. Well no one claimed him, so he was mine. After we had him about a year he got injured by a car. The injury was to his back and he had trouble walking so the doctor recommended another companion dog to help his rehab....so then came Meechee.

Meechee was my little girl. She was the sweetest thing you've ever seen. She was always so prim and proper but she could be the boys up in a heartbeat. When Meechee was about 9 months old, she got out while she was in heat and found a boyfriend. Well my mom calls that dog "the rapist". Anyway, Meechee ended up pregnant by this little mutt and had 4 beautiful puppies. When it was time to take them to the vet for their check up, I ran into a lady who had a litter of Lhasa Apsos. Well she didn't have them, her dog did. And that's where I met Kingo.....

Kingo was soooooooooooo cute. He was a little bitty thing. All white with dark brown eyes and a big nose. I thought he would make a beautiful husband to Meechee. I wanted to have a litter of pure breed Lhasas, so that's how I ended up with my three musketeers.

We lost Pancho in July 2, 2004. He went to puppy heaven due to his old age. It wasn't because of his injuries but of just having long life. The doctor says that he was probably around 16 when we lost him. Since I didn't get him as a pup, I never really knew how old he was when we got him. Meechee left us to be with Pancho in March 5, 2008. I still mourn her loss. She was always by my side. I miss her deeply. She was a month shy of turning 17. Kingo went to puppy heaven a week ago to be with Meechee. I lost him on January 12, 2009. He turned 17 on December 24, 2008. He was 17. All of my puppies are gone now. I am very sad.

The reason I posted this is because many of you who know me know that I adored my little furbabies. My husband and I couldn't have children of our own, so we put all of our love into these little animals that I considered blessings. Some of you may think it's silly, but there are those of you who understand my pain.

Now we have the four cats that have come into our lives one at a time. But no more. They are a handful and keep us on our toes. They are a joy but just different from my puppies. They give their love in different ways, but love non the less.

Just wanted to share........................

A project completed!!!!

Well, it's Monday after the holidays. Eric and I spent a lot of time together while he was off. It was great. We got a lot of projects done around the house. I was really excited about one in particular. We cleaned out the attic. What happened was when we bought the house and moved in, in 1997, we put a whole bunch of stuff up there. I hadn't seen some of these boxes since then. My husband was off for almost two weeks, so he and our neighbor friend took everything out of the attic. I went to Home Depot and picked up some storage containers and started organizing. I also threw out a ton of things. I had save the bridal magazines I used to organize my wedding from 1994. Isn't that crazy!!! I used my handy little label maker to label the outside of the boxes so that we'd know what was in there. I felt really good about that. My husband then put in a whole new floor in the attic so that we would have more space. Now what's really interesting is that the attic is not a walking attic. So, my wonderful husband is so handy, he converted it into an extra storage space. Now we can take out the stuff from the garage and actually park our car in there.....Hee hee. So now I am going through the rest of the house to see what I need to actually store and other stuff that can me donated or trashed. I don't really like garage sales too much, so sometimes I'd rather just give it away.

I am so happy we finally got that project done. It's was on our "short term goal" list and then moved to our "long term goal" list then on to our "someday" list. So that someday has arrived. YEAH!

First time blogger

This is my first attempt at starting a blog. I had been tempted with the idea a few months back, but finally was inspired by my friend Lisa. She has a wonderful blog and I thought that maybe I could do something similar. My husband and I have so many friends and family around the world, it would be nice to keep them up to date with what's going on with us.

I also enjoy my hobbies such and dancing and scrapbooking with a little photography on the side. So this blog is goin' to be a hodgepodge of Me and My BIG ideas....BIG stands for my initials....Blanca Isabel Gomez.

Enjoy!