Doggie business

Monday night was an eventful one in our home. Being a grandma, I go to bed early and about 1o p.m. I heard Cooper, our big chocolate lab, banging around in the living room. Dash was out there so I thought he was just playing with a toy, but it didn't stop. When I went into the living room, Cooper was crawling across the floor (he had bumped into a couple of walls) and his whole body looked like it was in a cramp. All four of his big paws were clenched and curled in and he was shaking all over. We comforted him as much as we could and a couple minutes later he was full-on Copper again - wagging his tail and running around. We took him to the Emergency Animal Clinic and they observed him for a couple of hours to make sure he did not have another seizure. At about midnight, we finally saw the doctor who ordered blood tests to rule out things - had he eaten something weird? did he have an infection? Nope, apparently our strong, handsome boy has epilepsy. He may never have a seizure again or may have one in a couple of weeks or a couple of days, but he is better now and has enjoyed sleeping in our room the past couple of nights. It was very emotional to see the whole thing happening to such a big dog and I definitely don't look at him as the same invincible dog that I did before. Now, we are just recovering from a late, late night.

Here's some old pictures of our Cooper:

Under FBI scrutiny ...

An FBI agent is visiting our home today ... not something that happens everyday in our household.

One of Dash's best friends, Austin, just moved to Washington D.C. to work for the FBI's counter-terrorism department. Still going through the months long process, Austin listed Dash as one of his personal references awhile back. Just this week, Dash got a phone call from the FBI wanting to meet with him to do a background check on Austin. After getting past the confusion that Dash is just his 'alias', they set up a time to meet (of all places) at our home. I really had to resist going into a freak cleaning mode last night for our FBI visit.

I'm sure Austin has no secrets and that he will do great through the rest of the process - I'm more worried about my husband doing/saying something crazy in front of the FBI guy or our dogs going on the attack or something totally random that would only happen to us. I hope my home and husband are still in one piece when I get home.

Have a great weekend everyone! We have a tennis tournament, bathroom painting, furniture shopping (a headboard for our bedroom) and a baby shower for our T Bar M and Aggieland friend, Susan.

P.S. To check up on how Dash and his dad are doing in their doubles play, you can check the draws here. They are the #2 seed! The #1 seed is Dash's boss and his coworker, so I really hope we squish them in the finals.

Food, Fellowship, and Friends

We joined a small group of newlyweds through our church a couple of months ago and are really enjoying it. We meet every Tuesday evening and get to see our new friends on Sunday mornings in class as well. Our mentoring couple is wonderful. The Nevarrez's actually have a lot of connections to Dash. They worked with Student Venture at Katy Taylor in the 80s when they were newlyweds and know Dash's good friends, the Zielers. The group is perfect for us - full of Aggies (like Evan and Amy), had a Wii tournament awhile back, and some great sense of humors. Tonight we are heading over to the Ruiz's home, but next week we are hosting the group at our house. Eeek! Any recipe ideas for a group of 12 that can be cooked in an hour?

Nerd alert?

So we subscribed to Consumer Reports Online this week with some new purchases coming up for us (like the new digital camera Shae wants for her birthday!) ... so if anyone wants us to research something for them - the "Best Buy," the best , safest, etc - let us know and we can share our new nerdy addition.

Happy July 4th!

We had a fun week, with a quick "staycation" to Galveston for a couple of nights. Hopefully pictures will come soon, but we forgot our camera so it depends on how long it takes us to develop the disposable camera we bought down there.

4th of July brought separate activities for us - after two years of marriage and many more to come, we didn't feel too bad spending the holiday apart, especially since we had just gotten back from Galveston.

Dash had a "party" at our house with some of the guys and Rock Band that someone brought. Dash claims he was "awesome." Hot dogs, some bratwurst and fireworks completed their guy night.

I went with my family and some of Sterling's friends to Miller Outdoor Theatre in Hermann Park. We ate a picnic dinner, listened to the Houston Symphony for a couple of hours from the lawn and then enjoyed an amazing fireworks display.


We hope everyone had a wonderful July 4th!