New Car!!! (And still no dogs!)

For the past month, Chris and I have been lucky enough to borrow a car from friends, because they had two, and one of them was out of town. But, alas, yesterday Chris had to return the beautiful Jeep Liberty that he had become spoiled driving. (I know, not as nice as a Mazda Navajo or a 1981 Celica named Cornholio...but that's another story) Because we knew we were going to need another car (When Chris and I got here, we only had the Frontier. So, I would either be stuck at home, or I would drive him to work, then pick him up for lunch, then drive him back to work, and pick him up at the end of the day. We don't live that close to base, so it was putting miles on the truck and taking up lots of time), we had applied and been approved for a car loan. We had a blank check, just no where to spend it! So, I spent all of last week calling dealerships, visiting some in Sierra Vista, and scanning online dealership inventories. We kept trying to find that perfect vehicle, sometimes calling the day after it had been sold. Boohoo. Anyways, yesterday, we drove up to Tucson before puppy class (that is the only dog reference), and went to a Nissan dealership to look at three different vehicles. I had called the person I was working with there that morning, and he confirmed that all three vehicles were still there. By the time we arrived at 4pm, two of the three vehicles had been sold. Lucky for us, the remaining vehicle was very nice. So, here it is...In my attempt to become ever more Korean, we bought a Hyundai Santa Fe. It is a cute v6 (because I can't stand driving cars that don't GO when I push on the gas!). It has about 60,000 miles on it, but because of that great Hyundai warranty, we still have 6 years and 40,000 miles left on the powertrain warranty. I haven't come up with a name yet, but I'm open to suggestions!


The back seat...very spacious...should be big enough for all my stuff.

My surprise sunroof! I didn't realize we had one until this morning!

My car's nose...small, but what else can you expect from a Korean car.

The front seats.

New car pictures, continued

My car's cute little butt.

The side view of the car...I love silver, it hides all that dirt!

The center console, complete with am/fm/cd/cassette.

The back trunk area with the plastic cover perfect for protecting the car from any animal urine mistakes (I'm not referencing any specific animal, of course!). It also has a cargo cover to hide things from peeping eyes.

No Dogs here!

Surprisingly, this update does not have any pictures of dogs, any references to dogs (beyond this initial paragraph), and therefore does not focus on dogs (good thing, because it would be hard to do an update on dogs if I couldn't do the fore mentioned things!). This one is all about my plumeria trees/sticks.

I bought these sticks while I still lived in Hawaii. Previously, while my sister and her family were visiting, we found this guy at the swap meet who sold plumeria sticks. I call them sticks because they are seriously just sticks cut off of a plumeria tree. The ends are sealed, and totally hearty. Mark, my brother in law, and I bought some sticks and I stuck mine in a pot and put it on the lanai. (After they sat on my dining room table for 3 weeks while I went on vacation) Literally, that is all I did. A few months later, it grew some leaves, and then we moved to Sierra Vista, so I gave the stick in the pot to a friend of ours who was staying in Hawaii. But since I had found out that it was pretty easy to grow plumeria, and they are easily one of my favorite flowers (I love the white ones with a little yellow in the center...reminds me of the kids I hope to have one day...hehehe!), I went back to the stick guy at the Swap meet, and bought more from him. Here's the crazy thing...I gave him money and the address I was staying at in Arizona, and he said he would send the sticks to me (so I could avoid all the bother with agriculture inspections...he was allowed to send them via U.S. mail). So, I easily could have just given the guy money and never seen the sticks. But he was a great old local guy, and I did get the sticks. I put them in a pot with some dirt and lava rock, and watered it when I remembered, and then it started to sprout some leaves. I continued with this exhausting regimen, and it continued to thrive. Then, I made a seemingly disastrous mistake. I moved the pot outside. Prior, it had been living in the guest room by the window, but it was starting to spread out too much, so I decided it move it outside. Then, once I got it out there, I panicked that it was too dry for a plumeria, so I watered like twice a day. Then they started to turn brown. So I stopped watering them so much, and moved them to a shadier spot. And today, I saw that one of the sticks was blooming! I don't know if the sticks' leaves will stop turning brown, but at least I got one flower out of the sticks. So, here are my pictures of my plumeria sticks:


Here is the actual plant. I bought four sticks from the swap meet guy, and all of them are growing leaves. Since my favorites are the white with yellow, I'm hoping one of the sticks will be that variety. Swap meet guy also gave me I think a rainbow one and obviously a pink/red one. He said those were the easiest to grow. You can see some of the brown spots on the leaves, but some leaves are still doing fine, so I'm hopeful.


Here is my first flower. She's pinkish/reddish with a hint of orange...Maybe this is the rainbow stick. He labeled them when he sent them, but I couldn't read his writing or decipher his code. Oh well...

Here's another picture of Flower #1.

In this picture, you can see the other flower buds behind Flower #1. Hopefully they will start blossoming, too!

Here is a better picture of the buds. There are quite a few of them!

So the moral of this story is that even with minimal care, I see to be able to keep a plumeria stick alive long enough to get one flower.

Dogs for dummies...

This is Rai, our country dog...notice the straw hanging from his lips. He often has straw or grass hanging from his mouth (we're not sure he knows it's there)....because he's an old man country dog.
This one is a cute one of Chris and the dogs. We love how they cock their heads to the sides when a funny noise is made. In the above picture, Chris had to hold them back so they didn't rip each other's ears off, then I had to make crazy noises so they would look at the camera. And, Voila! Puppy perfection.

Here's a cute one of Eden. She has this adorable habit of peeking around things. Sometimes, she's trying to sneak up on Rai, sometimes she trying to see if I'm holding the hose, sometimes she is just seeing what's going on.

Here's Rai. If you look closely, you'll notice that there is a wet spot on the wall by his head. He seems to be licking/digging his way out of the yard. If you haven't guessed yet, he isn't a genius.

In this one, Chris is playing with the dogs. They seem to only like the toy that the other ones has, so here, Chris has two tennis balls, and he throws one, then as soon as they go chasing after it, he throws the other one right in front of the dog in second place (usually Rai). That way, they'll each chase a different ball. It only worked about 50% of the time. Oh well.

Puppy Adventures

Eden and Rai drink water from the white tub below. It was hot out, so I filled it with ice. Raisin proceeded to try to dig his way to the bottom, throwing ice left and right. Then, he completely ignored the ice he had dug into. And I'm not talking one paw at a time, I'm an organized dog - dig. I'm talking two paws, throwing as if my life depended on it - dig. What a spaz.

This is Eden doing what boxers do...chasing her own tail. Around and around she goes until she slowly sinks to the floor so that she can bend herself in half to get that tail. It's the beginning of the "boxer burn." It's going to be great when she is a 70 lb dog trying to do that!

These two pictures are of the most recent escapade of Rai's. A few days ago, Rai found out that he could carry the tub around. Tonight, he grabbed it and tried to carry it around. I'm not sure where he was going, but it didn't matter, because whenever he got it up to carry it, he ran into something because he couldn't see anything past the tub. He ran into a wall, a chair, and a couple of times, the tub hit the ground while he was still trying to carry it, and then he ran into it (while he was still biting it). Logistically, that just doesn't work. He didn't figure that out, though.

This is Rai's usually eating pose. It's so much work to eat, that he often lays down with his head in his bowl, and eats just like that. He's saving his energy for running into things.

So, when Rai and Eden play, they chase each other around. And part of that chasing is moments of stopping and "stalking" each other, where they stare at each other until one moves, and then they begin chasing each other again. Well, recently, I noticed that my smarty pants dog, Eden, has begun trying to sneak up on Rai by hiding behind things. Unfortunately, she's bigger than she knows. She first tried to hide behind a leg of the grill. She walked up behind it, looking at Rai, then ducked her head behind the post, and then peeked around it again. Too bad for her that the post was only like two inches wide. Earlier today, I saw her trying to hide in the plastic pool we have, but she only ducked her head down. Her butt was still up in the air, wiggling around. She would look at Rai, put her head down, and then peek up a few times. Well, at least she's trying!

Sleepy dogs

So, I am a terrible Mommy. I let Rai and Eden outside by themselves for a few minutes while I went to talk to Chris, and when we went to go check on them, somehow, they had knocked over a patio chair. And upon closer inspection, Eden seemed to be stuck to the chair by her collar. We got her free and made sure she was okay, but as Chris informed me, she could have died. Bad Mama.

Anyways, we were trying to keep the puppies awake so that when we went to Tucson tonight for puppy class, they would sleep the whole way, and be tired during class so they couldn't embarass us (again.) Well, it didn't work because when puppies are tired, they just lay down and fall asleep.

Rai, sleeping. (And Jin.)

Eden and Rai, drinking the mist from the hose.

Hangin' with the pups

Eden and Rai, chillin' in the hot Arizona sun.

Best friends?

So, yesterday evening, I came outside to see Chris laughing his butt off. Then I looked down and saw Rai, sitting in the water tub (by sitting, I mean butt in first, all four legs dangling out, hanging out the sides). The tub is white, rubbermaid; my family used to use a similar one to wash the dishes while we were camping. Rai has figured out that he can pick it up with his teeth, and drag it around the backyard. Chris said that Rai was dragging it off the concrete and onto the rocks when he tripped and fell butt first into the tub. And then, instead of trying to get out, he just turned his head and began chewing on the edge again. Then, Eden came over and tipped the tub over, but Rai still couldn't get out. So, all in all, Rai is a dork.