More New Mexico

As you can guess, we're still in New Mexico. There's no reason that we would not be, but it was a bit of a drag this week. The problem was the springtime, even though it hasn't come yet.

In New Mexico the wind blows a lot for several months, and it has just started. It's really gross when that happens because the sky is blotted out with dust and it's too windy to do anything outside. It's even worse here because of the white sands. You can taste drywall just by walking outside.

Needless to say, it has been blowing recently. Blech. It was windy from Friday through Sunday. On Sunday we actually went to White Sands to meet a friend, and in the minute that our car door was open everything got covered in a thick layer of sand.

We also took Heidi to obedience class on Sunday, and she was much better this time. This behavior can probably be attributed to the prong collar that we bought her on our trainer's recommendation. The wind was annoying there too. People's hats were flying off, and just keeping your eyes open was painful.

We forgot to measure Heidi yesterday, but when she went to the vet last week she had only gained 1 pound. She hadn't been eating well for a while, so we have to put gravy on her food. Between wiping her after she goes to the bathroom and preparing meals for her, she is a bit of a high maintenance dog. That and she still freaks out when we leave the house. Oh well, she's just a puppy.

I've ridden my bike around town a bit and it has been fun. It's great to get some exercise while returning a movie, for example, and it's a lot of fun to travel at a more leisurely pace through alleys and streets that I don't normally see.

weekend

Here is another picture of Heidi. She's getting pretty big; today she was a 19 inch square. In the background you can see the piano we bought. It sounds and feels great.

We took Heidi to dog obedience class today, and she was worse than she has ever been--she wore us out and when we got home all 3 of us slept for 3 hours.

The dog trainer at our class today said that you can see how smart a dog is by hiding a cookie under a paper towel. A smart dog is supposed to lift up the paper towel to get to the cookie. We tried it tonight with a dog treat, and Heidi just ate a hole in the paper towel. We're not really sure what that means....

We also got to go over to our friends' house tonight to play Pictionary, which was a lot of fun. They had, however, forgotten daylight savings time, so when we called and said that we would be there in 2 minutes they were quite surprised. I guess it's good that we called.

Some more updates:

Yesterday we got to go help our neighbor out by fixing a gate that had blown down in a windstorm earlier in the week.

Friday we grilled some burgers at the squadron in the afternoon. Sarah made some fantastic baked beans, but the recipe was huge so we have several pounds left over. I was eating a lot of them as easy leftovers, but this morning Sarah asked me to stop....

Also on Friday Sarah fell while hiking and scraped her hand really badly. It's fine and getting better, but it looked nasty for a while.

Overall, today was a good day that was over much too quickly.

bikes

Sarah and I bought bikes this week. We rode them home from the bike store and had a great time. I also went for a ride tonight, but Sarah won't be able to for a while. She fell while on a hike with some friends and scraped her hand pretty badly.

Sarah was worried because she hadn't ridden a bike in years, but I told her, "don't worry, it's like riding a bike." She was fine. I had a bit of trouble though. It wasn't hard, it's just that it must use a new set of muscles though, because after our 10 minute ride I could tell that riding my bike would be difficult for a while.

Sarah made some fantastic baked beans today for a squadron event, and now we have a week's worth of beans in the fridge. Good thing I like them.

And She Keeps Growing....

Today Heidi is 18.5 inches tall and 18.5 inches long. She just keeps getting bigger! And judging from her paws, she has a long way to go! (Which we like because we wanted a big dog.) She's getting pretty good at "stay" now and when we're on a walk for the last couple of blocks we let her off the leash and say "go home!" She runs half a block, turns around, waits for us to catch up a bit, and runs another half a block until we get home. It's really cute that she knows which road to turn down to get home.

Yesterday Jordan bought me a SWEET new digital piano. I'm so excited about it. I started taking lessons again and instead of having to go to the church to practice, I can just go to my living room! Well that's about it for now. Things are going very well here in New Mexico.

Saturday

Today we woke up, had breakfast with some friends, and then decided to buy a piano. So this afternoon we drove to Guitar Center in El Paso, picked our favorite one (well, at least the best one we could afford), and brought it back. fitting it in the car was a little tough, but after about 15 minutes we were good to go. Sarah loves it.