Monday, May 4, 2009

A Bunch of Busy Bees!

Chris and I have been really busy these past few weeks, and are trying to take full advantage of our time and energy before baby Bunch arrives!! Over the past few months we have been taking Tucker to retrieving classes and not to be a biased bragging mom but he is really starting to shine! Chris got a little frustrated with us this past weekend because he has been busy the past few weekends so I ended up taking Tucker to class, and so at the beginning of class Tucker brought the dummy to me instead of Chris. Hey I can't help it :) But the two of them quickly fell into sync and did an amazing job!

The picture above shows a tricky test for Tucker, he had to watch people throw 2 different dummies, memorize where they fell, and then go retrieve each one individually and drop it at Chris's feet. Notice Chris's shorts, it was 75° this weekend....yea summer is finally here!
We got Tucker August 1st last year, and so he was too little to learn to swim. Well, we thought that swimming is instinct for retrievers....but we thought wrong. This was his first time swimming through the water, and he wasn't too sure about the freezing cold water. Chris and Tucker had to climb in the boat and then someone shot a gun and threw a dummy in the water. Tucker had to jump out of the boat, swim through the water, get the dummy, swim back through the water, and then jump back into the boat and bring it to Chris. It was quite a task, and about half way through the pond Tucker decided that it would be way easier to swim to the side of the pond, run on land to the dummy, and then run on land back to Chris. After a few tries, he got the hang of it!

At night, we have slowly been working on the nursery when we have a chance. We decided we wanted to keep Chris's red wall, but tone it down a little with stripes. Easier said then done, stripes take a LOT of time...but we are really happy with the end result. Chris spent hours taping the lines for the brown stripes and then decided we would paint the next night. Well then Tucker decided the next day that he was bored because he got left home and he would have some fun taking the tape down. So then Chris re-taped a few stripes and we painted a few every night. After we finished painting the brown stripes, Chris had the creative idea of adding little dark brown stripes on each side of the light brown. Yikes, he had to tape 36 lines! But it was worth it! While he was busy with the stripes, I painted the other walls a light brown. Because I am a little OCD, I had to make life interesting and trim the ceiling and sides by hand. Which for a normal person isn't that big of a deal, but with my huge belly it proved to be a little challenging. My belly had to fit between the steps in the ladder, and I had to hold the paint can because I got tired of going up and down the ladder!

Last weekend Chris and I took a road trip down to Anchorage for a hockey tournament...and shopping of course. We left Thursday night, and happened to pick the worst weather to travel in. It snowed pretty much the entire way down, but we still managed to make it down there in 5 and a half hours. We relaxed the entire weekend and didn't get very much shopping in but we really enjoyed our time together. Chris's team won 1 game and lost the other 2, they were close games and he had a fun time, so it looks like we will be going down next year!
On the slate for this week is to finish up the nursery, work on cleaning up the outside of the house (yes the snow has finally all melted away!), and go to birthing classes. I will keep you updated!

4 comments:

Sally Brown said...

Aww, I am so proud of Tucker! The stripes look perfect and amazing. I would expect nothing less from you!

michel said...

Yeah!!! Good job you guys.... I'm glad you're having so much fun and keeping busy! Why wasn't mom over there painting? hehehe.... I can't believe you're having such great weather when I'm gone AND it's been raining here for dayz... Guess I'll go sit in my tub and soak in the bubbles and such. Thanks to you guys!!! Hugs from Our Nation's Capital. Future Home of the Stanley Cup Champions. (won't even discuss whether or not I have tix for any of the games, don't want to hear the sobbing)

The Tylers said...

I LOVE the nursery & got a good laugh at picturing you painting it. I was OCD most of my pregnancy but found most tasks just too hard to complete. I am also proud of the pups! Hugs to you!

AK Momma said...

The stripes look so professional! I'm sure it was a pain but I do like the dark brown stripes.

That's great that Tucker got the hang of swimming. I think spaniels are supposed to be good swimming dogs too but Oscar is the biggest sissy when it comes to getting in the water. Jeremy just has to throw him in and after the first time, there's no getting him back in. Sampson is just as bad too. I think half of it is that they hate getting dirty. My dogs are so girly :-)