Happy Birthday Dream D!

Wednesday officially marked Dream's 8th birthday, and probably just the second one she's actually celebrated. We got a big "Happy Birthday" treat for her from Treats Unleashed, a great bakery and boutique next door to our vet.

She's definitely a cookie monster. After we gave it ot her, she took it into the living room and went to town.

About 5 minutes later, we decided we should maybe take 1/2 of it and save it for the next day since it was after 10 and we didn't want her to get sick in the middle of the night. We go to the living room and it's GONE. What a pig!

We're "babysitting" her mom for a long weekend and thought she might be with us to celebrate. We picked her up on Thursday and have her until Monday night. She's such a sweet girl! We'd love to keep her, Roger in particular, but D has been acting wierd over the last few days and is very protective of me...maybe we're just a one hound house. But she has gotten better.

And by the way, we have some grass growing :).

Operation Peppermint Patch (and Power Wash!)

Phase I of our backyard "renovation" was ripping out the playground and getting rid of the sand box. After scooping out 19 yard waste bags worth of mulch from the area between our back gate and the retaining wall over the last week and a half, we finally successfully completed Operation Peppermint Patch over the weekend. If you look back a few posts, you'll see some big green plants under the playground .... that's peppermint and it was growing ALL OVER a section of our yard.

Roger got a tiller on Friday and while turning over the dirt, ripped out the remaining peppermint roots. On Saturday, I did probablly the closest thing to farming I"ll ever do, sowing grass seeds, covering them with straw and watering.

Sunday was supposed to be a day to stain and seal part of our fence that we'd power washed earlier, but it was supposed to rain on Monday and Tuesday (didn't on either, of course). So I moved from Operation PP to Operation PowerWash and got about 1/2 of our fence done in 3 1/2 hours.

But the weekend wasn't all manual labor, we hung out at the Irish festival on the riverfront with Dream's rescue group. One of the guys tried to do the caber toss and actually broke the women's pole when it fell backwards. It was pretty funny!!

Think it's been a while since this fence has been cleaned? I don't think our neighbor's dog was too impressed with my work ....

Sad Day at the H-B House

Friday was a very sad day at the Henning-Buhr house.

For the last several months, Phoebe had been struggling with various allergies and a few skin irritations and had been on and off of a few different kinds of medicines to help resolve her issues.

Last week, my mom took her to our old vet for his opinion and after a few shots and a prescription, she was feeling much better. On Tuesday, she went back to the vet for a check-up and a blood draw to determine if the steroids she had been givin by the other vet had damaged her liver or kidneys. Her white cell count was low, while some level in her liver was very high which could mean several things. The only way to determine exactly what was happening was to sedate her and do an X-ray, which was scheduled for today.

This morning Pheobe had a very hard time getting up and had to be lifted into the truck to go for her x-ray. She got sick on the way there and the vet did not think she could make it out of the anasthetic needed for her x-ray.

Tonight she's pain-free, itch-free and on a comfy bed hanging out with mom and Larry's other dog Blackie, who they put down in May. What an unexpectedly rough day.

Holy .... Do We Have Cake!

As the director of PR and marketing, it's my job to create positive impressions both internally and externally for the school where I work ... from placing news items to creating the warm fuzzies.

Since 40 years ago today, the school opened its doors for the first time, I suggested we treat the boys to a birthday party lunch to know the advancement team. I hadn't really put much thought into exactly how much cake our "party" would need, except a lot.

For three lunch periods today, roughly 2 hours, five people from our end of the building and the school president served 15 humongous sheet cakes to our entire student body ... roughly 1,150 teenage boys. I've never seen, smelt or had to cut that much sugary stuff in my life! Glad I'm not in food service.

Aside from the decorated cake we saved for meetings tomorrow, I'm pleased to report that we had just 1 piece left over :).

One Down...

Do you remember where you were on this day last year?? Hopefully you were enjoying some Louisiana shrimp and a few choice beverages with us….

We’re pleased to report that as of today we’ve officially made it through one year of marriage. At the school where I work, they’re big on “reflection,” so we decided to reflect on the last 365 days of our lives … it’s amazing what went on in that seemingly short period of time.
• We purchased our first house.
• Roger bought a new truck.
• Heather got a new job.
• Roger earned a promotion.
• We traveled to England and France.
• Our extended family grew by one (Mason M. on July 31).
• The extended family lost two (Jerry in February and Blackie in May).
• Several of our friends were married (Mike & Sarah, Heather& Jim).
• Two different cousins announced their wedding dates (Kara 10/07 and Kristen 8/08).
• Hard to believe that my mom and Larry celebrated their 10th anniversary.... I must be getting old when it seems like a couple of years ago.
• Rog’s niece, Heather, graduated from high school.
• We learned so many new skills in home repair, and painted for when seemed like weeks on end.
• We re-learned how to drive in the snow and ice (no snow in STL our first winter here)!
• Most importantly … everyone in our immediate families has a clean bill of health.

Here’s to many more great times with our family and friends!!