Boyz II Men

Rudy and Leo recently reached that all important milestone in a dog's life - neutering. Unfortunately for male dogs, their 6 month birthday not only comes with a doggie ice cream cake, but it also comes with an all-expense paid trip to the vet! Lucky them.

Chris took the day off to drop them at the vet in the morning and pick them up after they had both been 'snipped' and, in Rudy's case, had a hernia repair. I was home from work when Chris pulled in the garage and I was greeted with 2 very distressed little doggies. Don't worry - they were fully recovered about 2 days later....despite the fact that we had to keep them 'restrained' for 7 days!

End of an Era

After 20 good years, our family cabin was sold in August. It took almost a year of sitting on the market with no offers for The One to finally come along. An NHL hockey player bought it for cash none the less! He has small children and wanted to use it right away before he headed to training camp. This meant that we had to be out in 2 weeks! This didn't really allow for any last vacations at the cabin, but we did manage to drive up for a day to take some last pictures. Things are a little messy in these photos due to the place being in various stages of packing at the time. It's surreal that we won't be going there anymore. So many happy family memories - I hope that the next family has just as many!

Where Have We Been?

It's been a long time since I've written. What have we been up to all summer? Just a few things, here and there. To start, we finally tackled our basement project. Since we moved in last May, we've accumulated quite a collection of boxes in our basement that we just didn't 'know what to do with yet'. Our decision making was accelerated when our washing machine flooded into the utility room below and soaked a lot of the cardboard boxes we had down there.

As a result, we invested in some large metal racks from Costco (gotta love that place) and many, many plastic bins to avoid this issue in the future. Of course, this meant we actually had to go through all of the boxes and possibly (gasp) get rid of some things. Over the course of about 3 weekends we actually got it all done! Of course I didn't take any pictures of the 'in process' work, but I did manage to snap this little gem of a picture of Chris cleaning out a box that contained his old glasses from high school. I'm guessing these weren't designed by Michael Kors - classic!

 The end result was a much cleaner and organized basement, and even some room to spare on the shelves!

Out with the Old!

When we get bored, we tend to buy things....not a pretty picture. Except when the new thing is this!

We traded our CRV for an Acura MDX this week and I absolutely love it! I have XM radio now and my favorite station is "90's on 9" - all 90's music, all the time! It also has a backup camera so that I don't roll over one of the little fur balls in the driveway. We are about to take it on our first road trip to visit Ashley!

Here are a few pics of Heidi Honda on her last day at the Krusmark household. I hope she'll make a new family very happy :).

Summer Fun

Summer seems to be flying by as always. We've had a lot going on in the past few weeks! We recently took a trip to Duluth for a Michael Buble concert and we took the doggies. Here they are on the car ride, nice and safe!

We took them down to the lake shore but they hesitated a little about going in. They much preferred the sticks that had washed up on shore.

After a long day of walking around we decided that it was time to find some snacks and delicious summer drinks!

While we were eating we spotted a little something interesting.....see if you can figure it out based on this picture :)

And of course there was the concert! We had floor seats and they were worth every penny! Michael came down to the floor to sing a couple of songs and I stood on my chair and was eye level with him! He looked at me, smiled, and pointed his mic at me! Then I fainted and had to be revived by Chris....just kidding. His gorgeous model wife was sitting just behind us and I'm sure she was seething with jealousy.

What Happened to Spring?

I'm glad that I managed to snap this picture of my peony plant before the 100+ degree temperatures killed everything! So much for spring.

Another impediment to the growing season seems to be my dogs....they have been enjoying my plants more than I have. A little too much!

On an unrelated note, we've recently acquired some lovely end tables and lamps for our living room. Adding the lamps gives the room a lot more light and having 2 end tables creates a lot of symmetry in the room where there was none before.

We also decided to update the window treatments in the living room and dining room. It was hard to part with the mauve honeycomb blinds that Nancy (previous owner) installed, but somehow we made it through.....

Stay tuned for the 'final' reveal once we've finished the room!

Wildlife

So, I was in the back yard with Leo (the bad dog), in pajamas and no bra (give me a break, it was 8:45 pm on a weekday!). We've been taking chances with some 'off leash' bathroom breaks outside before our Invisible Fence is up and running, and this happened to be one of those days. Usually when we have 1 - 1 time outside, they go potty and its right back inside. On this occasion however, I was waiting for Leo to do his 'business' when a giant (according to me) coyote ran into the neighbor's yard. It took less than 3 seconds for Leo to bee line for Mr. Coyote - cue Krystle's heart attack. Luckily, coyotes are scared of people and this one ran away....right back to the elementary school playground that it came from. I didn't get to my camera on time, but this photo is a pretty solid depiction of what I saw.....