HELP! Puppy Potty Training

Ok people, I am in need of your help!! I need to know any facts/tricks to help our little pup understand the whole {only} potty outside thing. At the moment, I feel as if I should own stock in paper towels because we are going through so many rolls lately.

I know he is still very young, almost 9 weeks old, but when exactly do they start to realize that they should go outside to pee??

We have puppy pads that we stick into his kennel during the day, while we are both at work. Now I get right now that there is no way he can hold it all day long, hence the puppy pads. The real problem is when he is out of the kennel playing, then all of a sudden he pees. Somedays I would swear he has an endless supply of pee!!

If any of you have any tips or advice, we would GREATLY appreciate it.

**Link-Up with Random Wednesday

What's In A Name??

Choosing a name for our puppy was a very hard decision. Hubby insisted we wait on name ideas until after we met him and could feel out his temperament and whatnot. Well, I couldn't do that lol. You would not believe how many websites / name lists there are for dog names! So I made a list of names that I liked {some I thought Hubby would like} and went from there.

A few names got nixed because of one thing or another, but we narrowed it down to around 10 names before Saturday morning. So during the whole ride back home, we discussed what name to give our newest family member. I had a few I really liked. Hubby had a few he really liked. We couldn't find the ONE name that we both completely agreed on.

After a 2.5-3 hour car ride home, we still didn't have a name picked. I came up with the idea of having the puppy help pick his name. We both had two names we really liked, so I wrote them each on small pieces of paper. I laid the names out in front of me and hubby held the puppy so he could see the papers. Which ever name the pup touched first would be his name, that was our plan.

Duke {Me}
Gunner {Me}
Hank {Hubby}
Luke {Hubby}


Well the puppy touched two names, one right after the other. Unfortunately I hated the first name {Hank}, so I made the executive decision to veto that vote. Hubby agreed and we are going with the puppy's second choice.


Drum Roll........

His name is Luke!

On a side not, hubby's BFF's dog's name is Beau {that's pronounced Bo}. So together we have Beau and Luke, like the Dukes of Hazzard. Yeah we are corny people sometimes. :) Did anyone else have problems when it came to picking out names??

Newest Addition to Our Little Family

Surprise, I'm a mommy now!! Now that we've settled into the house {and fixed the gate}, we decided that we wanted to hear the pitter patter of little feet. Saturday morning we got up super early and drove the 2.5-3 hours to pick-up our little bundle of joy.

His name is a 7 week old chocolate lab. Ha has the most gorgeous silver/blue eyes!

Mommy & Puppy

Daddy & Puppy

We are both so in LOVE with him!!!!

More to come on how / what his name is later. {b/c that's a story in itself lol}

***Link-Up with #YOLOmondays

I'm Alive and Still Slightly Sick

I know I've been a little MIA this week, but I have a good excuse. Remember last week when I was telling you how I wasn't feeling well and that my voice was doing some fun things, here?

WEEELLL, it me we got worse.

Both the hubby and I were down for the count. I was rocking a low grade fever for a few days = no work. We went to the doctor's office on Wednesday, and found out we had some sort of bug/virus thing. BTW I probably did get my hubby sick, but let's just keep that between us. Ok??

So now that we are almost finish with our medicine that doctor gave us, we are actually starting to feel better. Now don't get me wrong, we are still a very coughy couple but it's getting better. We are getting back into the swing of our everyday {non-sick} routine.

Happy Friday!!!!

Sick...Sick...Sick

I feel like death today. I've been having an oh so awesome cough / sore throat for a few days. Today I wake up and either I have no voice at all or I sound like a thirteen year old boy going through puberty. Why is it that every time you have a a bad cough, it always comes with a sore throat? It would much more manageable if I had one or the other, not both.

I cough, my throat hurts.

I cough some more, my throat hurts more.

See what I'm getting at?? It's a very vicious cycle that I'm dealing with right now. And to make matters worse, Hubby told me this morning that he couldn't sleep because he had a soar throat. Oops! Did I really just get my Hubby sick? Lord help me if he gets to feeling as crappy as me. I left him some cough drops that I placed in the shape of a heart. That should cancel out the fact that I got him sick, right?? Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday!

Have any of y'all ever got / made your significant other sick? Tell me that I'm not the only one!!

First House Guests & Crawfish Boil

This weekend we had the Hubby's best friend and wife over for the weekend to see the new house. Which means that last weekend, we were trying to quickly clean out the guest room so we could put the bed in there. It all worked  out, because they had a clutter free room {with a bed} to stay in.

Hubby decided that he wanted to do a crawfish boil while they were visiting. So Saturday morning the boys went out and picked up a sack of live crawfish to boil later that evening. Here are a few pictures I took of the day {with my phone}.

 Now doesn't that spread look yummy?? Luckily  one of our neighbors came by to help us eat some of it. There was so much food!!!

On Sunday after our friends left to go back to Mississippi, we sort of had a lazy afternoon of watching TV. We ended up watching a show on the Cooking Channel about wood oven pizzas, which all looked super yummy. So I'm not really sure how we got the idea to make our own pizza for dinner, but you know.  :)


Hubby found a recipe for pizza dough online. I know I'm a horrible blogger for not remembering where / who he got the recipe from. We put some tomato puree {from a can} along with some dried herbs mixed in as our pizza sauce.

Then we added the leftover crawfish, mushrooms, garlic, and sausage from the crawfish boil on our pizza. Baked at 450 degrees for about 18 minutes, and voila Crawfish Boil Pizza!!!! Let me just say that this crazy idea was delicious!!

**Link-Up with #YOLOmonadys

Wedding Album!!

After a really LONG day at work {I've been sick all week} we come home to find our wedding album by our front door. This made my day!! I've been waiting for them to finish it for weeks.

Quick side note, the album was delayed due to Hurricane Sandy.  Apparently my photographer's supplier was hit by the storm, so everything was on back-order for a few weeks/month.

The album came out far better than I had expected. This thing is massive and weighs a ton.

Thanks again to Photo225 for creating our lovely album!!!

Car Problems

Here is a little back story to help you understand what I've been going through. About the middle of January, Hubby and I went to his best friend's wedding near Jackson, MS, which meant we were taking my car. It had been super cold so I thought my car was being sluggish because of the weather, well I was wrong. While we were in MS my car started to jerk when Hubby was trying to accelerate really fast. {Not a cool trick} I blame my car's new trick on how Hubby drives my car. Fast & Furious anyone?!

So when we got back I did some investigating online and everything said to check the transmission. Hubby went out and checked the transmission fluid for me {I'm not mechanical} and returned to tell me he couldn't see any fluid. WHAT?!?! To make matters worse, my car has "special" transmission fluid that you can only get at the dealership's shops. So I call around and one place says they can't even look at my car until the end of February {mind you I called the the 3rd week of January}! So I called another place that didn't have a transmission guy and would have to send it off. Umm....no thank you. Third place I called could see me. YAY!!! To make this long story short, there is a crack on a cap that connects my transmission to something else. Did I mention I'm not a mechanical person?

The part was ordered! :)

The part is on back order and I'm still leaking transmission fluid. :(

Fast forward to today {Friday} and my car was dropped off Wednesday morning to have the part fixed. Turns out that it wasn't just the cap-thingy that was cracked. Apparently some other part inside the transmission next to the cap is also cracked/broken. Thank God that they checked the rest of the transmission when they were putting the new cap on. So I'm stuck with a rental {Thank You Extended Warranty} until the beginning of next week. I can't wait to have my car back!!

And my sunglasses!

And my garage opener!

And my parking tag for work!

Yes I had not prepared myself for not getting my car back the same day I dropped it off. It's been super fun driving without my sunglasses. I'm sure the people at Parking & Transit enjoy the note I left them explaining it's a rental and begging them not to ticket me. On the bright side, today is Friday and some of Hubby's friends are coming to see the house tomorrow and to take a tree with them {more on that later}.

So to end this ever so long post, Happy Friday!!

Southern Bloogers

Hey y'all! I just stumbled over a giant list of southern bloggers! I'm so pumped over my little discovery this morning. A big thanks goes out to Rebecca over at xoxo Rebecca for coming up with this whole list.

 Here is the image of Rebecca's button {located on my sidebar} that takes you directly to the list:

Let me just say it one more time, I love this idea!!! I'm even on it {#304}. I can't wait to go through the list and discover some new blogs to follow. 

So go on over and check out the list. Let me know if you're already on it or if you just added yourself to it. I love making new blog friends!

Lowe's & Lost Ring

So I don't know if it is just us and our inability to remember everything we need, but I feel like I almost live at Lowe's. We have gone so many times in the past two weeks that I feel like they are going to remember who we are, and start judging us after our third trip to the store in one day. Uhhh! The other day I was going to the grocery store and I went on auto pilot or something because before I knew it, I was at Lowe's!!!

Here is a picture of our first trip to Lowe's that day.

The makings of a mailbox {because someone took the other one}, potting soil, and a few pots to transplant our herbs from the apartment to the house. At the apartment the Hubby had use cinder blocks as pots, but I said it wouldn't go with our new house.

Anyway, the installation of the mailbox post was going along smoothly once the Hubby found the original post's hole by the driveway. Everything was great, we put the cement in the hole and we leveled the post before it all dried. The Hubby went to wash off all the mud from his hands on the side of our house, and realized his ring was gone. Oh my heart sank when he told me that!! So we spent the rest of that day not installing the mailbox part to the post, but looking for his ring. Poor thing thought it had to be where he was washing his hands {and not in the cement foundation of the mailbox post} which just so happened to be next to a rather large ant mound, which i have been trying to kill for days.

Needless to say we didn't find it. I have decided that he made sacrifice to the house and everything else will go smoothly. {Fingers Crossed!}

Do any of you have any crazy stories from when you moved into your house?

**Link-Up with #YOLOmondays

Happy Friday & Call Me Maybe Video

First off, yeah for internet at the house!!!! Here are some pictures of use after we signed the papers for the house.

Pictures of the house will follow soon.



And now here's a video that made me giggle. Thank You YouTube!!!

BTW I don't really care that this video is a few months old, it's still frickin' funny! So Happy Friday!!!

Homeowners At Last!!

Just to bring y'all up to speed, since it is already Wednesday, we signed the papers Friday afternoon!! Right after we signed, I went straight to our house {I LOVE saying that} and went to town trying to clean as much as possible before we moved Saturday.

Let me just say that Saturday aka Moving Day drove me C-R-A-Z-Y with everybody asking me where everything went. I had no idea where somethings were going to go, and to be completely honest I still have no idea where something are going. Oh well.

Now for something serious, we don't have internet at our house yet. I'm hoping to have them come out Friday and hook a girl up with some internet and cable, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen. So my posts might be a little sparser for the moment, but don't worry because I have loads of things to tell/show y'all.

House is a GO!

We just got the appraiser's report this weekend, and everything that he said needed to get fixed was fixed. Last week was the longest week of waiting ever! I spent days wondering when they would turn the water back on {ended up being late Thursday afternoon} and when the appraiser would be able to go back out to the house to check everything {sometime on Friday}.

So with all of that settled, we close this Friday!!! We have commenced the long ordeal of packing up everything we own, which for some reason I seem to have more stuff than the Hubby. I have no idea how that happened! ;)

We have really no food left in our fridge for this week. Last week I pretty much made dinners out of whatever was left in our freezer. The house doesn't have a fridge in it at the moment. Hopefully we can have one delivered this weekend! I refused to go shopping for more groceries, because I have this fear we will be living out of ice chests. Plus this way I don't have to deal with cleaning dishes!!! I'll keep y'all posted on how everything goes this week.

I Have a Window!!!

After a much long awaited delay {2-3 yeah right}, the living room window has been fixed. The guy finally showed up at 5 Friday afternoon!

So Pretty!!

I'm going to let that go because the window was the last thing we needed to do before the FHA appraiser guy could come back out to the house. So now we just have to wait for the water to be turned back on {it was shut off again before he went out the first time} and for the appraiser to give our financing company the green light. Maybe by the end of the week, the Hubby and I could be homeowners!!! Being a homeowner is still a little scary to us, because it makes us seem even more like grown-ups. Lol. I think this is going to be an even better start of our new lives together.

**Link-Up with #Yolomondays

In the HOME Stretch!?!

Ok y'all! We are soooo close to finishing everything we needed to do for the FHA guy to approve the house. We painted over the water spot on the ceiling. I got Lowe's to deliver our my stove on Martin Luther King Day, because I had the day off from work. Woohoo I love paid days off of work!!! And now I'm just not so patiently waiting for a phone call saying the window is in. I had hoped it would of been in in time for them to install it on MLK Day too, but no such luck.

If {and I mean a big IF} everything goes as I have planned it, then we could possibly close the middle of next week. Eeek! I have my fingers crossed that I'll be getting a phone call soon from the window people or I might just call them myself after lunch to see if the window is indeed on their truck. It would just make my weekend if I could have the window installed tomorrow. I already have so many plans/ideas for the house, thanks in large part to my unhealthy habit of being on Pinterest a lot. Plus the fact that we have already grown out of our small apartment. Oh I can't wait for this house buying process to be over!!!!

2013 + House Update

We've made it to 2013!! In true New Year's Resolution style, the Hubby and I have decided to get healthier. We already don't buy soft drinks for the house, which seems to be going pretty well. We only drinks soft drinks whenever we go places and sometimes on the weekend. Now we have added to cutout fast food. No more just picking something up on the way home for dinner, we actually have to cook something or get something from a healthier place to eat, like Subway. Since we are both completely on-board for this, it should work in helping us get healthier {and maybe a little skinnier too}.


Now onto the House!

We had our inspection done and there are no major issues that we didn't already know were there. The water spot on the living room ceiling is just from when the A/C unit pan overflowed, probably happened after they foreclosed on the house. We have to replace the broken window in the living room as well. We also need/want to replace the stained carpets with some wood-like flooring.

I say wood-like because we will eventually be getting a lab puppy and I see no point in spending a lot more money on real wood floors just to have the dog scratch them all up. Plus now they make the wood-like flooring that looks just like the real thing! {that's my practical side coming out}

Our bank sent out their appraiser New Year's Eve morning, and we got the report later that day. So now we have a few things to get done to be up to FHA's requirements. 1.) We needed to prove the spot was just from a leak and nothing serious. DONE. 2.) We have to put a stove in the house. I bought one the other day, and am just waiting to know what day to have them deliver it. HALFWAY DONE 3.) We have to fix the broken window. WORKING ON IT

Did I forget to mention that the previous people broke in {by breaking the window} to reclaim their appliances?? Yes all the appliances are gone, which in a way allows us to get whatever appliances we want.

Then once the house is ours, I can start to decorate/repaint it!!! I have complete control of decorating. The Hubby said I could do whatever as "long as it looked good," like I would want my house to look bad or something? lol