Independence Day

A month later...is anyone else still getting pumped up about America due to the Olympic spirit? Y'all I am loving these games! 
On July 4th we drove with some friends to see some fireworks.

 On our way back to their house, we saw fireworks in literally every direction around us! I guess everyone had been storing up since they were unable to do fireworks the year before because of the drought.  It was amazing! We ended up having just as good of a view from their house as we did from the fireworks show.

Meanwhile E was back at the house doing this...

God Bless America! Let's keep getting those gold medals! : )

Cooling off

Holy Cow it is August!?!
So I got this idea on Pinterest (I feel like that's how 75% of my conversations start now-a-days..) for the pups.  The pin showed a picture (with no link) of a huge block of ice with dog toys and treats frozen in it.  The idea is to take it outside with you so the pups can stay entertained and cool.  I started with chicken broth mixed with water in a large tupperware container. Froze it part of the way, added in the toys and treats and then returned it to the freezer.
When we went outside, I dumped it into the grass and the girls worked hard to get their treats and toys out. 

Love this idea! Next time, I may freeze treats in an ice cube tray because this took them FOREVER to actually get to the good stuff.
Since you love my puppies (right!?) Here is what else they have been up to:

SNUGGLING! I didn't even place them like that, promise!

 

And playing with their favorites: E's is the Wubba

 Chlo's is the hamburger

Happy Wednesday!

The attention span of a 5-year old

I have a paper due Monday....I currently have the attention span of a 5 year old. This is a problem. While I'm off task though, I have a few pictures to share : )

Ellie loves three things in her life super fiercely:
1. Cody Sage 2.Her wubba toy 3. pillows (she will move them so that they are positioned under her head).

2 of her loves are picture below

Chloe makes herself comfortable on the ride home from Longview. Her head is poking out between our bags in the back. (Ellie's green wubba made the picture too..)
After reading lots of funny iPhone autocorrects, I had one in a conversation with my mom that I thought was funnier than I'm sure that it actually is
We went to our first Astros' game of the season with Cody's sister Lyndsey and her husband, Chris. Its perfect baseball weather right now!

Happy weekend!

My life in pictures

Randomness seems to be the theme as of late, but pictures help me remember what I want to share:

Cody and I got to celebrate my in-law's anniversary with them again this year (last year we were in Hershey, PA on their anniversary aka St. Paddy's day) . Went to Fleming's for some yummy steaks! I cannot express how grateful we are for the example of marriage that has been set for us in our parents and grandparents!

That same weekend, we saw Alan Jackson at the Rodeo with Cody's parents, sister and brother-in-law. Alan Jackson was not a super-energetic entertainer like Miranda Lambert was (we had gone with Cody's sister and b-i-l to see Miranda earlier in the week), but you knew every song that he played, so he was fun to sing along with. I am always amazed at the sheer number of people who go to the rodeo & carnival each night...so many people! We also saw a lot of children going to the rodeo/carnival as we were leaving around 7:30 on the last night of Spring Break..really parents?

Last Friday right after school, a group of teacher's went to see the Hunger Games. Now I am a not usually a big follower of fad books/movies. I have not seen Harry Potter or the Twilight series and will not do so unless I feel so inclined to read the books before (which I have not been thus far). Cody's cousin got me to read the first game of the Hunger Games and I got hooked. So we were the crazy people last week who bought tickets earlier in the week and were at an afternoon showing of the movie. It was for the most part very true to the book and of course a fun experience when you have that many teachers in a confined space : )

We also went to Dallas last weekend for my cousin, Kara's wedding. Although I do not have a picture of the busy bride, know that she was gorgeous.

We stayed with our friends Warren and Danee and on Sunday, Danee and I got up early enough for her to bike and for me to run White Rock lake. It was so peaceful!! I wish that I had gotten a picture of the rowing crew, but just picture them in the middle of the lake. If we lived in Dallas, I would run here frequently.

Ellie had to have a spot removed on her face and now she had stitches. Of course she seems unaffected, but it makes me hurt for her. Poor pup. I am in so much trouble when we have kids....

And I think to myself what a wonderful world

Yesterday, and today for that matter, God gave us such beautiful days! I was outside doing some school work and decided to snap a few pictures of my scenery. I LOVE the way the trees in our backyard look against a blue sky.


I also snapped a pic of each of the girls:
Ellie's is a little more artistic

and Chloe's just cracks me up..she posed perfectly for me
Hope you are outside enjoying the beautiful weather as well!

Rain!!

Y'all we had rain today!!!! It was like manna from heaven and our grass was rejoicing! The only one not rejoicing was the 84 lb puppy hiding from the thunder...oh my... Look in the middle of the picture, behind the black shoes, kind of under the pants...that's her hiding spot

The Dog Days of Summer

Since I am now home during the day,
1. my puppies are EXHAUSTED at night
2. I am getting to see what they do during the day
Some parts are not exciting such as nap time or window time, but squirrel time on the other time is very exciting

The foe is spotted
The ladies then assume the hunting position

Until one undoubtedly gets distracted (see black lab rolling in the grass)and the other has to go for a closer look
Yes, I did have time today to not only witness this but to also document it. Wish you were a teacher now, huh? : )

Dog Park

We love our puppies and our puppies love to play. When we first moved to Houston, some friends told us about a dog park for Chloe. It is called the Congressman Bill Archer Dog Park, but we call it the Bearcreek dog park (let's be honest, I call it the puppy park). Chloe loves to go play on the little dog side and when we got Ellie, we took her for the big dog side.

My favorite things about it:
1. It is divided into two dog parks with exactly the same things on both sides (smaller scale of course for the little pups).
2. The pools are shaped like a dog bone.
3. There are puppy showers, so we can bathe the girls before they get back in the car
4. There is a lot of room on both sides

Ellie shows off when we are there. Her jumping/swimming skills are impressive. Chloe likes the big dog side and will go up to the largest dog in the dog park each time without fail...she will literally find dogs that resemble horses in size. For this reason, I like to take Chloe on the little dog side. : )
Our pups just had their yearly check ups! Our 5-year old Chloe is 8.4 pounds and our 2-year old Ellie is 82 pounds.
And I just finished watching Marley and Me. Great movie, but leaves me in tears EVERY time. Luckily Chloe is cuddling right by me so it makes it okay!

A tree top view

I love our house. It is very unique. It is also a very old house which means that we are often updating it, but still I love our house. Luckily for us, our puppies love our house too. Their current favorite spot is upstairs. Our house isn't really a 2-story, but we do have a loft room upstairs. It is not anything special, just a place to hold our workout equipment...kind of a second living room.
Our puppies love it because it has big windows, that are up high, hence the puppies are at the same level as the squirrels and birds in the trees. Due to safety reasons (Chloe...), we have to gate off the upstairs,

but once that gate moves you have to watch out for the girls (especially Ellie) as they will try their best to get upstairs before you.

They'll watch for a tiny friend and then rush downstairs and outside to chase it. This will go on for hours! Oh what a good life! : )

On a completely random note, I was trying desperately to get a lot of things finished yesterday, but found my self very ADD jumping from one task to another without finishing anything. I laughed when the Vitamin water that I pulled out of the fridge said FOCUS. Looks like I needed a reminder : )

National Running Day

Yes you read that right. There is a National Running Day and it is on June 1. All of those crazy runners out there like to celebrate their favorite sport and I am no different (I know I know, its kind of silly). After looking around some, I found that there was a group run from Luke's Locker in the Woodlands so my running partners, Carolina & Lauren, and I headed up to the Woodlands on Wednesday after our last student day of school. We did a little shopping, ran around one of the beautiful trails in the Woodlands, won a $25 Luke's Locker gift card, ate some yummy pizza and cupcakes! It was a wonderful evening!

While we were there on Wednesday, I saw a sign for the Dog Gone 5k on Saturday. Ellie and I love to run, so we headed back up to the Woodlands on Saturday morning. What a fun race! There were other puppies for Ellie to play with (some big and some little). Little Miss Ellie came in 3rd place! Woohoo!

She has yet to eat her award. I am sure she and Chlo will enjoy it : )

Squirrel Hunters

In case you didn't know already, our pups are amazing squirrel hunters. Now I'll concede that they have never actually caught a squirrel (praise God!), but they are very focused when at work. A few weeks ago, Ellie came SUPER close to catching a squirrel, but thankfully it got away. The squirrel only made it to a tree in our backyard where Ellie proceeded to stalk it for the next hour. (If you look closely, you can see Ellie under the tree and the poor squirrel close to the top.

When there are clouds in the sky...

Its a gloomyish Saturday, but we have not had the rain they predicted making it the perfect lazy day (after a 8.5 mile run)! Who can name the song my post title is from? : )
We have noticed lately that our formerly inside puppy (Ellie) is now spending great amounts of time outside by herself while we are home. She has found joy in chewing on sticks in the yard, a side effect being that she often smells like tree sap. Now she has chosen many different sticks to chew on: fat ones, skinny ones, ect, but her stick of choice today greatly amused me:

it was huge, a tree basically.

On the kitchen front, I have two new recipes to share with you.
Thursday night, my good friends, Meagan and Dinah, came over to make pizza Sage style. My in-laws always make wonderful personal pizzas, so we decided to carry on the Sage way.

Meagan's pizza

Dinah's pizza

My yummy pizza

and Cody's (he chose not to have his picture taken with it)

Pizza Dough
4.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1/4 cup of olive oil
2 packages yeast
1.5 cups warm water
2 tsp. brown sugar
Measure 1/2 cup of warm water in a measuring cup and stir in 2 tsp. brown sugar. Dissolve the 2 packages of yeast in this mixture and allow to set for about 5 minutes. Sift 4 cups of the flour with salt in a bowl. Add olive oil, 1 cup of the warm water and then the yeast mixture. Mix all together and knead this dough for about 8 minutes. Can dust with flour so it will not be too sticky. Rub a clean bowl with olive oil, put the dough in this, cover, and allow to rise in a warm place for about 1.5 hours. It's ready to make pizza!

I made the pizza dough the night before, covered it with saran and put it in the fridge. When I got home from school I let it rise on the counter uncovered for 1.5 hours. We preheated the oven to 450 and put our cast iron skillets in. When we were ready to make pizzas, the skillets came out one by one, were brushed with a little bit of olive oil, added a small ball of dough rolled out and then brushed it with olive oil and minced garlic and pizza sauce (of course as well as yummy toppings: mozarella and parm. cheese, canadian bacon, pepperoni, onions, peppers, jalepenos).

Friday night we had our friends Hannah and Alex up for baked Spaghetti:
Baked Spaghetti
Ingredients
* 3/4 pound lean ground beef (I used Venison)
* 1 (25 ounce) jar spaghetti sauce
* 1 pound spaghetti
* 1 cup shredded mild Cheddar cheese (we used parm, italian mix and a little bit of Mexican mix)
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). In large skillet, cook hamburger until brown. Mix spaghetti sauce into skillet. Reduce heat and simmer.
2. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Mix in pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain.
3. Mix together spaghetti and meat mixture, pour into 9x13 pan. Top with cheese and bake for 30 minutes, or until heated through and cheese is bubbly. (We layered: spaghetti, meat mixture, cheese, spaghetti, meat mixture, cheese)

I also made a salad last night mimicing the house salad that I had at Peli Peli a few weeks ago.
Raspberry Vinaigrette
Iceberg Lettuce (they used field greens and baby spinach, but I used what I had)
Blueberries
Strawberries (sliced)
Carrot Shavings
Onions
Carmelized Pecans - I couldn't find any to buy already carmelized them, so I bought pecans and carmelized them at home:
I went ahead and did the whole bag so
1 1/2 Cup Pecans
1 1/2 Tbs Butter
3 Tbs Sugar
Melt butter in small skillet over medium-high heat. Add sugar and nuts. Stir constantly until sugar loses grainy appearance (mine took about 4 minutes). Pour nuts onto sheet of aluminum foil and let cool for 15 minutes.

I hope everyone enjoys the weekend! I'm looking forward to having Monday off! : )

A Tale of Two Puppies..

**Disclaimer: We love both of our puppies equally!!
Now don't judge our sweet Chloe on this, because she really is an awesome dog, but back in the summer she went to Petsmart to get groomed. Being a bad puppy mom, she was very matted because I had not been very diligent about brushing her (which means that they had to try to brush out the mattes and it hurt). When I picked her up, she had received a report card that said "I was a little devil, but my groomer still loves me." : )

In stark contrast, Ellie went to Petsmart's Petshotel and Doggie Day Care (which was a wonderful experience, I def. recommend it) while we were at Horseshoe Bay. When we picked her up, her Pawgress Report said "I love Ellie! She is such a sweetheart. She loves giving hugs and kisses, it's so adorable! Please bring her back soon."

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

What a fun time of year!! Beautiful decorations are everywhere around town and Christmas music is playing in every store! Of course there are the crazy drivers (who apparently only come out in December?) and the Scrooges out in some store, but in general it's a very jolly time : )
I am out of school for 2 weeks and 2 days, which makes me very jolly!
Last Friday we had polar express day and party day all in one which proved quite exhausting, but fun!

On Friday night I actually finished all of my holiday shopping! What a good feeling!
Then on Saturday, Kelly and Beth came to Houston. I just LOVE those girls!!
Kelly, Beth, Liz, Heather and I went to lunch Saturday and then onto Crave for some yummy cupcakes.

Then we went for manis/pedis and shopping. If you have not yet visited Francesca's, I suggest that you go right now! What a fun store! They have fun, inexpensive jewelry and very trendy clothes!
Then we went to Fish City Grille for dinner and met Jessica there. Fish City Grille is in the Vintage Shopping center, which is a newer center and I had no idea it had so many restaurants towards the back of the shopping center. Lots of fun places to try!

Sunday we went to the early service at First Baptist and then onto Cadillac for a birthday celebration brunch! What fun friends I have! We are all so different, but have so much fun together!! I'm pretty sure that during brunch we planned a European trip and a half marathon. : )


While I was finishing up school and spending the weekend with my friends, Cody was way out in West Texas hunting mule deer. His is the second from the left! He had such a good time!

On another note, after 10 months of trying Ellie finally succeeded in getting one of her toys into my bathtub. Sometime I feel like I have a toddler instead of a puppy! Look at that happy puppy face. : )

My countdown is getting smaller: 1 day until my 25th birthday, 4 days until Christmas and 8 days until our 2nd wedding anniversary!