Mountains here we come!

That's right, we will be heading up north this week to the mountains of North Carolina. Gabrielle's parents have rented up a place for the month and we have decided to take a couple days to get away and visit. That also allows us a great opportunity to visit Ben's grandparents and his Aunt Susan and Uncle Lenny (can't wait to see you guys!!). We are very excited for the trip to see family and get a change of scenery as well as everything we know we could be doing here with the house :)

The place Gabrielle's parents got allows dogs, so we will be bringing the two pups with us and then her parents have two dobermans. Rigby has been around the dobermans for about 2 years and knows them well, but this will be Rory's first time hanging out with them. Should be pretty interesting, it gives Rigby a slight break from being the only target :)

It has been so nice to come home lately and know that we don't have to worry about the baseboards (well until we redo the flooring). Ben was able to work on switching out all of the electrical receptacles and the plates. He did a great job and another project is now completed. The doors should be pretty soon. It sucks to look at them knowing that everything else is nicely painted and complete except for them. Guess we can worry about tackling them upon our return :)

We will try and update while we are away but if not, we will continue upon our return. We hope to take some pictures and will share!

Love,

Ben and Gabrielle

Pups and Paint!

Rory and Rigby have definitely been keeping us busy! Knock on wood but so far we have only really had one item casulty due to Rory's teething and that was part of Gabrielle's laptop cord (thankfully not plugged in) and that has now been replaced. We still have about an accident a day in the house but she has definitely started to learn going to the door when she needs to go. Rigby has his moments where we think he wants to pack up and move away but then he also does enjoy playing with her. Rory also loves being outside a lot (just about too much), we may have a gardener helper with us :)

News I am sure everyone will probably be glad to hear is that we finally finished painting the basebaords!! Yes, that is correct, they are done and we couldn't be happier. We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of our painting escapades. All that is left are 4 doors and two closests...at this rate we may be done by the end of the year :)

Our current plan is to try and get the office finished soon as well, if we can get that room finished we can get going on the fourth room that has been our free for all for the most part. The biggest project will probably be around the February/March time frame when we hope to get new floors throughout the house. I think 3 dogs and 5 people living here at one point can put a little wear and tear on any floor.

Well I think that is all for now. Hopefully everyone is doing well.

We love and miss you all!

Love- Ben and Gabrielle

4 days in...

So we are four days in to having our new addition, Rory. She has definitely brought in a lot of energy and has kept everyone on their toes. We are absolutely in love with her though. Rigby may still have the jury out on his opinion but that's the age difference talking. They are doing really well together but there is a difference between 4 months old and almost 4 years old. Rigby definitely tires out a lot quicker than Rory.

Our first night with Rory was a little rough. We were up a LOT with her crying and barking in her crate. However, we definitely got smart the second night. She slept through the whole night and didn't wake up till it was time for Gabrielle to get ready for work! Success! Last night wasn't too bad, she woke up at 2 to go to the bathroom. We let her out and then put her back to bed and she slept great till we got up. We will see what tonight holds but it is going well. She loves her crate and falls asleep in there for the heck of it and barely makes a peep (knock on wood :-)).

This weekend we are really hoping to get some painting done to finish the baseboards. As many probably know that has caused us some slight issues. We will be so glad to get that done. Not sure how painting and Rory will go together but we shall find out :)

Nothing much else to report here. We will try to get more pictures up and maybe even a video of the two dogs playing.

Hope everyone is doing well and we will be in touch again soon.

Love, Ben and Gabrielle

Here's Rory!!

Just a quick post to share some pictures of Rory! We have only had her at the house for about an hour or so and she has already made herself at home. I think Rigby is definitely going to be getting his work out from her!! She is loving all of her new toys and her new friend. We will be posting more of her and Rigby playing down the road!

An intro to our new addition...

Well we can honestly say that things still don't feel the same without Baxter. Each day gets a little easier though daily routine items still remind us (i.e. eating dinner, feeding just Rigby dinner now, not getting slobbered upon coming home, etc). We know it will all take its time. We thank the kind thoughts from friends and family, it does help.

When we first found out about Baxter's cancer we had discussed getting a new addition to the family by rescuing another dog. We knew the house would be empty and that Rigby has grown so used to having his buddy with him, so as time went out we started to keep the idea open. It was kind of ironic that on our appointment with Baxter on Friday that the vet techs asked us to stay after our appointment because they wanted to introduce us to someone. We were a little confused but soon understood.

After waiting a minute, we see them bring out this adorable puppy. She is a 3 1/2 month old Catahoula puppy. She was abandoned by her previous owners because they learned she was deaf. The vet's office was fostering her while they were looking for her forever home and they thought that we would be excellent parents and interested. She really stole our hearts. Baxter even got to meet her! She has the bluest eyes we have ever seen and just a heart of gold. We told them we would definitely consider it and let them know. We talked about her the whole way home and started to lean toward getting her.

After everything that happened that Sunday, we knew that we needed to get her. It was almost as if she was shown to us for a reason. She may not fill the void from Baxter in the same way but she would be a great addition to our family. We called the vet's office on Monday to follow up and confirmed we wanted her. Both parties were extremely excited.

We have plans this weekend in Orlando for both Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon that we had made a while ago. We really didn't want to bring in our new pup and then take off on her leaving her and Rigby alone for a while, so we said we could move her in on Sunday. So it is now official, we will be getting our new buddy, Rory (that's what we are naming her) Sunday afternoon!! We are so excited. We think she will bring a new "energy" to the house! We promise to be posting pictures of her as soon as we can so stay posted!!

In the meantime we are trying to start puppy proofing the house and getting things done now while we can. We thought we finished the baseboards but as luck would have it the paint is peeling all over, so we will have to work at it with another angle. It is a slight setback :( We will get there. I think we will continue with Plan B tomorrow....we had to quit this evening due to frustration. Oh well, so it goes.

Well, we look forward to formally introducing you all to Rory!

Take care.

Love,

Ben and Gabrielle

Sad Day...

So we debated a little bit as to when we would post this and we think it will be a little easier for us to just go ahead and share the sad news. As you know from our post on Saturday things with Baxter had gotten a little worse. We didn't find a whole lot of improvement by Saturday evening and found ourselves with a pretty long night while Baxter had a lot of trouble getting comfortable for any length of time. We brought him on the bed with us and he still only felt discomfort. It was to the point where we couldn't even pet him like we used to, it made him fidgit even more. We decided we would bring him to the vet on Monday.

As we woke up this morning, he once again refused his morning treat. He began pacing all throughout the day moving about every two minutes from one position to another, from one room to another, never finding any comfort. After seeing this become a pattern we decided if we could have the vet meet us today that we needed to put him at ease today and we did. Dr. Kehoe truly treated us and Baxter with only the finest treatment. We couldn't have imagined him being cared for by any other vet (we have plans on changing Rigby over to her as well). Baxter went very peacefully and while we miss him more than we can ever explain (its amazing how big this house feels) we know we did what he needed and know he is no longer hurting. Hopefully he is back to being his usual self out chasing frogs :-)

The picture we have posted with this entry is from more work that we did today in the office. Gabrielle had bought Ben the picture as one of her weddings gifts to him. We took the collar and hung it near the picture and Ben took his name tag and glued it on the picture. He was truly one of a kind and so loved by everyone that met him, especially his family and it will be a nice reminder of him. We miss him!

Hope this finds everyone well. We love you all.

Love-
Ben and Gabrielle

Another Room Almost Done!

Hello again! While this is going to be pretty short,we wanted to post pictures of what we worked on this weekend. We decided to get back to working on the office as we had shelves and sports collectibles building on the pool table. We have hung the shelves that used to be in the living room and put all the sports items nicely in one area. Under where the shelves are we are going to put a desk for Ben that will cover that whole area of the wall. We think it has added a great touch to the room. Included you will find a picture! We will have more up soon as we start to hang more pictures on the wall and get that room done. Hope this finds you well!

Love,

Ben and Gabrielle

Baxter's Monthly Check Up

Yesterday we had Baxter's (now) regular monthly check up with the vet. Since his last visit, which was an "emergency" one 2 weeks ago, he has lost at least 5 pounds. He has lost a lot of muscle and you can start to see some areas of bone a little more. You could say we agreed on a "plan" but the vet was definitely not sure on how long to say we still have. We will just be taking it a day at a time.

Baxter's spirits were definitely up yesterday and then we even go to take the dogs over to the Grandma and Grandpa Graingers, where we got dinner and the dogs got highly spoiled. I know they both enjoyed themselves and as usual Baxter found himself the center of attention :)

This morning things were definitely a lot rougher. After the dogs usually go out in the morning they like to have their morning treats, Baxter especially! As Ben went to give them out, Baxter had no desire or interest in having any. If you know Baxter, you know that this is NOT the norm. To help his hunger and weight loss we have also been feeding him two meals twice a day, which Baxter has enjoyed. This morning as Ben went to give Baxter his food, he didn't want it right away. It took a lot of convincing to finally get him to eat. After that he had slight hesistation to get on the couch (another difference) and laid with Ben breathing quite heavily. I can honestly say it was tough trying to decide what exactly to do today. He laid there for a while but finally got up when he got some fresh water and then excitedly waited for treats. Not sure if he is just having a bad day or not but we will definitely be keeping a close eye on him. We will see how he does through the weekend. The last thing we want is for him to suffer. As of now he seems to have calmed down some and is just laying near momma's feet as we are writing this. We hope for only the best, we love that guy!

In other news, some work was started about a week ago on the baseboards. We are really hoping to finish them this weekend.....time will tell :)

Well we hope that this finds you all well.

Till next time,

Love- Ben and Gabrielle