Life With Barley

As expected, our life changed a bit when we got little Barley - our 50 lb - 4 month old St. Bernard. Even though she eats and poops more than us combined (well maybe not combined) - we are so happy to have her in the family!

She is growing faster than we could imagine - over 3lbs a week and getting smarter day by day. We've had 3 puppy training classes at PetSmart and she will now come, sit and lay down on command. Other than an occassional pee accident when she's excited, she's trained to do her business outside.

Here are a few pictures of our little hairy girl. Hope you enjoy!

Barley loves the "monkey" slipper...all you have to do is say 'Go get monkey' and this picture says the rest.

Barley can now just walk right up on the couch which is forbidden territory for her - except when mama needs a cuddle.

Betsy got Barley a 'flat cat' playmate and after about 20 minutes - the cat lost his tail and a foot. Barley loves the flat cat!

It will be soon when Stan cannot even pick Barley up. She loves being in laps but she's already so spread out and heavy it's difficult to even fit her in the lap.

Car ride anyone? Ginle the keys and Barley goes running to the garage door. Open the garage door and Barley runs to the back of BiggKat to go for a ride. She sits in the far back and likes to get up and look around while crusing. She can't miss a thing!

Thank You for your Support

We would like to thank everyone for their support whether - it was through flowers, plants, cards, emails, voicemails or gifts of sweetness. It was a shocking event that we experienced that blind-sided us.

The good news is that Betsy has started working full time as of May 7th - having completed her speech therapy and pleasantly surprised her neurologist and cardiologist with her recovery progress. In early June she will have another MRI for the stability of her brain and may even be taken off of the coumadin (blood thinner medicine) at that time - which is awesome!

The other night we were discussing how fast the clot in her brain affected her life and on the flip side how fast it was removed and she recovered. It almost feels as though it was a bad dream.

Throughout this ordeal we never lost focus of those things in life that are important: family and friendship. A life without the love and support of family and friends isn't worth living - and it was a testament to how much love was sent to Betsy by how fast she recovered.

So thank you for everything - it would be difficult to include pictures of all the well wishes but here are a few.

Easter in the Desert

We hosted our first joint-family, post-marriage holiday gathering this year for Easter. We had Stan's parents, his brother and his nephew along with Betsy's Dad and his girlfriend. We had a spread that spanned the ages including ham, turkey and all the southern fixin's. While in town, the whole crew did a little site seeing at the Red Rock National Park and the free-range desert in our backyard. Hope you enjoy the pics!