Hey everyone! I’ve missed you guys, too! I’d like to say I’ve been busy doing lots of exciting cool, hip, with-it stuff…but…no…not really. Unless the “cool” thing to do is to sit around and watch tv and play video games. If so, I’m SUPER cool. lol, right? Here’s some photos I think I actually took on Thanksgiving or possibly the day after Thanksgiving that perfectly illustrate how we lazed about the house.

Btw, these are all kinda crappy photos. They were all taken when I contorted myself to take photos of the pugs as they lay mostly asleep on my lap. Please pretend you don’t see my belly in those shots. Embarassing, really.  I love the expressions on their faces. They’re like…what the fudge, man? We’re sleeping here?! Rukia is like, “Homey, please. Baby girl don’t play.”

Another of Poley sleeping. Awww. Don’t you want to eat that little scrunched up face?

This one was a snapshot of Baby girl sleeping, but she kinda woke up when the flash went off, so it looks more like a snapshot of her waking up. Still cute, though.

I call this one “Ode to Popo Sleeping through the sound of Baby Girl Snoring like a Freight Train and putting up with his Mother Photographing him with a flash for about 20 Minutes”.

He has the patience of a zen master for letting photo him. And, I LOVE his lambchops. In case you need further examples of my obsession with his lambchops (i.e. flapjacks, jowls, cheekies, etc).

And, this one I call “An Ode to PoPo Waking Up”.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Btw, there are ONLY 22 Days until Christmas!

I know I promised more Halloween pics…and they’re coming…but I don’t have them on me today and so, well, screw it. Today you’re getting a mish-mash of whats been happening in our life. Let’s see…where to start.

Ah, yes. So as you know, Terry is a school teacher. He teaches 4th grade. And the entire 4th grade had a musical preformance a few weeks back…and I took photos. It was actually pretty cool and everyone was really proud of the kids.

Here’s a photo of the kids waving colored flags during one of the songs. It was rather pretty. And touching. The song was something about all the colors of people and it not mattering or something. I don’t really remember, I was taking photos and not paying attention.

A cool blurry shot of the kiddlets.

This photo was during some song about all the music of the world or something…hence all the kiddos holding flags of the world. At least, I think thats what it was?

The BEST part of the preformance is when the two male 4th grade teachers, Terry and Mr. Belcher got up and did an imroptu rap & Guitar solo. Well, Terry didn’t exactly do a guitar solo…as he was using a Rockband guitar. But he did a FANTASTIC job faking it. LOL. He totally hammed it up.

The teachers breaking it down. Downtown. To funky town.

Terry and his solo. You can see his adoring fans going wild behind him. He missed his calling.

And the big finale! Confetti! Terry on his back playing faux guitar! The kids going wild! It was a very fun night.

Let’s see…what else has been going on? Hmm. I’ve been very suzie-homemaker lately. We’re on a budget so I’ve been all…casserole-happy. See with a few inexpensive ingredients, you can make a whole 13×9x2 pan of a casserole that feeds you for 2-3 days since there are only two of us. Here’s a photo during the middle of the lasagna-making process. Btw, that was lasagna made with home-made marinara sauce. Yes. Freshly-made home made marinara. YUM. I also made extras of it and froze it for later.

Then yesterday I made my “Mexicali Casserole”. I made that name up so don’t go looking for the recipe somewhere. Technically this is totally bad for you – instead of using tortillas in the casserole, you utilize crushed up nacho doritos. YUM! Its got lots of cheese, doritos, meat, spicy sauce and served topped with olives, sour cream and avocado slices. It’s to-die-for.

Let’s see, what also has been going on? Oh, yeah, here’s a photo of what it looks like trying to give Babygirl her monthly heartworm & flea prevention pills. Popo takes he pills like candy. Babygirl (who normally eats ANYTHING)…refuses to take them even when covered in cheese. Fickle little puss. So we have to force them in and hold her mouh closed, then massage her throat until she swallows. Anyone else have this much trouble?

And in parting, here’s my favorite shot lately. Took this when we were cleaning up after the Halloween party. Look at what a little lush my Babygirl is. See how EXCITED she is to see the Rum bottle? Ha ha ha!

Well as you guys know, we here at the manicdote household had a fabulous Halloween Party on the 31st. And I’ve actually got two posts worth of photos (there were a lot) so I’m breaking it up into two groups. Today’s post are the photos of the house decorations. Ready? Let’s go!

Here’s a photo of the front door as people arrived….! Terry will take all the props for this, he did all of the outdoor decorations. Actually he did all the indoor decorations too, because I was cleaning and cooking. I love the pumpkin lights and the black flower wreath!

And here is our landing strip (thats what the table in your entryway is called, in case you didn’t know!). It was decked out for Halloween with a spooky candleabra and a cute hand-painted Halloween decoration that my Mom did years ago.

As you walk into the living room, below is how we had it decorated. Terry hung crepe paper around the tre ceiling…that was totally his idea. I thought he was going to do it with just the normal scallops, but he hung it inidivdually like that. A guest said that they thought it looked like spider legs hanging from ceiling…which was kinda cool actually.

Our bowl on the sofa table…filled with mini pumpkins and a spooky skull! Alas, poor Yorick.

The fireplace. We had cobwebs allover!  

And a close up of one of the dangling skelletons from the mantle. Ooo! Spooky!

In the kitchen, we had a skelleton on the backdoor window…here’s a cute photo of the puggies pouting when we put them outside during the day while we vaccumed and cleaned. Popo’s like,”Mama! Let us in! Who needs pigs in a blanket when you can have Pugs in a Blanket!?”

It was totally crazy on Halloween night. People showed up early (before everything was out and I was still in my jammies!) and so I didn’t get a photo of the food on the table the night of the party before everyone arrived. So, sadly, here’s a photo of the food the next morning. Yes, I’m a total lazybones and didn’t clean it up at 1am when everyone left. It was quite a spread! The biggest hit was probally the bacon-wrapped jalepeno poppers. I made 100 of them and they were all gone (that was the big empty platter in middle).

We replaced the lights over the bar with blacklights…which were very cool! Terry put cobwebs all around them, too. Creepy!

We’re back outside and its morning, thats why it’s light in the photos. But it was creepy at night, too! Here’s a photo of our little “cemetary” in the front yard.

More of our cemetary…in this shot you can see the grim reaper and in the window behind it  you can see a sihouette of a skelleton…the night of the party we lit up that room so it showed and looked like a skelleton rising out of our graveyard. Very cool! We didn’t have a big budget so we tried to do little things that made a big impact.

And lastly, here’s a little shot of the “ghosts” we had in the tree in our front yard. Boo!

More pics tomorrow!

How is everyone doing? Only 3 days until Halloween! Things are kind of crazy around the Manicdote household because we’re having a big Halloween Bash on Saturday so we’re in the midst of cleaning/ decorating/ cooking, etc. That’s pretty much all that I’ve been doing. Well, and World of Warcraft.

I had lots of grandiose ideas for decorating and cooking…lots of handmade decorations I envisioned after reading Martha Stewarts Halloween magazine. I had ambitions plans for the house and I can safely say I’ve done none of them. *LOL* Yup, very true. Ran out of time and energy, therefor, we purchased a few decorations and I had some from previous years, but its mostly going to be a few simple things. Its the people that make the party, right?

The one thing that hasn’t been scaled back, its the food. I’m still going to be making a lot of food because I’ll enjoy doing it and who will care that we don’t have all kinds of fancy-ass creative decorations if the food is great, the drinks are flowing and the people are fun. At least thats the idea. At first I was going to make more chi-chi things like an Asparagus and Gruyere Tart, but, then, I realized that there are a lot of people who don’t like Asparagus. (Crazy, I know). I also had plans to make Ina’s Roasted Shrimp Cocktail but then I saw the prices of shrimp at the grocery store.

So my menu has been altered and modified from my champagne tastes…to fit my beer budget. I’ll be making Chili, Bacon-corn mini muffins, Pigs in a blanket (albeit fancier smoked sausages in puff pastry), bacon-wrapped jalepeno poppers, a hot artichoke dip and a tray of crudites, cheese & fruit. I also found this recipe for Mini Italian Club Sandwiches and I may or may not make it.

The party should be fun…we’ve got Rockband (regular and new Beatles Rockband) set up for one room, and then the new DJ Hero set up on the other xbox in another room. I know that will be fun…especially once a few people get drinks in them! We bought special black vodka for the occasion! YUM!

I can’t wait to get our party on! I have to admit I am vaugely nervous that we’ll have gone through all this work and bought all this food…and what if no one shows up! Ooof! Wish us luck!!!

Hey everyone! Took Baby girl to the vet yesterday to get her stitches removed. The vet says everything looks normal so we’re hoping that the whole issue is over and done with.

While I was at the vet, they had the cutest kitten in the waiting room…kitten was waiting for someone to adopt it. Awww.

But instead I took this home with me:

Baby girl always makes me laugh and smile. How can you not love her? She’s got such a personality.

Anyways, while I was running the errand to the vet, I was cooking ribs in the oven. I’d gotten a good price on some spare ribs from the market the other day…so on Sunday I dry rubbed them. After 24 hours sitting in the frige, letting the dry rub work its magic, I put them in the oven with a some liquid (wine!) and more dry rub to cook until tender. When I got home from vet, we threw them on grill with my special BBQ sauce and grilled up probally the best ribs I’ve ever had. SOOOoo good.

And another shot of the ribs on my plate with my baked potato (with butter and sour cream). YUM.

This morning it was 55 degrees when I went out to the car. That’s not really cold, but considering every morning last week when I went to work in the morning, it was in the high 70’s, low 80’s – that was quite a different temperature. I wonder…is summer over for real? Is fall here? What is everyone else experiencing?

Hey everybody! Not sure if you guys follow my twitter of facebook account, but if you do, you would know that about two weeks ago I found a lump on Ruki. It was on her privates area, around where she had a scar from her spaying surgery. This is what it looked like:

And here’s a different view, a more relaxed way that she is posed.

I was, in a word,  freaked out. Okay, that’s two words. So I scoured the internet and of course, all kinds of horrible scary various things were swirling in my mind. I talked to my pug-bloggie friends on twitter. The lump was squishy and didn’t seem to hurt her when I pushed on it. Her behavior and eating habits and playing – nothing was different. She wasn’t acting strange at all.

We played “internet doc” (the game where you read about stuff on internet and pretend you have any idea what you’re doing, and you self-diagnose yourself). Anyways, we were pretty sure it had something to do with when she was spayed, something to do with the stitches…I had a day off coming up and so we waited a few days to see if it would go away (and it didn’t), so on my day off (last friday), I took her to the vet.

Here are a few shots of her in the car on the way to the vet. Just chillin’. Isn’t she adorable? She’s always very calm in the car.  

…..

Our vet took one look at her and was like…”Yup. When she was spayed her stitches were supposed to disolve internally and they didn’t.” So they had to have immediate surgery on her that day to take those stitches out and use something else. Yikes! Poor baby girl!

I was pretty anxious after I dropped her off.

In fact…this was her reaction to the news. She’s not a happy camper.

I was waiting for the vet to call me back and let me know the surgery had been successful…etc…but I had a few more errands to run so I took Popo with me to keep me company and to keep my mind of baby girl’s surgery.

Here are a few cute shots of our afternoon of driving around town. Btw, I’ll never do that with him again. He ws constantly trying to jump in my lap and he wouldn’t sit down. Never again. Ruki will sit there and go to sleep, he was WAY to active. Sorry buddy, but you’ll have to go in the carrier. Worse still, he got hair everywhere! My car now looks like it rained pug fur. Not a pretty sight.

In the afternoon, I heard back from the vet. It was the stitches, they just hadn’t disolved as they were supposed to; they corrected the problem and we only had to pay for the anasteasia. Which I was very glad for. Vet bills are always so expensive!

And I sill had to pay for their new flea pills. These pills called “comfortis“. Does anyone use this? Well, we’re trying it. The puggies don’t actually have fleas…but since we’re letting them roam around the backyard we thought we should have them on the medication just in case.  You know?

Well, we couldn’t pick baby girl up until the next morning because they wanted to keep her overnight…so the last photo is of Rukia the next morning after we picked her up. She was so excited to see us she was shaking. Poor baby!! Now she’s on antibiotics and prednisone and doing great. She’s as silly and goofy and sassy as usual.

Hey everyone! Let’s see. Haven’t been up to much lately. Chores around the house, errands around town, playing World of Warcraft, watching television. The second season of True Blood finished up last Sunday night. Great season, better than the first, although the finale had yet another cliff-hanger which is totally annoying. Great show if anyone is on the fence about watching it. I love it. So much better than Twilight.

Oh, we joined a gym. It’s this totally cool place called the Opelika Sportsplex and Aquatics Center - it’s such an amazing gym. Not only does it have all the usual gym stuff like equipment and machines, but it has an indoor pool, indoor raquetball courts, an indoor running/walking track, a gym that you can play basketball in, classes like Body Pump, Zumba, yoga, etc – but it also has a rec center that has classes like ballroom dancing, scrapbooking, cooking, etc. How fun is that? We just joined and last night was our first night there. Above is a photo of Terry that I took after our main workout. We were goofing around shooting hoops in the gym part of it. So cool! Above his head you can actually see part of the indoor walking track where part of goes aroud the upper perimeter of the gym. Cool, huh?

Here’s a photo of the outside of th place. It’s totally swank. Now we just have to keep motivated about going three times a week!

Hey everyone! Sorry it’s been like a week since I’ve posted. I’ve been lazy I suppose. Well, here are some adorable photos I’ve taken recently of the puggies. Thought everyone would enjoy! For the weekend, we don’t have much planned. Going to take the car in for an oil change. Playing some World of Warcraft. Watching some TV. Nothing big. We are considering joinin a gym, so we’re going to check out a local place. That’s about it. Anyone else have exciting plans?

Here are Baby Girl and Popo having a good time relaxing on the lawn. The looooooooove the backyard. Poley in particular.

I don’t remember when I took this series of photos that you’re about to look at. Seriously. I think last week when I was cooking? Or maybe last weekend? I have no idea what was going on in my mind, Terry’s or the Pugs. But let me see if I can decipher something from body language. I shall play…photo CSI.  Hrmph. Baby girl looks pleased with herself and Poley looks kinda sad or grossed out or something. I’m guessing Baby girl farted.

Here’s Terry getting an unfortunate wiff of it. Poley is already aware of said fart and pushing his head away, away from Baby Girls noxious odors. Look at his face. He’s thinking “Put down the camera and help me, Mama!”

Here, Terry has obviously gotten a bad wiff of the fart. Therefore, he has subsequently put them both in a sleeper hold (wrestling move), trying to get them to give themselves up and admit they farted. Popo is a total wuss, but Baby girl is a tough old broad.

And finally in defeat, Terry is about to DDT or suplex or some other wrestling move on them for the attrocity of daring to fart in his general direction. Baby girl looks particularly pleased. See the nose guard? It’s so she doesn’t get a wiff of her own stench.

And this photo is after they’ve been released from their punishment. They come attack me with love. One parent is always the punisher, the other is the love-giver, right?

That’s fair, right?