Whew! Almost Finished ...

Hmmm ... it seems we missed a couple of days. Well, we guess we have to forgive Mom. She has been sitting in front of the printer feeding card stock sheet by sheet for what seems like hours ... days! First she printed the outside, then she waited until she was sure it was dry, then she printed the inside. She wasn't so silly as to do this one card at a time. She did 40 in a stretch so it took a while!

She also printed mailing labels and return address labels.

We've already mailed the international cards. You should see those sometime in January ...

She has all but the last 40 domestic cards signed and in envelopes. Our hats are off to those of you who did this so promptly. Next year we want Mom to be better prepared ... like designing the card in August! You know we are going to do this. You can design the card and print the first 100! Then you don't have to disappear for hours at a time and leave us to wonder what you are doing instead of spending time with us!

Well, as you can tell, exactly nothing fun has happened around here. Mom apologizes for being so dull. Perhaps printing non-stop does that to you humans.

Sammy's spot doesn't seem to bother him but it is still bare of hair.

It was thundering loud this morning but, when we went outside, we couldn't tell what or who made all of that noise. It did rain some because the grass was wet.

The lawn people came today and made lots of noise outside too. We had to bark at them until they went away even though we were inside the house. Mom was in the other room (printing) so we don't know if she realized how dangerous the situation was!

Roxie ate some grass and threw up. That was interesting. Wouldn't you know ... Mom was there for that and wouldn't let us check it out.

We've discovered how much fun it is to throw Roxie's blanket into the water bowl. It soaks up all of the water and makes a mess when Mom carries it to the washing machine. This way we get fresh water every day instead of alternating days. Of course, it's kind of hard to drink after the blanket soaks it up. We are still working on that part which is why we have done it three times in the last week.

Finally, we want to remind humans to keep your pets safe this holiday season and every day ... please do NOT feed your dogs:

Chocolate
Onions
Grapes or Raisins
Drinks with caffeine (like Coke, Mountain Dew)

These are all very bad for doggies and probably kitties too!

Progress!

Today Mom designed and started printing our cards! Woohoo! We like the way they came out. We would have really liked for them to have been mailed two weeks ago and all of our friends to have them already but we can't have everything. Mom has been printing up a storm. She has the fronts of 20 of the cards printed and the insides of ... 2. We gave one to Grandma and Grandpa because they are special and we love them ... and Mom needed to know if the cards looked okay. We hope Grandma and Grandpa were honest about what they thought because we want Mom to spend time printing up the rest of them.

Sammy went to the vet today to have his side looked at. He got to see Dr. Wagner today. She took a scraping of it and said it didn't have any mites or fungus. She also said Sammy didn't act like it bothered him to have the area manipulated. He has some antibiotics and some kind of spray that is good for abrasions. He gets the spray for 5 days and the antibiotics for 10 days. We hope his hair grows back soon because he is Mom's handsome boy.

Mom and Sammy went to see Grandma and Grandpa even before Mom finished the Christmas card. Mom said Sammy needed a reward for being such a good boy at the vet. Unless Mom takes all three of us to the vet at the same time, she usually takes us to see Grandma and Grandpa or we get to go to PetsMart. This time Roxie and Andy had to stay home. Sammy sure was lucky. He got to explore Grandpa's back yard. There are all kinds of different smells in their back yard! And you can usually look cute and get a treat at Grandma and Grandpa's house!

But Sammy has to be careful about treats. He weighed 16.8 pounds! Last time he weighed 16.4 pounds. Dr. Wagner says he should weigh 16 pounds. Poor Sammy, those spoons of cottage cheese and canned dog food are going to get smaller. It's not fun being a little dog. The food portions are just too small!

Well, we need to get to bed so we can get up early tomorrow and print more cards! We hope our friends forgive us for being so terribly late. Just remember ... we are cute!

We Almost Forgot!

We are so excited about Christmas coming, we almost forgot to tell everyone that Christmas day is also Roxie's birthday. She will be 3! She is a big girl now but still acts like a puppy around Mom. Mom falls for it every time. We know everyone will be busy with family and celebrations but we hope a few of you can stop by to wish Roxie "Happy Birthday".

You Like Us! You Really, Really Like Us!

Just wanted to make a quick note to tell you that today was a banner day. We got SEVEN cards. And we need to go tell Jojo and Russell that we got their card. (Their mom was concerned because the mail center didn't tell her to put enough postage on the cards.) We have gotten so many cards, we can't even count that high! Mom (hee hee) has one ... from some real estate lady who sends cards to everybody so they will hire her if they want to sell their house.

Time to go kiss on Mom. She needs to know we love her even if no one sends her cards ...

Country Roads Take Me Home (or a Visit!)

Today we go to the country house for the whole weekend! We are so excited. We were afraid we might not go after what happened on Wednesday night. Aunt Bec had come over to help Mom make labels from Miss Sunshade's DWB Christmas card list. Mom got home so we all ran outside to welcome her. She pulled into the garage and pushed the button to close the door and it came part way down and stopped! She pushed the button again and all she got was that funny noise you get when something isn't working correctly. She pulled the release and the door came down the rest of the way but it wouldn't open up. Finally Aunt Bec and Mom took some tools and disconnected the arm thingy so Mom could open the door and get her car back out. While Mom was working on this, she yelled at us to quit barking but we didn't. She wasn't very happy with us so we were afraid she might change her mind about the trip. Fortunately, she went to buy another garage door opener yesterday and she is just waiting for them to come install it. In her words "I'm not getting up on a ladder."

After all that excitement, we went to the office/computer room and started working on the labels. Aunt Bec is really smart about doing things in Word so she made the labels in almost no time at all. We just need to make one more for the new participant and a new one for a family that has a new puppy dog member (yea for finding a home!) Mom opened up one box of cards we were going to use and, in the middle of the front cover, every single one says "attach picture here". Mom was so irritated. Now she has to take them back and buy something else. How stupid is it to write words nobody wants on the paper? The only way to use them is to make pictures and then attach them. We want to just print our picture right on the card!

Mom wants us to send a thank you to Greg (Charlie and Opy's dad). Mom wants to do some creative work with some of our pictures and she didn't want to buy Photoshop because it is pretty expensive. She asked Greg if he could suggest a more economical alternative and he sent her an answer right back. Even the humans make friends at Dogs With Blogs! We are so glad Charlie and Opy invited us to be a part of Dogs With Blogs. We do such fun stuff -- calendars, Christmas card exchange and just making friends around the world! And you don't even have to be a recognized breed of dog to join ... check out Fu fu the hamsterrier!

Well, gotta go pack treats for the trip. Something tells us we are going to have lots of reading to catch up on when we get back!