Oops!

Things I did not do while in St. Louis:

1. Get my case of Fitz's. My brother and I had a great plan for us to meet him for lunch downtown and stop by the Fitz's restaurant/factory and pick up a case of root beer. It did not happen. Too busy. Or too lazy. Or just unwilling to spend any extra time in the car. One of those reasons. Plus, there would have been no room for the case in Dad's car on the way home. I suppose I could have sat on it, but those bottles are uncomfortable. :)

2. Take any pictures of Jenny's graduation, the reception afterwards or the congratulatory party on Saturday. Reasons: My flash wouldn't reach the stage and I couldn't hold the camera still long enough for a non-blurry picture; we skipped out early and did not attend the reception; and I'm just stupid. I set my camera on the fireplace mantel while I ate and then forgot about it. I'm a goob. It was a really great party, though. Yummy food.

What I did do in St. Louis:

1. Got some really great pictures of Echo playing with Diesel, Dave and Jenny's rottweiler. She wasn't too sure about him at first, but once we got them out in the backyard, she got in the game.

And I thought this one looked rather vicious.

I plan to get a case of Fitz's

Dave will be on his own for the next week as I travel with my parents to St. Louis for Jenny's graduation from vet school. My understanding is that after Friday she'll refuse to answer to anything but "Dr. Brown" :) I'll post an update and pics when I return. In the meantime, everybody give Dave a call this week to keep him from getting lonely.

We've got a Puppy Graduate!

Echo finished puppy classes last night. Even though she Hoovered up the treats on the toy aisle instead of obeying our "Leave It!" command, the instructor graded on a curve and she passed. (None of the other puppies left it, either.)
She wasn't nervous before the test. Just concentrating on guarding her baseball against the fearsome Army o' Dave.After class, we took a group picture of those of us who were there. (Kabot and his people didn't come to the last two classes for some unknown reason.) From left to right, the dogs are Charlie (he won Most Improved), Holly and Echo. I don't know the names of the people. We're proud of how much she's learned and hope it doesn't all fall out of her head in the four weeks until we start the Intermediate classes.

(I think there must have been a dog in another aisle.
The puppies are all fascinated by something.)

I was going to get our instructor a little gift for putting up with us all those weeks, but couldn't think of anything. If anyone has an idea, let me know. We'll see her around PetsMart when we visit.

Congratulations

We had folks graduating all over the place. Christopher graduated from SFA in Texas, and Cindy graduated from MTSU here in Tennessee. We couldn't make it down to Christopher's graduation. We planned to go to Cindy's until we received the invitation in the mail and realized it started at 9 am! Even though that was Central Standard Time, we still would have had to wake up before 6 am to get there in time. That just wasn't going to happen. We did head over to the party at Cindy's house afterwards and had some yummy barbeque and a good visit. I took my camera, but didn't get very many pictures. None at all of her cute puppy, Ajax. In fact, these are the only two pictures that turned out:


At the party, Tracey gave us the very cool housewarming gift she made for us:


The red and yellow flowers match the colors of our front door and living room walls, respectively. And the oak frame matches the oak floors! She sure put a lot of thought into it! I can't wait to hang it up. (It's not the greatest picture. I was trying to get one without a ton of glare.)