My Boys & Their Dogs

Our new addition has fit into the family quite seemlessly. Crunch tosses me the occasional look as if to say, "Did you not realize that I am very old and want only to snooze peacefully in a corner without being pounced on by THIS THING?" Other than that, though, it has been pretty smooth sailing. She sleeps through the night and gets up when we do. She's even down to about one potty accident a day. Good stuff.

My boys have actually surprised me with their attentiveness to both dogs since bringing the puppy into the fold. Noah, in particular, is very careful about giving both dogs equal attention. Tonight he spent a long time on the floor with a hand on each resting dog, talking to them and telling them that they were good and sweet. He finally turned to me and very sincerely said that he thinks he might like Crunch just a little bit better. He clearly doesn't want to risk making the old guy to feel like yesterday's news.

Here are a few snaps of my lovely boys and their dogs.









Crunch has taken over the bed we bought for Stella, which she enjoyed for the first few days we had her. Not a big deal, since she will probably grow out of it before too long. It's funny, though... She doesn't want to be on his old bed (which is just a few feet away), but rather nestled up to the side of him. I love how her front leg is even hooked over the side. :)



Here are a few other quick snaps of the new girl:

More Dogs

I was feeling bad about not including Crunch in the last post, and I managed to grab a reasonable shot while he sat and watched his new baby sister scamper around the room. Here's the old man himself:



And on the topic of dogs, here's Foxy's latest crafty creation (I swear, this girl generates projects at the rate of several an hour). Obviously, she was inspired by the theme of the weekend.



:)

Meet Stella

Call us crazy (and people have), but the Clausen family decided that it was time to add a new puppy to our family. You know, because we're always sitting around, twiddling our thumbs and wondering how in the world to spend our time. ;) After research and debate we settled on a bulldog, and then after more research... and more research... we found a breeder that we felt was a good match.

Since the breeder was in Riverside County, though, we had to ask a lot of questions and make our final decision as a leap of faith. We didn't actually meet Stella until she was delivered to us by my parents -- aka the puppy storks -- yesterday afternoon.

Good thing we like her.

A LOT.







I did try to take some photos of Crunch, too, but he was all wound up and wouldn't sit still for anything. Try telling that dog he's about 84 in people years. The dude thinks he's still a puppy most of the time...

Halloween 2011

As I mentioned in the previous post, Foxy opted for pretty when it came to Halloween this year (as anyone who knows her might imagine). The boys, however, went with silly.

Here is my goofy crew before they headed out to eat a quick dinner with friends and then trick or treat. :)















Fun stuff!

Happiness is...

... being a Watermelon Fairy for Halloween, even if no one you know is quite sure what one is.

It doesn't matter. The costume clearly makes you think you're the prettiest, cleverest thing on the planet.

If only they made these in grown-up sizes.



I'll post a few pics of the boys tomorrow. What their costumes lack in pretty, they make up for in funny. :)

Bake Sale

About a week ago, my kids got all excited about raising money for their school's walk-a-thon. Since I'm not a huge fan of going door-to-door (or picking up the phone) and just asking for money, I supported their idea to have a bake sale and put the profits into their walk-a-thon envelopes.

We baked, baked, baked for a couple of days, and then they executed their two-pronged plan. First, E walked the halls of his dad's office with a cart filled with goodies (thankfully the A/V department there had the perfect cart). When the other two got home from soccer practice, they joined a couple of their buddies and had a neighborhood stand. In all, they collected almost $200 for their school. Good work by them!

We Did It!!

I achieved a big goal on Sunday -- one I never, ever thought I'd achieve. I'd watched Brian run the City to Sea half-marathon in previous years, but I never would've guessed that I'd be motivated to try it myself... let alone have the fortitude to actually FINISH IT.

But having missed the SLO triathlon this summer (we were in England) and after opting out of the Pacific Grove triathlon (not feeling the kelp swim this year), I agreed to train and run this race with my good buddy Summer. Together we ran, ran/walked, and drank a lot of after-run coffees... And suddenly it was race day.

We got up early on Sunday morning and headed downtown with Brian and another friend who was doing the race. I snapped a few quick camera phone pics before tucking my phone in my water belt, and before I knew it we were off.

Brian never planned to run with us -- he's way too fast -- but Summer and I hoped that we'd be able to hang together and encourage each other throughout the event. We'd never run that far together, and in fact I'd never run more than 8 miles ever. Fortunately, we were able to stick with each other throughout the race. Thank goodness, because I don't think I'd have had such a good time if I hadn't had her by my side. :)

Here's a little collage of iPhone pics, plus a few that Summer's husband snapped at the finish line (including that one of Brian chasing me in!).



Just noticed that the map of the course is dated 2010... I guess it must have been reused and recycled. I swear that we did this race two days ago. Just ask my weary legs!

The Little Chef

I couldn't close out the family photos from this past week without adding these snaps of my little chef...

On Wednesday, I picked her up after kindergarten and we spent a little time roasting butternut squash for dinner (I tried a soup recipe I'd found online and it was pretty darn good!). I cut and scooped, and she brushed a little bit of melted butter onto the big pieces of squash before they went into the oven.

Together, we were a cooking power team!

80's Day!

The Clausen boys got a lot of coverage in those last two blog posts, so I thought I'd toss a few pics of the girlie onto the blog this morning.

It's 80's day at school, and she was soooooo excited to dress the part. As usual, we were running late getting out the door to the bus, so these were snapped on the fly. I wish I'd budgeted a few actual moments to play around a bit. She was so cute!

The Boys' Triathlon, Part II

As promised, here's the second batch of triathlon shots. Kind of overkill, I suppose, but I just can't resist. I was/am one proud mama.

Splashing around and warming up in the lake with the other kid athletes:



Aaaaand, they're off!





Cute little swimmer:



And Evan is out of the water!



Then Noah emerges to lots of cheers. :)





In the transition area:



Noah was a little quicker in the changing area (shocking to those who know my boys, I'm sure!), so he was the first Clausen out on his bike. He got a little guidance, and then he was off.







Brian ran up the initial hill alongside Evan, despite the fact that he (Brian) was running six miles later in the morning as part of an Olympic distance relay. Crazy man!



After a TOUGH bike course, they came back in by coming down that same hill.







Then Noah rode in:





I didn't get shots of Evan running out, since I'd been waiting for Noah. But here's Noah heading out on his run:





After a bit, the first Clausen boy stormed into the finish. Go Evan!





If you happened to have clicked on that video link in the last post, you may have noticed that Brian taped Noah's finish. This shot shows Noah looking over at his dad:



(Psssst. Don't start doing any math and comparing the boys' times. Noah missed the turnaround sign and ran an extra mile. Whoops!)





And a last shot of the little dudes after the race. They are real champs!