A Brandi-Dandy Day

What a day, a Brandi-Dandy day. I managed to get the house picked up over the last couple of days off so I promised the girl that if the weather held, we'd go for a walk this morning before kick off. She held me to it, and we had a wonderful time. Let me start with the last couple of days. After the last wedding shower Duane and I have been staring at boxes of gifts that are both useful and beautiful. We have been looking forward to tearing into some of them and redecorating our house, so this weekend, that's just what I did. Duane had already found a place for the fountain where Brandi can't drink it dry and I took to trying to create shelf space in the living room. After stealing the bookshelf from Duane (and then discovering it really doesn't fit out here after all) we did settle on a new furniture arrangement. We do lose a little floor space but I like it anyway. It may be hard to tell but now instead of the couch being flat against the wall it is at an angle. Duane's massive collection of DVD's now has a home on shelves in the closet and we found lots of space for photos and such.

Yes, that's Brandi sitting in the chair. She had previously been watching out the window for Pa to get home.

Anyway, with this out of the way and the house looking respectable again, Brandi and I decided to go for a long walk Sunday morning. I loaded her in the car and we went to the River Trails in downtown La Crosse. Once you hit the trail (starting by Riverside Park) you follow the river through wooded area and out into the wetlands. The trail is well maintained and has several little offshoots down to the river tributaries where people like to fish. There weren't many people out there today and I had one very tired dog on the walk back to the car. I led her down one of the side trails to get a drink of water and apparently she wasn't listening when I told Duane that I wasn't going to let her go swimming. It all happened so fast. Uck...wet dog. But a VERY happy dog. I wasn't as happy. She shook out all her wetness on me, and was still soaked after the last 1/4 mile back to the car. She needed help getting in the car so I had to lift her and found myself almost as wet and covered in as much mud as her. For her part, Brandi was not ready to get home. When we got there, she did NOT want to get out of the car.

Once I finally got her conned out of the car (for treats) we finished our Brandi-Dandy day with her snoozing on my lap while I wrote out thank-you notes and watched football. The Vikes, not so great...but that doesn't matter...cuz our Pack kicked some Colt rumps up and down the field. We're going to celebrate with ice cream. She likes it when she gets to lick out the empty tub.

So that's about it. Duane came home sometime during the Packer game but kindly left us to cheer (loudly) by ourselves while he went and played his computer games. Since then, supper was made (and delicious!) and a couple loads of laundry done. Now that the Brandi-dandy day is coming to an end, it's time for the three of us to curl up and watch a movie.

Hey Brandi, thanks for hanging with me while Pa worked, now it's his turn for some attention from his girls.

And for the rest of you...thanks for reading. More to come soon, I'm sure!