Outdoor Coffee Table

Jake's latest project has been this beautiful coffee table. We got the idea from a table we saw in Lowe's and decided that we could do better. It is going to go outside under our gazebo/canopy after we find some chairs to go with it. And in the winter we can bring it inside and it will look great in our front room. Here is the table in the beginning stages:And here is the finished project:

Jake's beautiful tiling job:

I love it! Jake is so talented!!

Nala

Jake and I decided that it was time to give Nala a hair cut. She always looks like a completely different dog after she gets one. Mostly because we just have them pretty much shave her to get rid of the tangles and so that we don't have to take her in every month, which you probably should with silkies. Below are her before and after pictures:And after the hair cut: a brand new dog (who can actually see!).

A little bit about Nala (because after all she is my only baby and most people like to blog about their kids and stuff)....

• Nala is about 2 1/2, almost 3 years old. I have no idea when her Birthday is because Jake doesn't have a clue. He thinks he bought her in December of 2006 so my guess is she was born in Sept- Nov.
  
• She is a very VERY hyper dog (maybe a little ADHD but we're not sure if you can test for that in dogs). We don't mind too much, though, because it's always a good feeling to come home and have someone SUPER excited to see you, even if you only went out to check the mail and come back.

• Her favortie thing to do is lick. Lick, Lick, LICK!! She licks anything and everything! This is a picture of her giving my brother, Issac a bath (and boy does he need it)!
• Nala runs really, really fast! When she needs to let out energy she runs from one end of the house to the other about 20 times, non-stop. I think she also does this for attention because it happens a lot when we have guests over and they get a kick out of it.
• Nala is more than just a dog. Since we've had her we have discovered that she is a lot of other animals in one. Such as:
• She is a lion. As you might have guessed she was named after a Lion and there is good reason for it. She pounces. Like a cat. I have never seen any dog pounce on things like she does.
• She is a pig. When she gets really excited she likes to make a grunting noise like a pig, weird.
• She is an Elephant. For some reason she thinks she has a trunk, not a nose, and tries to drink from it. She coughs almost everytime she gets a drink of water because she gets it up her noes. Duh!
• She is a fish. I don't know if this is a scientific fact or not but they say a gold fish only has a memory of about 10 seconds. Nala might be worse than that. Partially because she gets distracted easily and partially because she just can't remember where that ball went.
• She is a cow. I know it is normal for dogs to eat grass every now and then but she seems to do it a lot and every time we're in the backyard playing we have to remind her that she is not a cow and to stop eating the grass.

So far I think that is all the animals we have discovered inside her. No matter what though we love our little princess. (And she really is just as spoiled as a princess)!

Our Other "Pet"

This is our other not-so-nice, not-so-cute, don't-want-to-pet-it-or-even-look-at-it, sorta pet. It has no name because it doesn't deserve one and no gender because I'm not getting close enough to check. This is A Hobo Spider. I say A instead of THE because just now I saw 4 in the yard. This is the only one I got on video. Scratch that...I just looked out the window and saw another one, I'm going to get in on video too.
Anyway....For those of you who have never heard of a Hobo Spider let me tell you a little bit about them, besides the fact that they are a spider....They are huge, ok maybe not like a triancula huge but still pretty big. I'd say the average size if you were to draw a circle around one would be like a quarter. They are either a brown or gray color and have a sort of stripe down their back. And the worst feature of all, in my opinion, is they have buggy eyes, or what look like eyes but really they say that hobo spiders can't see very well so they will often run towards you before they run away from you. VERY SCARY!!!
Also, it can be very bad if they bite you. They say that they only inject venem 50% of the time but I still don't want to be in that 50%. Most people have heard of Brown Recluse....Hobo Spider's bites are pretty close to that. You can get a big ugly blister like thing from it that I'd imagine hurts pretty bad and it can take anywhere from 1 month to 3 years to heal depending on how bad it is. If you want more info here is awebsite I would recommend looking at...http://hobospider.com/info/index.html.

And now the videos...

Our New Pet

As some of you may remember when we first moved into our house we found out we had a snake living in our back yard. This year we've seen at least 3 snakes (a mommy, daddy and a baby) and found out they live under the house. The other day we were fortunate enough to find one sun bathing and got some pictures before Jake scared it back under the house (he tried to pick it up). Because you can't really tell in the picture I thought I should let you know this snake is probably about 18 in. long and maybe an inch thick. The baby snake is only about 1/4 in. thick and maybe 6 in. long. You might be surprised to know I love snakes so I was very excited to see the ones I've seen and excited to now have a picture to share with you all. P.S. His (i hope this is the boy) name is George, Jake named him. I decided that the mommy snake will be Georgina and the baby is Georgie. Yes, that's right, George, Georgina, and Georgie. :)

Jake is now 28!!

Jake's Birthday was on Aug 24. For his birthday I took a teddy bear holding balloons and a card to his work that day. That evening we went with my family (my dad & cece and the kids and aunt suzette and her kids) to a very yummy restaurant in SLC called the Asian Star. If you haven't been there I recommend you go! You will love it! We had a really good time being with family and eating food :). On Tuesday we got together with some friends and family and went out to eat at the Olive Garden. Afterwards we went to Trafalga for a little mini golf, go carts, and arcade games. It was a blast. Afterward we were going to eat cake but everyone ended up leaving at different times and I guess we were having so much fun we just forgot about it. However, it was specially made for Jake by one of my good friends and I figured since no one got to see the cake but us I should post some pictures. I think she did an awesome job!