ready and waiting

Ugh....these three weeks are going incredibly slow. Although we'll be crazy busy the next two weeks, I think Zach and I are both looking forward to it in hopes that it makes the time go quickly. In the meantime, here are some more pictures from when we met Abe! 

Daddy and puppy!

Mama and puppy!

Today we spent the day getting supplies for Abe. Just two toys, first aid kit, shampoo, brushes, nail clippers, bed for in his crate, and a soft blankie to be all snuggled up. (The super cute moose is from Zach, and the blanket is from me.) 

Dear Abe - 

We got all this stuff for you! Please come home soon!  

Love, Amanda and Zach

the luckiest

BIG AWESOME FANTASTIC AMAZING SUPEREXCITING NEWS!
As of yesterday, Zach and I are officially puppy parents!
We have been saving up for a puppy, and planning and reading and researching, for almost a year now. Zach has wanted an English Bulldog since he was a little boy, and after reading and looking at tons of pictures, it didn't take much convincing for me. We found an apartment where we could have a dog and saved, and now that our move is coming up we started to look more closely at breeders. We found a breeder we really liked about 2 1/2 hours from here. He had two litters, one that was about a month old and one that was about two weeks old and at least 8 adult bulldogs, so we were surrounded by dogs!!

We made an appointment for Saturday to meet the breeder. We set it up on Monday and had to wait until Saturday which meant we had nearly a week of agony trying to keep ourselves sane and calm. In all this time of preparing, we had kind of put together an idea of our ideal puppy - male, mostly white, one dark ear, and maybe a spot over one eye. So we went there, we met the breeder, he was awesome and enthusiastic and super informative. When we first walked in to the room with the two litters, Mike (the breeder) was saying, "I've got this male left..." and as he turned around, we saw the perfect puppy. He is mostly white, with one black ear, a black spot over his eye, and a black little puppy butt. Zach and I looked at each other immediately, and there was an unspoken statement that this was our puppy. He is adorable and perfect and wrinkly and we are already in love with him.

So without further ado... 

Sir Aberford Undertaker, of House Porkchop, 

the First of His name. 

(Abe for short)

Snuggling with his new mama

So tiny!

He has very soft jowls.

He likes to lay like this.

He looks extra cute in his daddy's arms!

Giving his daddy beard kisses.

We are so excited! The next few weeks are going to be pretty busy though. We will be moving soon, with a move in date of July 13th. We were thinking we would be getting a puppy from the second litter, because they would be ready to go home around August 1st which would give us a couple of weeks to get settled into the new place. Abe is from the first little, and even though it will be a tight timeline, we'll be bringing him home on July 14th!!! Only 20 days! So now I'm going to try and work out something to get into the new apartment a little earlier so we can get things at least a little bit set up before puppy comes home. My apologies if blogs slow down between now and then. Speaking of which, I should be packing and making lists and planning and freaking out.....

Look forward to TONS of pictures of our new baby boy! =]

if there's any other way, i'll do anything for you

Whew. The older I get, the busier and more exhausting weekends get. What happened to weekends being a time to recoup after a busy weekend?

This weekend was definitely fun though. Friday night Zach got off work a little early and we went out to dinner with my Mom and Dad for an early Father's Day dinner. We went to a barbecue place, which was mostly good. The fries were pretty awesome (probably because they were mostly grease) and we had some yummy hush puppies for an appetizer. My meat was not great though..good flavor, but the cut of meat was grisly and tendony. Plus the acoustics in the restaurant were terrible. It wasn't that busy when we were there, the music wasn't terribly loud, but it was really hard to hear, and I felt like we were all yelling at each other. Aftewards we went and got some Cold Stone ice cream which was good. However, we sat out on State St. to eat it and were accosted by a trashy guy on the street. Luckily my big strong dad and big strong boyfriend were there to protect us. ;)

Saturday we got up early and went out to spend the day with Zach's dad and siblings. We started the day with a grill out which was nice. The weather kept changing between super sunny and windy/rainy, but once it settled down we had a really great afternoon for it. After spending the afternoon out in the sun, we headed back to Madison to one of Zach's family's favorite restaurants and met his sister for beer, burgers, and fries. By the time we got home, I was ready to go to sleep. (I did take a nap at like 10pm).

All in all a great weekend with family. And lastly, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to the best dad in the world (mine of course!).

its bound to melt your heart - for good or for bad

My intentions were to blog more than I was before, but that has proved difficult. Time is kind of flying by, but its one of those weird contradictions where you feel like you've been ridiculously busy,  constantly running around, but can't even start to list what you've done.

The biggest thing in the past few weeks is that I got my hair cut!! I got approximately 6 inches cut off, so it was a pretty big change. I will have pictures sometime soon (which has been part of the delay with getting a post up, but I'll have to do without for now).

Zach and I went to his uncle's wedding/reception a few weeks ago out at Blue Mounds State Park. It was absolutely gorgeous out there. It was basically a party at the campground (with some awesome cake) followed up by a bonfire. We also got to see the sunset out of the ridge of "mounds" which was beautiful. Afterwards Sam came over and spent the night so we got some extra hang out time with him.

Last week we went to a Brewers game with a bunch of our friends (I think it was 19 people total). I took half a day of work (it was Zach's day off) and we headed down to Milwaukee and met everyone there for tailgaiting. It was a pretty good game to be at - Brewers v. Cubs, good game, and we won! Plus it was our first game of the year, so it was exciting just to be there.

I also went to the zoo last week with Steph and Jake. At the time, I was sad to not have seen the lions (they were inside when I was there) because they are one of my favorite animals to see.  But now I'm even more sad, because the mama lion just died a few days ago! =[ Make fun of me all you want, but I was particularly upset about it - that poor baby lion, Leopold, is without his mommy!

Anyways, not too much else new is going on. Apologies again, but hopefully you'll see another blog soon!