This past Saturday, Dallas came home! She will be 9 on July 7th. :-) She has a rather sad story, though. She was rescued when she was about 3 and lived in a home for almost 6 years. A year and a half ago, her owners had a baby and started neglecting the poor ol girl. :-( So after all that time, they returned her to the kennel she came from ( (Northern Greyhound Adoption) ). I've been helping out at the kennel and met her in one of her first days back... I just couldn't leave her there! So my mom and I (and the rest of the family!) are busy spoiling her and giving her all the attention she missed out on in her last home! She does like LOTS of attention, and everyone is her friend!

Me and my bestest. :-D

 

And I created this. I think it's a really cool collage. I can't figure out how to change which parts of the pictures it uses when there are too many pictures. I'll get there someday! :-)

 

Christmas this year was at Mom's house. There was quite the crew, too! Mom, Jeff, Christie, Travis, Wade, Sara, Bruce, Grandma and Trixie. Trixie is Grandma's new pooch, pictured below. She weighs all of about 3 pounds and was really hilarious. She seems to think she's a princess. Every time I turned around, it seemed like she was perched on a pillow! :-) She definitely made Christmas a light and fun affair, and everyone seemed to enjoy the day! :-)

Christie, Travis, Wade and Princess Trixie on the loveseat... Jeff is laughing at them in the background. :-) We didn't do gifts, persay, we actually did stocking stuffers for everyone. The stockings were packed because we went overboard as usual!
Grandma Libby with her stocking. Not really sure what they were talking about, but Bruce is holding the cookies that Sara made for everyone. Well, that packet was for him.


Princess Trixie and her favorite pillow...

I think Wade was tormenting Trixie with a cookie. The next picture didn't come out very well, but he did end up giving her a piece. She was very attentive while he had food. While anyone had food, really! ;-)

Wow. Where to start? So much has happened lately that it seems hard to believe we're almost to the end of yet another year! Christie and Travis got married October 4th, that was a pretty big deal. Below is a picture of Christie and Travis, and I'm messing up the coolest picture from their wedding. lol JK! The rest of the pictures (for the most part) are on Ronny's laptop, and he's off to Germany for the holidays. So the other pictures are MIA. lol

Which brings up yet another awesome thing from 2008. I went to Germany shortly after Christie and Trav's wedding. Yay! I was there for 11 days, and I had a blast. Ronny's parents... suffocated... him at a couple of points but overall it was a fabulous trip and I had a blast! (Ronny and I recently broke up, so who knows when I'll go back but I absolutely cannot WAIT!)

This was one of my first pictures in Germany, and it's definitely the first picture that is clear and recognizable.

The day after we got to Germany (we were just outside of Dresden, in a small town called Miltitz) we drove north about 4 hours to the Baltic Sea. In Germany, they call it Ost See. This was the first night we got there.

The cobblestone streets were really cool. A lot of towns had them still, but more and more they are being replaced by pavement. In Meißen, (the nearest city to Miltitz) the streets were paved but the places where people could park on the sides were still cobblestones. I am pretty sure the picture below was taken in Bad Doberan, which is as close to the Baltic Sea as you can get without actually being IN the Baltic Sea! haha I wasn't really paying too much attention to names of towns.

The picture below is a sign that was in the town. The blue up at top is the symbol for the autobahn.

One really cool thing we did (besides spend lots of time walking around on the beach) was take a train ride from one town to another on an old steam engine. I mean really OLD steam engine. At first I was really dreading this because Ronny's dad insisted we ride this thing because he really LOVES trains. Neither of us was looking forward to it, but it turned out to be really fun! It actually moved through the city streets like a trolley, but it was a steam engine. Once we got out into the open country it picked up speed and was just a ton of fun. I didn't sit in the cars, but stood at the back of one of them on the platform.

After we got back to Meißen, we went to see Albrechtsburg Castle. It's right in the city, and was amazing! It originally housed the Meissen porcelain factory, which is now down the street a bit. Meissen porcelain was the first in Europe (pictures of that later!) Albrechtsburg:

The picture below is of an alleyway leading to the castle.

And this one is looking back down to where I was for the first one...

Below is a picture of the city of Meissen from outside the castle.

This was in the city. I couldn't resist taking a picture or two of it, it's just so classically German. haha