We started the day out early. Tiki decided at some point that we'd slept long enough, so she popped open her crate and joined us in bed. And by joined us, I mean she played jump up and down on mom and dad and sit on our faces. Little brat, I wish she'd never figured out how to open her crate. Hard to be mad at her cute little face though. This was the hottest thanksgiving I've ever experienced. It was about 80 degrees outside, still t-shirt weather down here. With the oven and everything cooking, the house was boiling hot. We decided to try this turkey recipe from the food network good eats guy that Matt likes. It involved soaking the turkey overnight in vegetable stock and some other stuff like salt and pepper. Matt made homemade vegetable stock and we put the tiny little 9 pound turkey in a bucket for the night. The turkey spa, I called it. To cook it we stuffed it with apples and oranges and herbs and holy cow it turned out the be the absolute best turkey I've ever tasted. Although the recipe said to cook the turkey on really high heat (500 degrees) for 30 minutes to make the skin all pretty, which it did nicely, but it made the entire house all smokey. But man, it was delicious. Naturally, Matt spent the day tethered to his laptop. The dogs and I romped in the backyard playing fetch and chase, and their most-favorite game "ignore mom!" It was the first holiday in awhile we haven't spent with our crazy neighbor, and it was nice to eat on a real table instead of on your lap without her kids or her dogs trying to steal stuff off your plate. Well, last Christmas we stayed home, but only because I was sick. If the entire unit hadn't been on exodus I'm sure we'd have ended up at someone's house. The dogs were mad that we locked them outside while we ate, but they got turkey later, so I'm sure they forgave us.

We ordered really cute christmas cards with german shepherd puppies on them that support the canine health foundation. So if you'd like a really cute christmas card with german shepherd puppies on it that supports the canine health foundation, give me your address! Here or mail it to me at sark9handler@yahoo.com. Did I mention, the puppies are really cute. One is wearing a santa hat. Really cute.

I also got in the mail, all the information for the Southeastern guide dogs fun day "walkathon' at which I will possibly recieve my new guide dog puppy. The last weekend in February. Unfortunately, it's in Florida, and since matt will be in Iraq, I will have no one to watch the 4 dogs that will have to stay here. I know the club's leaders are going to turn in their dog and get a new one, as well as another puppy raising couple in our club, so hopefully between those 4 people, someone can carry my puppy on the plane back to me. I'm sure they won't turn down an oppotunity to fly back with an 8 week old lab puppy in their arms. Not that they won't already be bringing back 2 others, but you can never have too many puppies! Puppies are really cute! If you've forgotten that puppies are cute, refer back to the previous paragraph.

It's just like being back in California. It's hot, it's crowded, people don't let you change lanes or merge no matter how long you've had your blinker on, lanes suddenly become turn only when you want to go straight, and there's too many damn one way streets. And one thing I've notices, Texas doesn't seem to have a street sign for the idea to merge. You'll be driving along the freeway, and without warning, your lane will suddenly end and veer into the next lane. I almost clipped some guy's trailer and had to slam on the brakes, and I've had several people nearly side swipe me when their lane ended and they were suddenly in my lane! It's still hot here. We're going on November and it's still high 80s every day.

In other fun news, Tiki is in heat! She came in a day early, but that's pretty much right on time. I searched high and low and read pages of recomendations and found a good vet here. I called them up and they even managed to get ehr an appointment the same day- Halloween. So I dressed Tiki in her halloween panties (orange with black bats on them) and took her off to the vet's office. Her panties were a big hit, especially once everyone in the waiting room discovered that I made them. This vet seems very breeder-friendly. There was a lady in the waiting room with day old Yorkie puppies, waiting for their day old checkup. The vet tech was all excited about the idea of puppies, and she took Tiki in the back to have her blood drawn for her pre-breeding bloodwork. She also gave me the name of the local emergency vet, and recommended a good book on whelping puppies that covers just about any emergency I could run into and what to do about it. I found it today at Barnes and Noble and it seems to be a great book. I'm reading a vampire book my mom gave me and having a hard time putting it down, so I'm going to have to read the whelping book in stages. But hte vampire book was just made into a movie, so I want to finish the book before the movie comes out. But YAY puppies! Can't wait. Tiki should be bred on November 9th and 10th, then go back in about 2 weeks before Christmas for an ultra sound, and assuming the ultrasound comfirms that she's pregnant, again right after the new year for an x-ray, then pups should be due around January 11th or 12th. Matt and I are going to build a nice wooden whelping box right after the ultra sound proves that there's actually puppies in there. Yay puppies! Hopefully Matt doesn't sign in on the 10th and find out he's shipping out to Iraq before the puppies are born.

Matt and I went to Best Buy and invested in two portable external hard drives. Now all my music, video and pictures can be safely stored in case something happens to my laptop. Plus, it frees up a lot of space, I have a lot of music and pictures. I got a pretty red one and a red carrying case. Matt got a blue one and a blue carrying case. I feel very sterotypical, I got red, he got blue!

We bought 3 bags of candy and we didn't get a SINGLE trick or treater. Not one. Not a single one. Now we're stuck with 3 bags of candy. Matt, on a sugar-high, is like a 5 year old on speed. I'm in for a few weeks of him driving me crazy as he eats through all the candy.

We had our transportation appointment yesterday and settled on Monday and Tuesday as a move date. That gives us Wednesday to clean and hand in the keys at noon. Matt and I also went on a spring (fall?) cleaning spree, going through all his computer manuals in the office and pitching games and stuff he doesn't play anymore and manuals to old computer components and things we don't need to keep (matt's a bad packrat...). We are allowed 8,000 pounds of stuff, not counting any of matt's "pro gear" which is things like rucksacks, awards, ammo cans, any army gear minus his regular ACU and PT uniforms and boots. We came here with 7000, but as I found out yesterday, they never weighed his pro gear seperately coming here, so all of it counted toward his weight limit, so I'm hoping they'll count it this time and we'll be within our weight limits. Anything over 8,000 pounds we have to pay for, and I'm sure we've aquired more stuff in the way of books, picture frames, some shelving I put up that I want to take with us, more DVDs, more clothes, etc. I was annoyed, because on our original transportation form, I put that we had about 500 pounds of pro gear. When we had our appointment, the stupid lady said, no you probably have about 200, and changed it. What the hell? have you seen Matt's army stuff? Who are you to tell me how much stuff we don't have when you've never set foot in our house. Oh well, our moving days are Monday (to pack up) and Tuesday (to load it on the truck). I have to find a way to make the guinea pig's big cage fit into matt's explorer for the drive. because the explorer is too heavy to safely tow behind the F-150,we each have to drive a car, so Ray & Tiki are going in the back of the truck in the crates, Pepper in the cab with me, the guinea pigs in the cargo area of the explorer, and our luggage probably in the middle seat. It's going to be a tight squeeze. I'm going to push the dog's crates all the way to the back of the truck bed, so I have room in front of them to secure dog food or something, but this will make it so the window fans in the camper shell don't blow on the dogs. Hopefully it won't be a hot drive.

We had our housing walk through today. He was just looking for things we had to do to the house to be ready to clear it (patch nail holes, etc.) It was funny to see him walk up our stairway, where I have all the dog show ribbons hung. He was trying to read them all and look at the pictures without looking like he was staring at them. I still had all Tiki's ribbons from the weekend show dumped on the dinning room table where we signed the walkthrough papers (poor Tiki, I'm running out of wall space to put them on, so they've been cast aside for now).

I also found out, the water and electricity are turned off to our house, so I have to turn the electricity on before we leave here, and the water can only be turned off by going in to the office in person, so we might not have a working bathroom our first night there!