First off, not sure if I mentioned it before, his name is Xander.. He’ll be 12 weeks old on Saturday and he’s just oh so freaking cute

He’s doing great!  He had a very busy and exhausting weekend with grandpa(my dad) in town and auntie Jen and the puppy-cousins visiting.  The puppy-cousins seemed scared to play with such a little guy and he let them know his displeasure with their lack of enthusiasm over playing with him, by barkbarkbarking for many many hours.. to the point he was hoarse!  He wasn’t liking eating very much to the point I was worried he was losing weight.. So I read some Boxerworld.com forums and decided to see if he’d eat his food if it was watered down.. Low and behold he LOVES it that way and eats the entire bowl without stopping or complaining.  We had a breakthrough with the potty training this morning when he walked down the stairs by himself (I used to have to carry him to make sure he didn’t just stop and pee somewhere) and walked outside, pottied.. came in, ate ALL of his breakfast while I sat on the couch doing my makeup.. When he was done eating I said “go outside and go potty” and he did just that, walked outside on his own and went potty!  He came back in and played with his toys some before we had to go to work, when Mike came down to get his shoes on I said “Xander, outside go potty one more time” and he did just that, walked outside and went pee.  You should’ve seen the look on Mike’s face!  His chin was dropped, mouth wide open shocked!  He said “how did you get him to do that?” I said “he just did it.. he just got it, I don’t know, but I hope it sticks!” He got a treat of course for being good, and another treat for going in his kennel so well.  We’ve now taking him on 2 long walks (1 mile each) and he does well.  He did better the 1st day (Tuesday) than yesterday, but I think that is because yesterday we went about 30 minutes earlier and all the neighborhood dogs were out for their walks too.  We’ll have to see how he does tonight

I’ve taken some pictures and put them on Flickr here:  http://flickr.com/photos/joleine/sets/72157605488794450/ I need to take some more as he’s getting big!!

Tonight Mike and I drove out to BFE (Estacada, Oregon) to look at some puppies.  Mike decided for my birthday, I should get a puppy.. I’ve wanted a boxer for years and years and now we finally get one!  He’s almost 8 weeks old, but we’re not going to pick him up until he’s 10 weeks old.  But I gave the lady a check and we’ll go get him on June 7th!  He’s oh so cute.  The lady has named him “patches” for now.. but I’m sure we’ll pick a new name He’s the puppy on the left in the picture, the one with the patch around his eye

I can’t wait to bring him home!  We’re very excited.  I even went and bought “Boxers for Dummies” today and will read it front and back a few times before getting him!

Okay so we didn’t go to a show.. But we did do some work on our yard, garden and patio this weekend!

Started on Saturday morning with a trip to Lowes:

Left there and it was raining a lot.. Mike got home from helping Jim out at his house and we needed to go BACK to Lowes.. So off we went.

Came home and started tearing up a corner of the yard to put the garden.  That was a feat in and of itself, since all of our soil for the first foot down is chock full of pebbles and below that is very full of clay.. Lovely ‘eh?  So the odds of our garden flourishing are NOT in our favor.  Oh well!

After a couple of hours of digging in the dirt and moving it around, laying some top soil, mulch, etc.. We have a garden!

Sunday we got up and Mike mowed the lawn.. Then it was BACK to Lowes to buy a grill!

As you can see, we needed one badly, as this is our old grill.. ugh

That was our weekend.. Now we’re exhausted and just want to sleep, and eat food off of our grill