Saturday, February 6, 2016

40 by 40 - Get a dog

I've had a dog for most of my life. When AJ and I got married, we got a dog within the first year. I love having a dog around and have missed it ever since we had to put Snax down about 2 years ago. It didn't make sense to get one right away when we knew we'd have another baby, so we waited. Then we had Dallas and we're getting to the point where he's not so needy and I started getting puppy fever. I thought it would be great to get one while on mat leave so I'd been home more often and have time for training. AJ wasn't so sure so I just looked up puppies online.

One day, I was looking up breeders to see if there were any new litters of goldendoodles at a reasonable price and I found one in Peterborough. I sent it to AJ more as a joke, but surprisingly, he said we should do it. I called the breeder and they still had a female left and Kyler had a PA day the next day so we went on a road trip. We didn't tell Kyler what we were doing and he was very patient for the whole 2.5 hour drive.

When we got there, we went inside and told Kai what was up. He was pretty excited. We took a look at 2 different dogs and fell for the playful white one.



We made a deal and brought our new puppy home.




We named her Kona which means Lady in Hawaiian and is also an apparently delicious coffee. Kyler is already her favourite and has the playful scratches to prove it. The first bit is always a little more trying - she cries when we leave the penned in area of the house or put her in the mudroom at night and there are lots of accidents to clean up, but she's already a pretty great dog and I love having her sleeping on my feet right now as I type.



Friday, February 5, 2016

40 by 40 - Let someone else order order dinner

I am a very picky eater. But I'm working on it. I used to only order chicken fingers at every restaurant I went to. AJ will eat almost anything and his sense of food adventure has been rubbing off on me over the years.

This year, I created a binder full of new recipes and we've been trying a new one every night. It's been a little over a month and it's been an interesting experiment. Most of them, we've all enjoyed, some have been less than thrilling and we've tossed the recipe, but it's been fun trying new things and buying groceries we've never bought before.

Still, letting someone else order whatever they want for me at a restaurant is a scary thought. I'd hate to spend all that money on something I don't like. But last weekend, I had a girls' day while the husbands watched all of the children (brave men) and the girls wanted Indian food. I have never tried any kind of Indian food, but they all raved about it so much and I was just happy to be out kid-free, so I agreed.

Since I know nothing about the food, I let them do the ordering. We had butter chicken, daal, curried beef, samosas and naan. I tried it all and it was good! The samosas and naan were especially good, but there was nothing I truly didn't like.

Maybe I'll even try it again sometime.