Return of the JDog

We got a visit from our former roomie this past weekend. He was in town on business and stayed with us for a few days. We hadn't seen him since he moved in May. It took Clara a minute to warm up to him, but after she did, she was an adoring J Dog fan. She went around all weekend saying "J Dog!" and asking him to hold her and read to her and climbing all over him. She loves her J Dog.

Everytime she slept though, I guess she forgot he was here and would wake up afraid of him for a minute or two. After one of her naps, she opened her door and came running down the hall. As soon as she spotted Jason sitting in the office looking at her, she screeched to a stop and high tailed it back to her room and shut the door. She didn't open it again for a few minutes and when she did, she wouldn't come out. She just stood in her doorway. I think she was psyching herself up to come around the corner again. I finally had to go in and get her.

Here's the lastest addition to Clara's playroom. I bought an unfinished peg rack at Michael's and painted it myself. I spent $4.00 on the rack, $1.00 on the paint and $.50 on the brush. After I painted it, I took sandpaper and gave it a little bit of a distressed look. Didn't turn out half bad in my opinion. I think it'll coordinate nicely with the curtains, if and when I get around to making them.

And this next picture is from Sunday after lunch. Isn't this just the sweetest dress? I'm a sucker for smocking (and sales). Chris had to work most of the weekend, so Clara and I headed to the mall to find some brown dress shoes, but guess what, apparently brown dress shoes are not in style. Seems weird since I see dresses with brown in them EVERYWHERE and even bought one thinking I'd get some shoes later. Anyway, we couldn't find shoes, but we did finally give in to our, actually mostly my, urge to buy this dress I've been eyeing for 2 months now. It was on sale, so I had to get it.

Sunday after church we ate at Market Street and Clara fell asleep about 10 minutes before we got home. I HATE it when she does this. Upon waking when we got home, we spent the following two hours trying to get her to take a nap before we finally gave in. Surprisingly, she did fine until bedtime. I really thought the rest of the day was going to be a whinefest, but I guess the 10 minute power nap did the trick. Of course, that meant I didn't get a Sunday nap and that was NOT cool.

Which brings us to today. I finally broke down and let Clara play outside this afternoon despite the sweltering heat. She was in a swim diaper and cap and as we were filling up her pool, I noticed Max hanging out by the back fence and then realized Dingle was nowhere in sight. (I knew exactly where she was; the dog hates even the thought of being squirted with water.) Sure enough, I peek over and she had slipped through the iron fence and was already a couple of houses down and kept going when I called her. Dumb dog.

So I run inside letting the other two in, grab Clara (because there was water in her pool), find the community key to the iron gate on the side of our house, find a leash, grab Clara and run out back to get the booger. She had made it about 6 or 7 houses down by this point. Thankfully she came when I called her; I would've been steaming mad had she not. I'm just glad the gate to get back there is by our house. It would have been a much larger ordeal if it wasn't. Anyway, that's all the excitement going on around here.