Upper 20's what?

Where does the time go? It feels like just yesterday I was turning 21 and now I am definitely considered upper 20's! My birthday ended up being a weekend long celebration - it was tons of fun! It started off with dinner with our great friends at the Cheesecake Factory! Molly, Raquel, Sherri, Shayne, Chase and James

They had their seasonal blueberry cheescake and it was sooooo good! Look at all that whip cream doesn't it just look delectable?

Of course noone ever eats all that whip cream but the whole time we all kept daring each other to eat the whole lump of it. Molly finally caved, what a good sport. Thanks for the pic Molly it's a classic!

Molly made this sign for me - so cute! The funny thing about this pic is that originally it was just Molly and I with this sign, Raquel jumped in to even it out for us! I also got some great card stuff from Raquel - thanks girls, you're the best! Since it was Memorial Day weekend we headed up to Michigan to visit Sherri's brother and his family. We ate at this really yummy Mexican restaurant. Funny side note: At the Cheesecake Factory everyone told them it was my bday so they would sing to me and then again here at dinner with my bro they did the same. Both times they "forgot". I wasn't complaining - guess I'm just not supposed to get older!

After dinner we went to a Tigers game. I felt like I was in highschool all over again. They kept playing Welcome to the Jungle and Eye of the Tiger - I loved it. All you Bengals will know exactly what I'm talking about!

Our niece Sarah - she is a girl after my own heart. All she could talk about before the game was eating a hot dog and popcorn. Look how happy she is to finally have it!!

Baby G, Granters or Grant. He is just too cute for words. We are working on him early with all the sports!

There was a firework show after the game. Sarah loves them but thinks they are too loud so Uncle Shayne hooked her up with some sweet headphones!

Sarah is obssessed with 1,2,3 whee! I was able to capture it here and thought it was too cute! The next day was Sunday, we had an awesome bbq and I even got cake! Sarah made sure to put the candles on for me. She was adamant that we have princess candles - she did a great job don't ya think!

They finally caught me. I was sung to twice on my actual birthday. Once here at the bbq and once at church in primary. Kasey leads the singing and when she was asking if there were any birthdays Sarah totally sold me out and announced it was mine. It was actually so precious to have the whole primary sing to me, not everyone gets so lucky on their birthday! The best part was that Sarah was front and center belting it out the loudest, she is such a sweetheart.

Sarah "cutting" Shayne's hair. She sure loves him and he is such a good sport to play with her like he does!

It wouldn't be a trip to Michigan with out Custees!

There is this really yummy (and cheap) frozen custard place that you can walk to from my bro's house. The kids call it custees and would go 10 times a day if their mom and dad would let them.

Priceless - I just love the ice cream all over the face look, do you think any made it into his tummy? So as you can see I had a wonderful birthday and it doesn't even end there - I know I am totally spoiled. For one of my presents my parents helped with a plane ticket for me to go on our annual Cali trip with them. So....pics of that to come very soon - stay tuned!

Sno Shack

Dear Mr. Sno Shak,

Oh how we miss your delicious goodness. Especially on these oh so hot days! Banana. Black Raspberry. Blue Cotton Candy. Blue Raspberry. Cheesecake. Cinnamon. Cola. Cream Soda. French Vanilla. Godzilla. Green Apple. Hawaiian Punch Honey Dew Melon. Kiwi. Lemon Zesty. Mai Tai. Margarita. Nectarine. Orange Pineapple. Peach. Pineapple. Pink Champagne. Pink Grapefruit. Pokemon. Popeye. Red Raspberry. Rock N Roll. Rum Butter. Sno Cream. Sour Grape. Strawberry. Swedish Berries. Tamarindo. Tiger's Blood. Watermelon. Wild Black Berry. Wild Strawberry. Black Cherry. Blue Bubblegum. Blue Hawaii. Blueberry. Cherry Cola. Coconut. Cranberry. Daquiri. Fuzzy Navel. Grape. Guava. Hawaiin Tropic. Horchata. Lemon Lime. Lucious Lime. Mango Madness. Maui Wowi. Orange. Passion Fruit. Pina Colada. Pink Bubble gum. Pink Cotton Candy. Pink Lemon Sour. Pomegranate. Red Hot. Rio Grande. Root Beer. Silver Fox. Sour Cherry. Sour Green Apple. Suicide. Sweet Cherry. Tequila Sunrise. Tutti Fruiti. Wedding Cake. Wild Cherry.

So cool and refreshing when it slides down your throat. And the cream, oh the cream!!! Need we say more?

WISH YOU WERE HERE! :(

RACE FOR THE CURE

Shout out to all you breast cancer survivors out there and those of you fighting it right now. I went with some friends to run in Race for the Cure on Saturday and it was so fun. There were 45,00 people there to support the cause all in pink: pink wigs, leggings, tattoos, capes... you name it - I just love it. I wish we would have taken some pics of everyone decked out.

Checking out all our free goodies - of course all things pink!

Shayne's Grandma (aka Pacer) is a breast cancer survivor and his Great Grandma Sandy just passed away from it last year so I was running in their honor.

Heather, Me, Annie and Allyson Thanks girls for going with me it was such a fun morning - let's do it again next year!

Allyson and I still haven't fully recouped from our 1/2 marathon. Her foot has been hurting ever since and my knee has been bugging me. We ran this anyway! What's 3 miles after you've done 13 right...wrong! We paid for it after - but it was all worth it anything to help fight for the cure! I think you can tell from the pic Ally is hurting a bit more than me - your poor foot, way to go for running anyway!

Capital City Half

If I would have told you I was going to run a half marathon before I did you probably would have all died laughing (for those of you that know me well), knowing that I am no runner. For a long time I couldn't even believe I had agreed to do it. Well, I did in fact run 13 miles on Saturday and here is the proof. Bright and early at 6:30 am on the way to the race.

Being crazy pre-race we were all pretty hyped up! The infamous O-H-I-O that everyone spells out here for games and just at random These are the 3 awesome girls out here that I decided to run it with. They were so motivating and pushed me even when I thought I couldn't do it - thanks guys!

Just some more great girls that ran as well

Between the 4 of us we didn't think we would really run together but rather wait for each other at the finish line. Taunya and I ended up keeping the same pace for about 10miles - thanks Taunya I couldn't have done it without you! Taunya's husband would ride his bike ahead and cheer us on and take pics it really kept us going. Not sure when this was but it has to be early on cause I'm still smiling

They gave us these medals at the end - even better I love having something to show for what I've done. Just for the record I was not doing this to "race" but just to say I had and could do it. I kept telling everyone I would probably never do it again. After actually being there and finishing I will eat my words - I would definitely do this again. Can't wait for the next one girls!

The tags on our shoes is how they clocked your time. My goal was to run it in 2 hours and 10min and I am proud to say I beat my goal and ran under that

I wasn't sure if Shayne was going to be able to get there with all the road blocks and traffic. I was soooo happy to see him waiting for me at the finish line - thanks babe for the support. If you can see behind us it was quite crazy they said there were 5,000 runners and 7,000 people there in total

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THE ICING ON THE CAKE

About an hour after I got home from the race this was delivered to my door. A few months ago I helped a lady whose car was on fire (posted a few posts ago if you don't know what I'm talking about). Now mind you that was in February and she just happened to send this to me on race day with a note that read "Thanks again for saving my life, hope you are well - Diane"! Soooo sweet and so unexpected. I kept telling Shayne how I just wanted to eat fruit and nothing else sounded good so this was perfect.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DDS IDOL

I couldn't end this post without writing a quick blurb about DDS idol (thanks Ally for the pic :) Every year the dental school does this huge production where they make a total mockery of American Idol and it is absolutely hilarious. A lot of time and money goes into it and the winners even get paid. We went last year and had a blast so of course were not about to miss it again this year. Wish I had more pics. Anyway, quite a fun and eventful weekend at the Perry household - thanks for stopping by!

SYKE!!

WARNING THIS IS GOING TO BE LONG SO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!

I love playing pranks and jokes on people but am never any good at thinking them up. However, every year on April Fools I try to come up with at least one good one. Last year I told Shayne I wrecked the car and really had him going on it for awhile. This year, however, I couldn't think of anything.....until now! So, Happy Late April Fools everyone! The last post really only has some truth to it. We did not get a third dog and and the dog wasn't even a boy! (We had to say it was a boy because those of you that have heard us talk about having another dog know that we have said it would be a boy). However, Sherri really would love a third dog! She would have 10 if Shayne would let her but at risk of being the "crazy dog lady/people" he will not give in. And....our girls right now are just too dang selfish to share us, we couldn't get another dog if we wanted to.

This was mostly for our family and friends that give us a hard time about having two dogs and keep wondering when we are going to have kids. Thanks everyone for playing along with all your comments - it really was a good one. Looks like the post title fooled a lot of you! And although this may seem like a dumb joke, if you all could have heard some of the things our families and friends were saying that didn't comment, it really was quite funny. So don't worry Mom/Mama Later you are still just a grandmuthow to two dogs!

Now for the truth and the real reason we had this cute little dog at our house!

This little gal was running around our condo complex and it was freezing. I could tell it didn't have a collar on and it was shaking so bad probably from the cold and from being so scared. I just couldn't leave her out there for fear she would freeze to death or be hit by a car. I tried a few times to catch her but to no avail. So, I went home got some treats and a blanket and with the help of a neighbor we cornered her and I brought her home. Let's just say our girls were not thrilled at all with this idea. We took her in the laundry room (hence the pics from the previous post) and gave her some food and water. She was starving and ate the whole bowl pretty quick. She took a little while to warm up to us but with a little coaxing and some treats she finally calmed down. She just melted our hearts after that, she was so dang cute! We sat down and she would just jump into our lap and lay her head there. Of course Sherri wanted to keep her and after Shayne saw her I think for a split second he was considering it. If you are from Utah and are familiar with the Humane Society they are awesome and do a great job with all the dogs. I usually felt comfortable sending a dog there knowing it would be well taken care of until it found a home. Since we are new here and have never had to do this before I was hesistant as to what to do, not knowing what the shelters here were like. This was about 8pm. I knew we couldn't keep her overnight because our dogs were going ballistic but it was too late to take her anywhere to get microchipped so against my better judgement I called the dog warden.

BIG MISTAKE!!!

They came and took her around 12pm and it was so sad as I was handing her to the warden she just put her little head on my shoulder. However, the warden said they would check for a chip in the morning and if there wasn't one I could come and get her. The next day at work I was asking everyone how the shelters were around here and where I should have sent the dog if the shelters are no good. One of the ladies I work with actually fosters dogs just to keep them out of shelters and told me she would take it and find it a home. Can you imagine my relief, now I was just so mad at myself for making the poor thing spend the night in a cage, we could have suffered through one night with our dogs going crazy! So a note to everyone in Ohio. If you find a stray or don't want your dog anymore please call me and we can find it a foster home (I guess the lady I work with knows quite a few other people that do this). The shelter here is awful and they really do not care about the dogs!!

The next morning I called to check on her and sure enough she had no microchip. So I asked if I could come and get her and was told no. I won't go into all the details but basically I was lied to in more ways than one. I guess once they get a dog they have to keep it 3 days to see if it is adoptable or if anyone claims it. After that if it is not adoptable they put it down. I spoke with some of the trainers from the shelter who said there are a list of things that make a dog adoptable but they don't really check very well and will just put the dog down most of the time because it's easier. I have also been checking on her and they said she is so scared and doing horrible. She isn't being the sweet dog she was for us, and why would she be, she is locked in a cage with a million other dogs and strange people around! Anyway, I have just been beside myself ever since for even calling the dog warden but that's what I get for assuming I guess. I have since been in touch with the director of the animal shelter who has put a note on the chart saying that this dog is not to be euthenized. He told me that if it wasn't adoptable that I could have her back at which point I would give her to the foster home. I tried everything I could to have them let me take her to the foster home in the mean time but they would not give. She obviously would do much better being somewhere else as we witnessed the night she was at our house. What's one less dog for them to worry about anyway? It sounds like they are just in it for the money at this point!! Well, today she is doing a little better but still not great, I plan to keep checking on her until she has found a home or I get her back. I know it's just one dog out of the 100's that they have but if I can save one dog's life then why not? Just last week alone they put down 60 dogs - how sad is that?

Moral of this long story? Do not send dogs to the shelter in Ohio and probably most places for that matter. Check in the paper and online I have found that most places have free foster homes that are much better for the dogs than being put in cages. And...if you are looking for a dog or no anyone that is, this one is super sweet so look her up at the Franklin County animal shelter or get in touch with me. So...even without owning three of my own dogs maybe I really am the crazy dog lady but I don't care - I love dogs and I just can't help myself!

Look at that face, doesn't it just scream cute!

And those ears? I was just dying over them she was so stinkin cute!

Wish us luck, I hope we can find her a nice home!