While everyone else in enjoying their long weekend off from work, Luna is getting ready for an entire week off. And it’s breaking this mommy’s heart!

On Saturday, when Luna woke up, she came limping out of her crate, highly favoring her front left paw. We checked for any obvious problems, but there was nothing we could see. We decided to give it some time, just to see if it would wear off. Sometimes her legs fall asleep depending on how she was sleeping, and it takes a little bit for all the blood to start flowing normally.

As the day progressed, however, she got worse. It went from a slight limp, to not putting any pressure on it at all and hopping around on 3 legs. But as we massaged and manipulated that leg and paw, there was no indication of any pain. She was also just as lively as normal – listening to every noise around, trying to play, wanting to run (hop…) up and down the hallway after her ball. When it didn’t get better, we called the vet to schedule an appointment for first thing Sunday morning.

Well, the vet loved Luna. All the vets do. They love how beautiful she is, they love that she just sits patiently on the scale while they get her weight, and that she’ll lay down in the exam room and let them do whatever they want to her. She did all of that this time, still not putting any pressure on her front left paw. Even in the examination, she showed no signs of agitation. The only indication she gave of pain was a slight tensing when the vet was manipulating the tendons and joints in that leg. She said how tough Luna is, even for a dog.

The Xrays the vet requested showed that Luna has Elbow Displaysia, Arthritis, and joint problems – which isn’t quite normal for a dog Luna’s age. She’s 4ish. But since we don’t know her full history due to her being a shelter dog, there is some indication that something happened early in her life to sort of start these issues. It’s something that I can expect to be an issue in the future, although there isn’t really cause for concern in the amount of activity she does as a service dog. But, the vet said, surely this has been causing her pain before now, but she just never showed it. She’s one tough cookie. And she must have a very high pain tolerance, like her mom.

But she is showing us now, which means it must be a pretty severe amount of pain. She must have done something that morning that just aggravated all this to the point that she couldn’t ignore it, although she is desperately trying to and is VERY angry that this means no jumping on our bed or playing with her ball. She is on some pain medicine, and might be getting more depending on what her bloodwork shows, and she has been given very strict instructions to take one full week off.

From this picture, you would never know she is hurt!

Here you can see her favoring that paw, not letting it touch the ground.

This is how she has started sleeping – I wonder if its the most comfortable since it puts no pressure on that leg?

And here are a couple videos (Video 1 and Video 2) of her hopping around.  (Sorry they are sideways – I didn’t think about that when I took them…)
(Side note – to play the videos, I had to hit the Pause button at the bottom of the movie square, THEN hit the big play button that came up in the center)
Even with a hurt leg, she still sits in front of the door before I open it and waits until I say she can go on the porch.  She’s so obedient!

But it’s going to be a LONG week of “bed rest” for this hard little worker.

Last week Andrew and I were a part of the Rocky Mountain Deaf School’s performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  I was involved from the very beginning, but a little over a month ago, one of our actors quit, and Andrew very graciously stepped into his roles.

I played the Queen Mother of Snow White – the one who dies basically in child-birth, leaving Snow White’s dad to marry the Evil Queen who is obsessed with her beauty and thus starts all the problems.  I had one scene – I pricked my finger while sewing – and that was that.

Andrew played the King, the father of the prince who eventually marries Snow White, and also the Servant of the Evil Queen.

This is Andrew’s King costume, and my very pregnant Queen costume. I only had a brief scene at the very beginning, but I had to stay in that costume the entire 2 hours! Sheesh being pregnant is hard!

Both of us in the green room, just before the final show. On the walls are pictures and playbills from all the acts that have performed at this venue over the years.

All things considered, we both had a lot of fun, and got to work with some really great kids. 

When Andrew and I filled out the application for the marriage license, we discovered that our birthdays are exact opposites of each other.  Mine is 11/5 and his is 5/11!  Which means we get to celebrate his birthday two days before our anniversary.  I think its so fun to get to celebrate him right before we get to celebrate us.

The day before his birthday, his parents came down to Greeley (they live a little over an hour away) for dinner at our place.  Andrew cooked his favorite meal (yes, HE cooked it, otherwise it would have been a disaster) and his parents brought salad and a side.  My contribution was purchasing a cookie cake for him (neither one of us love cake cake) and then adding a bit more decorations to it.

It was the first time his parents have gotten to see our new apartment, as well as the first time we’ve really gotten to show it off.  It was really nice to have them here, and we had a fun evening.  Here is Andrew’s cake:

It’s a chocolate chip cookie, and they place that made it did all the white icing.  They won’t mix plain and chocolate icing on one cake, and I hate the taste of icing that’s been tinted different colors.  So I had them just do white around the edges and white words, then I added the chocolate stuff myself.  The colorful parts of the balloon tops (yes, that’s what they are, balloons) are different kinds of sprinkles.  I think it turned out pretty good!

We added some fun squiggly candles.

The birthday boy!

Look at that monkey face!  But, he got them all out in one blow.

Then on Saturday we had a full day of rehearsal for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which we both play very minor roles in.  Then we headed back to the Denver area because we (and Andrew’s parents) had tickets to see WICKED!  It was our anniversary present to ourselves, and we were so excited.  This was my 5th time seeing it, and I love it each and every time, but it was Andrew’s first time seeing it, which was extra exciting.

Here we are, all ready to go!

We had great seats! First row of the mezz level. 

It was a fabulous production.  The actress who played Elphaba was by far the best I’ve seen – and I’ve seen it on Broadway, in Chicago, and in North Carolina.  And Andrew’s family knew the guy who played Fiyero!  Cool!

So we had a very fun weekend celebrating all of that, plus getting to spend time with one of our mothers close by, and texting with the other mother who is far away and getting to celebrate both of them as well.  Happy Mother’s Day to our mothers!

And Happy First Anniversary to us!

I had recently seen a lot of facebook and blog posts by my friends of them curling their hair using a method they learned on Pinterest.  Now, I’m not on Pinterest and don’t plan to be any time soon, but I was intrigued by their descriptions of making their hair curly in the morning by sleeping with their hair wrapped around a headband.  Yesterday I was on StumbleUpon.com and came across a website that showed exactly how to do this process.  She made it look so simple with her step-by-step pictures, and my friends had raved about their results, so I decided to give it a try.

My hair is curly when it is wet, but the second it is dry and I run a brush or comb through it, it straightens right up.  Normally I like my straight hair, but sometimes it is fun to curl it up a bit.  I don’t like using a curling iron very often though because I have too much thick hair and my arms get tired too early.  I’m also secretly terrified of what the heat might do to my hair.  Here is what happened when I tried this new method.

Step One: Start with DRY hair.  I suppose it helps if your hair is kind of long, but I think it would work with most hair lengths.  This is mine when I started last night.

Step 2: Put a stretchy workout-type headband on your head.  So you look like a hippie.  It’s very important that the headband be outside your hair.

Step 3: Take a small chunk of hair and wrap it around the headband. 

Step 4 should really be to grow two extra sets of arms/hands because this is HARD.  There are no pictures of this process because it was a DISASTER.  I don’t know how everyone else does it, or how the girl got her hair to look so darn cute when it was all wrapped around.  The back is espcially hard.  I ended up going along each side and then leaving the back.  I braided the back into tight little braids and then kind of tucked that into the headband too.  Here is what it looked like from the back.  Sigh.  Good thing I was just going to bed!

And then you go to bed! Sleep on it all night, and then in the morning go through your regular routine of getting ready.  When it’s time to do your hair, you gently pull the headband off your head, moving towards the back, gently shaking out the curls (and in my case, unbraiding braids).  Then hopefully you’re left with beautiful curls!  Mine didn’t turn out too bad – I was pleasantly surprised.

So there you have it.  Curly hair with a headband.  Maybe with practice, I’d get better at it.