Tally the votes

In honor of the recent hubba-baloo surrounding the national campaigning season, the managers at latimerfam.blogspot are holding a caucus. Forget red vs. blue and mudslinging candidates. Simply answer the questions below.

If you think that the picture below represents a perfectly wonderful place to spend part of January, raise your hand.

I agree. Lucky that we fly out tomorrow.

If you think our family should relocate to a beautiful red brick rambler with fantastically outdated orange countertops and an entirely pink and burgandy bathroom, raise your hands.

We agree. So we are. Hooray.

If you or someone you love wants to rent a wonderful condo in Taylorsville, don't bother raising your hand. Email me instead. Thanks.

Le Pooch

Husband and I adore our dog. We even love her when she rips up our ugly carpet. We still love her when she eats most of our DVD cases. We even keep loving her when she learns to hop the fence at Madre's house and then won't stop doing it even though she doesn't run away and instead just sits on the front porch waiting to be let back into the yard.

Unfortunately, many of all y'all haven't met le pooch. This is the Lu and her best friend Indy. I double dog dare the HOA to dislike that face, even if she is 3 times the weight limit for the complex.


Note: When I say I "double dog dare them", what I really mean is that I "live in constant fear and sneak her out to the Jeep to drive out of the complex for a walk after the sun has gone down." But hey. It's all semantics.

Lupe, in turn, adores us. And she adores the dog park.

The fact that I went along for the ride on this particular morning shows my true love. After all, I am wildly intolerant of even mildly chilly weather, and this particular morning was down right frigid. Lucky that Husband had that cool Pumas hat from Mexico for me to wear.

Lupe is also superbly funny to live with, especially when somehow she ends up dressed as a human.

Christmas and the pre-Aruba diet

I couldn't resist this picture of the ridiculously adorable Husband opening his first real set of tools from my Daddy-o. My dad's a little short on sons, so I get the sneaky suspicion that he might have spoiled Paddy just a little. I'm pretty sure Paddy's just itching for something to break 'round our place so he can get them, I don't know, greasy or something.


In other news, I'm finally going to get a stamp on that hideous passport I secured a few months ago. We're headed to Aruba with one half of the fam-damly, which will be wonderful. Swimming suit time, however, is decidedly less wonderful. With the announcement came the immediate decision in our family that a serious lifestyle change was in order. I'll spare you the horrific details and the even more atrocious 'before' pictures we took. I'm shuddering just thinking about it. Suffice it to say that Husband is having infinitely more success dropping the nasty poundage than I am. Rather than lose all of our friends by posting pictures of us scantily clad with our dismal facial expressions, I'll just show you that at least one part of me is Aruba-ready:In college, the roomies and I always strove for 'perfectly suckable toes'. I'd say these qualify (even if Dane insists my toes are forever tainted by that one admittedly nasty barefoot-at-Warp-Tour incident. Don't bother asking; I'm not sure I can even explain why I was at the concert in the first place, nevermind the lack of footwear. The whole thing is surprisingly hazy despite the fact that I was among a handful of people not intoxicated.)

Goings-on

A while back, Livia blog-tagged me (which sounds like it should be messier than it is), so I'm supposed to come up with seven interesting things about myself. I can only think of one not-at-all interesting thing. I'm a sucky blogger.

Since I can't manage to keep a journal or a cutesy scrapbook, neglecting el blog means that all of our fun adventures go completely undocumented. What with the new year and all, I'm feeling a little guilty about it, so I'll post a bunch all together right now.

One of the great things about being a homeowner is that if the previous tenants decided that this subtle and delicate color would look great

you can have a little fun with it on a Saturday night, thusly:

and in the end, come out with this (hopefully) less headache inducing shade:

As you can tell, Lupe is thrilled about the change in her room.