February 26, 2010:  Hey again, glad to be back, even if it's only going to be for a few minutes.  Things have been absolutely nuts in our world since we talked last.  Mabel is going great but obviously taking a ton of our time and energy, and quite a bit of Stella's too.  She is getting better at going to the door when she has business to take care of but she easily gets distracted and forgets.  The toughest part has been our schedules at work and home.  If I let myself I could work 90 hours a week, there is that much work and I have that many responsibilities, which is also nuts but we can save that rant for another day.  Lisa's work has taken a change for the worse as well, her boss and his boss have both quit so her work load has increased a lot in their absence.  As it stands now they have a new manager starting but it won't be for at least another month, which sucks.  They just moved our office again, I think this makes the 4th time in three years and we're already scheduled to do it again in two more months.  So other than work and puppy there isn't much going on worth talking about. 

February 8, 2010:  Good afternoon class, we have a lot to cover today so let's stop messing around and get started.  My trip to France went very well, we learned a great deal and met some nice people.  The trip back back home wasn't quite as smooth.  We barely missed a rail strike that would have stranded us 6 hours west of Paris where we had to catch our flight home.  After we got to Paris and the airport the next morning we learned there was a mechanical issue with our plane and it was going to be delayed at least 9 hours.  We were flying back to Seattle through Iceland and had a connector to catch there, which we then missed by about 6 hours.  We had to be put in a hotel until the next flight, which wasn't until late the following day.  We made it back but it was more than 24 hours in transit including hanging out in the Paris airport for 11 hours while they flew in a wheel for the plane from Denmark!  After getting off the train we had hotel rooms in Paris for the night and early the next morning we went for a walk to get a few tourist photos, you are witnessing the extent of what I saw in Paris, maybe a trip back in the summer for pleasure not work would be better.  About 15 minutes after I got back to the house from the airport we left to pick up the new puppy, Lisa had been waiting all week for me to get back.  We ended up having dinner there and didn't get back until very late, which at the time I had been awake about 24 hours so I had little idea what time it was anyway.  Stella had spent some time with the puppies as they were growing up but every time she got too close she got yelled at by her mother Lottie, remember they have the same mother.  It happened so much that she quickly became afraid to get near them so it's taken a bit for her to warm up to the puppy but they are getting along fine.  They aren't sharing the same bed or anything like that but they are playing very well together.  The puppy threw itself into Stella's food bowl while she was eating this morning and nobody died so that should say something!  Lisa took a few days off this week to help her get adjusted to our schedule and I'm going to do my best to work from home next week so things should be back on a somewhat normal schedule here soon.  Stella has a lure coursing trial next weekend not far from here so we'll be out for that, hopefully she does as well as last time.  I guess that's about it for now, we'll chat again soon.