Liberty Belle(y)'s Growing up!

Our little pup has been with us just over four months now. She's about 7 1/2 months old and has surpassed 50 pounds ... hard to believe from the 16 pounds she was when we first took her home.

She's grown out of her old sleeping position:
















I think that her legs have gotten too long for it to be comfy anymore...

But as she grows, she remains a scholar...



















More than her size, we've noticed the past few weeks that she's really maturing a lot from her little-puppy stage. Through these weeks, she has experienced a lot of milestones.
Last Tuesday was a humongous day for her!
We went on a family day trip to Oklahoma City. We first spent about two hours with the Goldman Family at their house. Libby was out back running and sunbathing most of the time, while Yoni made pizzas and we ate a nice lunch. Then, we let her in to play with the kids for a while. She was wonderful with the kids - pretty gentle and playful. The milestone came when one of the kids ran up the stairs, and Libby stood at the bottom in awe. I hadn't realized this, but she has never seen stairs before. We don't have any in our house, there are none in Dallas, and I guess it's something that you just don't think about from a puppy's point of view. Well, with a little bit of help, Libby cautiously traversed the steps both up and down for the first time. She couldn't do it gracefully quite yet, but it was really adorable.
Then, I went swimming with the Goldman girls all afternoon while Yoni took Libby to the Hefner Lake Dog Park (www.pawok.com). Unfortunately, we forgot the camera that day, but Libby swam for the first time!! There's a big lake there, and all it took was her seeing other dogs playing, then when Yoni threw the ball to the middle of the lake she ran in and splashed around to fetch it. She even swam a bit at places where she couldn't walk. We hope to take her back a few more times before the summer runs out. She really had a great time. Then to wrap up the day, we stopped by Wendy and Mike's house to say hi and Libby got to meet Carly (their dog) and have a little play date with her - just in case she wasn't tired enough already!!


One really positive outcome of that day is her increased cooperation in the bath. We gave her one today, and the combination of our increased puppy bathing skill, and her maturity, allowed for an easy, uneventful bath time. Here she is in the drying process:

















We also notice a lot of the poodle in her when it comes to some of her habits. Whether we're sitting there or not, her FAVORITE nap place is right under our little breakfast table. It's very sweet, when we do sit down, she uses our feet as her pillow. I think part of it is liking to feel close to us, but she also likes the shape of a shoe. She'll often go into our room, steal a shoe (usually Yoni's big ABU boots or Crocs), carry it to her nap place and use it as a pillow. Most puppies would steal a shoe to chew on, but not ours...she steals it to set up an ideal sleeping place.

July 4th Weekend

(This is Yoni typing now, by the way.) I need to give Michelle a huge thank you for the amazing birthday gift that she got for me this year. It's a custom guitar strap with my name on it and it has the Stars n' Stripes along with Stars of David along the tooled leather:












Yoni's parents came to visit us for the July 4th weekend, and we discovered that his parents had never spent Shabbat at our home before, though we have been married for over a year. Needless to say, it was a very special and joyous occasion. They rolled in at about 3:30 on Friday afternoon, so they had plenty of time to get ready before Shabbat, and they even tasted a few of the last-minute items we cooked, like fresh egg rolls and schnitzel fingers! Yoni bought a new grill in time for the 4th, a Mesquite grill/smoker combination that he says, "Grills meat with robust flavor to perfection!" Tasty, eh?

In preparation for a super-patriotic 4th weekend, Michelle and Yoni came up with a menu to delight the American taste-bud. Barbeque chicken (as pictured below) with homemade BBQ sauce (mmmmm molasses...), meatloaf, chicken pot pie, "American pie", pumpkin pie, etc... Michelle also made AMAZING pull-apart Challot for Shabbat:











We had a nice relaxing Shabbat followed by another special treat of a barbeque on Sunday!! Also, the weekend provided an interesting and amazing discovery. Michelle, Yoni, and Yoni's Pappy played catch in the backyard, while the grill warmed up, and we let Libby out to play with us. It's a great way to tire her out! She'd follow the ball and sometimes we'd let it go (by accident) so she could run after it, fetch, and drop it at our feet. She also looked adorable in her patriotic bandana Michelle made:










The barbeque included special Yoni-enhanced burgers (read: he marinates them in "Bone Suckin' Sauce") and hotdogs on the grill ... and what's a barbeque without pickles! (not on the grill...) We had a great time, especially because the weather cooperated. It didn't get above 85 that afternoon, so we ate outside and hung out there for a while until the flies invited their friends and the fly horde descended upon our happy little gathering and tried to claim our dinner for themselves. We summarily snubbed them by wolfing down the rest of the meat, potatoes, salad, and cantaloupe before those derned ol' flies could even get their mandibles on a burger bun!

Anyway, after our fun outdoor supper, Yoni's parents went back to the big city and we spent the afternoon lazily cleaning the house and napping. By napping, we really mean taking a two minute break from cleaning by sitting on the couch ... and waking up three hours later... All in all a great weekend!