Fun with Zoey

Zoey has been an incredible joy and comfort to Jed and I. She is crazy but we are finally beginning to see her calm down and turn from puppy to dog. I think she will always be crazy about food and get excited when people come over but one good thing about Zoey is how easy it has been to train her. Especially when you have food, you can get Zoey to do about anything. Her tricks so far are sit, paw 1&2 (shake, pound it), high five, up, down, roll over, crawl, spin, around (she goes around your legs), figure 8 through your legs, and my personal favorite salute. She loves doing them! She is also in love with her tunnel and jumps that we made her. Basically anything to get her food she will do. Getting her to go through the tunnel though was really hard. I guess tunnels are very scary for dogs.

She is incredible off leash and loves to swim in the lake behind our house. For some reason it's the only time she will play fetch without a food bribe. We love taking her to the park behind our house. Especially when they close it for the winter. It kind of turns into this unofficial dog park and we can do things off leash.

Biking/Running Sessions

 She will play fetch in the backyard as long as she gets a treat every three or four throws. As willing as she is to do things she is also incredibly stubborn and that's really annoying.  When she doesn't want to do something she lies on her back and looks at you like "what are you going to do about it." It seriously is one of the most annoying things because it's usually when your in a hurry of some sort. Thank goodness for the magic or food. Some times we wonder why we got this dog, but in the end we both agree we would do it again. Just maybe a little less eating of things!

One of our favorite places to take Zoey is Shelby Farms (not to be confused with Shelby Forest). Shelby Farms has a giant dog park that just has dirt paths, large fields and small lakes. Zoey is in heaven there and it's nice to let her off leash and go crazy. But she is so good at staying with us. When she goes too far she either runs back or waits for us to catch up.

Hide and Seek with the Zoester

Lately we have been taking her to watch us play tennis. She is so good at watching us on the side!

Shelby Forest

Jed and I wanted to start the New Year right and we also wanted to take advantage of this amazing winter warmth. Apparently it is not always this warm in the winter but I am not complaining. We decided to check out a state park only 45 minutes away and do a 7 mile hike. We also got Zoey a hiking backpack and it is so adorable so we had to try it out. We had her try it on the night before and it was hilarious. She would not moved and looked humiliated for about 20 minutes. She just stood there as still as possible. Finally she began to realize she could still function with her backpack on.

The hike was so much fun. Southern hiking is really cool because the forest here are very dense. There is a lot on the ground. Everything was dead though because it was January. It still was gorgeous. Zoey was such a trooper and to our relief she slept the rest of the day. While on our hike, everything was brown and dead. Then all of a sudden we came across an amazing green field of weird looking grass. The color difference was amazing and the green was stunning. So naturally we took lots of pictures. We had a lot of fun on our hike and getting Zoey to climb on logs and such!

New Years Eve

We have been very blessed to have a lot of LDS students at SCO. So naturally this makes for great parties around the holidays. This year we went to our friends and neighbors, the Walkers. We had a great time eating and playing games while ringing in the New Year.

Christmas in the South

This Christmas Break was very different than any Christmas Break I have ever experienced. For the first time, I didn't actually have a break. I worked the entire break, except for Christmas Eve and Day. Jed on the other hand had school off and was getting a much deserved break. He just finished his first semester at SCO and did extremely well. We still made gingerbread houses (memphis style) and decorated the house for Christmas! It was the first year we had our own house to put lights on. Oddly we were the only ones in the neighborhood!

With the girls out of school I had to get really creative with what we did. Luckily Jed joined us a lot of the time. We had a lot of fun doing winter activities (well as winter as you can get with 70 degree weather).

So to make the most of our two day break and holiday we headed to Nashville to stay with the Ramsay's. Zoey went with us and it was the first long car ride she had ever been on. It actually went really well once she calmed down.

The weather was abnormally warm with a 75 degree Christmas day. Jed and Josh played tennis outside on Christmas Eve! For Christmas Eve dinner we went out to eat at O'Charlies with some gift card from Jed's mom and dad. I had never done that before but it was really nice not having to do any dishes! We did our own little version of the Christmas story with our limited characters but it still made for a very spiritual night.

The next morning on Christmas day little Nora and Emma were very excited to open presents and it was really fun to watch them. Unfortunately just a little after we started Nora ended up getting really sick. It was so sad to see a little girl not wanting to open anything on Christmas. Because it was all adults we were fine waiting to open presents until she felt better. It actually made the Christmas spirit last a little longer because we stretched the festivities out until 5 pm.
Jenny made a delicious Christmas ham and it was seriously so fun being with them. We feel so blessed to have them so near.

Fanz gear for Christmas!

Zoey did really well with the little girls. The only trouble she caused was when we swallowed a giant chunk of the ham bone. We never did see it again but we are assuming all is well.

Thanksgiving

Living in Memphis takes us pretty far away from family. We are fortunate enough to have some family still relatively close to us. Jed's sister, Jenny and her family, live three hours away in Nashville, while my Grandma Nelson, Aunt Marj, and my Aunt Naomi and Uncle Kirk live in Arkansas, only five hours away. Luckily this means that we don't have to be alone for Christmas or Thanksgiving.

For Thanksgiving this year, we got to spend it in Arkansas. Unfortunately because of work we did not have very much vacation time, but we got to spend two days in Rogers. It was a really good time and it was nice being with family we don't typically get to be with during the holidays. Jed and I contributed to the feast by making Jed's delicious twice baked sweet potatoes.

Oxford

When Jed and I were making our giant list of things to do we put "going to a football game in Oxford." We thought the SEC atmosphere would be fun and exciting. We had no idea we would get to accomplish this wish let alone go as early as we did. My cousins Tawnya and Shane Richardson were so kind in taking us to the Ole Miss v. LSU game. It was so much fun. It was a cold and rainy day, but the excitement didn't disappoint. The grove was incredible. This is basically an endless tent city of tailgaters. You haven't seen tailgating like this before, I promise! The game wasn't all that exciting because Ole Miss killed LSU, but it was still fun! Oh and we saw Karl Malone so that was cool too!

Relatives are coming

My Mom and Dad were able to make the trip to visit us in early November. It was a blast because they had never been to the area before. They stayed with us for two weekends and during the week they went to Arkansas to visit my Grandma Nelson. While they were here we took them to the pyramid, the river, Memphis BBQ and Central BBQ.

 

We went to the civil rights museum and that was amazing. We had no idea that it would be as extensive as it was. We would love to go back and spend more time because we definitely felt rushed.

My parents really wanted to go to Graceland. Jed and I weren't very interested but thought it could be fun. I've never been into Elvis so I wasn't sure how much fun I would have. Upon arrival the atmosphere was really fun and we began to become so excited. The tour of Elvis' house was so much fun and so informative. It was so extravagant and the audio tour made you want to be a fan. We had a blast at Graceland!

On one of the Saturdays we went to the Civil War battlefield of Shiloh. It was so fascinating. I have never been to a civil war battlefield before and I was very impressed.

Shelby farms was also on our list of things we did. It always is so nice to walk around the beautiful park.