We need your help!

Well, we spent over 5 hours of our Veteran's Day shopping for a new vehicle. I won't go into a long story here of the whole day...that would probably take 5 hours to write, but I will tell you that we puchased a car yesterday after spending more time at the Saturn dealership getting the price a little lower. We got a really good deal, by the way.

You already know that we can be a little weird at times so it shouldn't surprise you that we name our cars. Maybe we're not that weird. You might remember 'Mortimer' (who has 177,777 miles on him) or 'Rose', the red 2002 Chevy Cavailier I'll be driving now. I don't know if I can feel 'manly' enough driving a car named 'Rose' so I might call her 'Bud.' The blue Chevy Astro our family used to drive was called 'Papa Smurf.' Here's what we need help with: we need help naming our silver 2007 Saturn Vue. Please post comments with your ideas on a name or with reports on what names your cars have. Here's a pic of what our new vehicle looks like:

Fun Purchases

We've done a lot of purchasing the past few weeks here in the Bobily household. The most exciting blog-related purchase was this week when we got hi-speed internet hooked up at our house. Emily's comment after surfing the web for a few minutes was, "I can't believe we lived without this for so long." We now have no excuse not to blog every week...unless being busy or not feeling like we have anything to blog about are valid reasons not to blog. I didn't think so.

We've been buying a few things for our home and yard lately. First, let me introduce you to the Leaf Hog 4500:



We decided this particular item would be beneficial in light of the fact that we have 5 large trees in our yard and several other small trees. I won't bore you with specifics of what the LH 4500 can do (like it's 16:1 bag ratio or it's metal 'sucking' blade), but if you want to check it out click here for a link to the Black & Decker website.
The Leaf Hog makes both of our dogs a bit nervous, but especially Deviny. She was actually trying to attack the machine while I was using it.

Another purchase we made recently was a replacement for the old stove/range/oven that we think was the original from when the house was built in 1973. Here's a picture of another stove that is comparable to ours, but is a pic I found on the internet since we forgot to take a pic of our old one which was actually a gas-powered model. (How's that for a run-on sentence?)



We are really enjoying our new one:

Wow! It took less than 10 seconds to upload that pic. Our old dialup used to take several minutes to do that.

Hopefully you all noticed the beautiful paint job Emily did with the "cranberry" and white. I love it!










There are a few other things we are looking at spending money on soon. For those of you who know me I HATE spending money so a lot of these purchases are bittersweet, but necessary.
We are told that the 4-year old, 19 inch, Daewoo TV we got for our wedding needs to either be replaced or we need to buy a converter box before February of next year. Rather than spend more money to convert our TV than it's worth we will most likely be upgrading in the near future.
Long-time followers of the BBBBlog know that my car, Mortimer, has had his share of problems. For those of you who need a refresher check out my previous posts about him here. I was cleaning out Mortimer's glove compartment out the other day and I found the paperwork from when my family bought him in 1998. Well, a few weeks ago I noticed Mortimer's brakes were doing a bit of grinding. I took him in to get a quote on repairs. The verdict: $1400 to repair brakes, struts, shocks, etc. We got several hundred dollars worth of those repairs done, but are in the process of shopping for another vehicle. We are hoping to get a killer deal on a car and I have a feeling that the market is in our favor.

I'd like to take this opportunity to brag more about my wonderful wife. Every time I speak with parents and children at the school they tell me what an amazing job she's doing. I love her so much and am proud of what she's accomplished so far.
A few weeks ago they had a choreographer fly in to help the kids at La Cueva (that's Spanish for 'the Cueva') and I spent a lot of time at the school the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday the group was doing the choreography. The biggest reason I was there was due to the fact that I wanted to see my wife at least a little bit during that 3-day period. It is interesting to me to see her in 'teacher mode.' You can check out the La Cueva Choirs Website here, but some of the pics on the website are from last year and don't quite reflect Em's style.

For those of you who were following Edward Kidnapped My Wife before--please start checking it out again. I will be blogging on there soon while I read and write about the remaining 3 books in the Twilight Saga.

P.S. La Cueva actually means 'the cave' and their mascot is surprisingly the bears ( los osos).

Playful Puppies

Here are the vids we promised of Deviny and Zeppelin playing.

It's been a while since I (Bob) have posted. I've been busy with school, work,fixing things up around the house, and doing a little bit of blogging on the other blog.

Some of you may have already heard, but we got another dog. We picked him up at the Humane Society and within three days of getting him he had had three different names. The name he had from his previous owners was Charlie. We just had to think of something different.  Emily came up with the name Baron, but after less than 24 hours she decided that it didn't fit. He is a black dog and while pondering this I remembered that Led Zeppelin had a song called Black Dog.  (Are song titles normally italicized?) Anyway, while discussing the amazing guitar riffs in the Led

 Zeppelin song (not really) we decided to start calling the dog Zeppelin. He's glad to have a steady name.

Here are a few pics of Zep:

He loves standing at our front door and barking when "strange" people walk by.  We are counting on people being a little intimidated by our big black dog's bark.

And just so Deviny doesn't get jealous and start whining (she does that a lot), here are a few pictures with her in them:

In a few days we will post a few videos of the dogs playing. 

 I'd do it now, but Emily is asleep next to me and if I watch the vids to see which one(s) to post I might disturb her a little more than I already am.  Which reminds me--Emily had an appointment with a Chiropractor this afternoon for the back pain that has kept her in bed way too much lately. She actually feels worse right now than she did before, but apparently it's normal to be sore for a day or so after a chiropractic adjustment.

I wanted to end the post with a couple of funny things we saw tonight. Neither of us felt like cooking dinner so we headed to one of our favorite dining establishments, Red Robin. Just so you know, the Five Alarm Burger was fantastic. 

At the restaurant there was a person dressed up as a Red Robin.

At first this little boy seemed intrigued by the bird, but as the Red Robin got closer and closer the boy kept getting scareder and scareder. (If Dr. Suess and Shakespeare can make up words, so can I)

I apologize for the blurriness of the next pic, but the absolute terror in the face of this little boy made me lose my steady hand...I was laughing too hard

Well, life is good--in spite of 6 foot tall birds instilling fear into the hearts of our children. Emily and I debated on whether or not the following story is appropriate for the blog; you won't read anything in the next paragraph that you won't hear after watching a few minutes of evening TV commercials.  Plus Emily is asleep and it's not quite my bedtime yet...

We were driving home from the restaurant this evening and we noticed a car beside us that had a government seal on the side of it that read, "State of New Mexico EDD."  The thought came to mind, "does New Mexico have an ED Department?" I did a bit of research and their motto seemed to fit: "Our Mission: To enhance the lifestyle of all New Mexicans." The old guy in the government car was not a moving billboard for ED remidies, but works for the New Mexico Economic Development Department. Whew!  I was beginning to worry about where my tax dollars were going.

stuck in bed

Hi, its Emily. So, as you know from previous blogs, we bought a house. The good news is that we love it. Everyday when I am at home I think of another reason that I am so happy with our purchase. However, it is a lot of work and we are constantly thinking of things that we want to buy or do to make it nicer. Deviny is loving the backyard and is always running around and eating the apples from our apple tree. This week we followed Bob Barkers advice and took Dev in to get her spayed and chipped. She was a pathetic sight when I went to pick her up after work. The anesthetic was still making her really nauseous and tired so we kept a close eye on her for the rest of the evening. She wouldn't eat because her stomach was so upset and kept giving me the "What did you do to me?" look. I felt like the worst mother in the world.
This morning was a Saturday and Bob and I were both off work so we decided to go to Home Depot to get some home improvement stuff for the house. Deviny was feeling much better so I wasn't feeling to bad leaving her for a little. Our plans for today were: 1.) to re-stucco part of our wall that was chipped in the front and then paint it a different color, 2.) trim the trees that were touching our roof, and 3.) clear/weed a section in our front yard and put some bark down to make it look better then the dirt around the rose bushes that was there. The first two we had to do because out home insurance wanted it done and the third was just for curb appeal.
We ran errands all morning and then in the late afternoon, when it started to cool off, we went outside to get some work done. Bob started to re-stucco as I sat down to pull weeds and rocks out of our yard. We were working for quite a while when I decided to get up and stretch. I couldn't even get half way up without shooting pain in my lower back. I must have pinched a nerve or pulled something because I have never experienced that kind of back pain before. I managed to get myself into bed with Bobs help and have been lying here ever since. With some IB profin and a hot pad I am able to not cry with pain any time I need to shift but standing up is a different story. I hope I am able to move around tomorrow because my blogs will get pretty pathetic if I can't.
The most excited thing going on in my life is that I got a job teaching music. I am at La Cueva and Del Norte High Schools teaching four different choir classes. It is really surreal teaching high schoolers because I blend in a little to well with them but I am having a blast. I have been teaching for two weeks now and I am just relieved that I am still not only alive, but happy. The kids have been taking to me really well over all and most importantly, they are singing and singing well. I leave work 90% of the time feeling exhausted but very content. I only interviewed for the job a couple weeks because school started so my license hasn't gone through (I have to take a few more tests in a couple weeks). Because of this, I am not a licensed teacher, just a permanent sub but at least I am doing what I have always wanted to and what I worked endlessly in school for. It is so fulfilling to watch them learn and make beautiful sounds in my classroom. From what I have heard, I am very different from their last teacher and they are adjusting as fast as they can to my new style and approach to music. It always amazes me how resilient and opened minded young people are to difficult situations.
I promise to give you more details on my classes and students then next time I get a chance. Who knows, it might be tomorrow morning if I can't get myself out of bed by then!