I'm going to come on out and say that I hate xanga. It has made my life miserable and trapped me in its clenches not allowing me to move to my new love Wordpress.com. (insert sounds of me spitting on the ground xanga walks on.)

For those who love xanga still, I am okay with that. I just warn you to never compare the greener grass on the other side because even if you want to, you can never leave xanga. There is no way to easily export a xanga blog to any other superior blog technology such as blogger, wordpress, live journal, etc. They intended it that way and are lying in some dark lair underground writhing their thumbs and shouting mwahahahaha.

I'm going to attemp to post more often (yes again for like the 87th time) at marlajoann.wordpress.com, where the sun always shines and they trust that if you ever want to leave them they have to let you go like in that Mariah Carey Butterfly song.

So long xanga troubleshooting suckas! I'm out.

They are EVERYWHERE.

I wouldn't classify myself as an outdoors person, but I tried to be a good wife and plant some cute flowers in my front and back yard. It went well until about the fourth begonia. Then I was brutally ravaged by a frog that landed directly on me. Did he think I was a lilly pad? And I was all like, ewww... there is a frog on my leg, hey JOHN there is frog on my leg, JOHN! Then said frog jumped, I screamed. It was over.

Yea... no one came to my rescue. And John planted the rest of the flowers because I don't do that anymore.

The next night on our walk through the neighborhood, John stepped directly on another little guy and you could totally hear the squish.

Karma suckers!

John repeatedly told me when I begged for a puppy that the true sign of a good dog is them being able to hold a treat on their nose until you tell them they can eat it. Then they must perfect the treat flicking until they can toss it up in the air and properly catch it in their mouth. (I know... dream big, right?)

So, to ensure that my husband finds love in his heart for my new puppy best friend, Millie and I have been working to perfect her trick. (I think he likes her, but he just doesn't act like it yet.) It quite possibly could be due to the fact that she eats his socks whenever she gets the chance and bloody baby teeth fall out of her head onto our carpet each time we give her a delicious cow ear treat. I'll admit life was more simple before Millie, but she's just so stinkin' cute. Did I mention she was CUTE?

She is just now getting stable enough to hold her nose in one place. Before, when I said stay, her body wouldn't move but her head would flail about like a bobble-head hula girl on the dash of a car, you know, kind of like Stevie Wonder. So now... we've got that part down. Her only problem is how to retrieve the treat from her snout without going cross-eyed and dropping it on the floor. (See example below.)

This clip warms my heart... Hopefully it will warm John's someday, too. He just now learned to love the cat who turned three last Saturday. I think the dog purchase made him love the cat more. But I know he sneakily gives her nice pats behind her ears.

Oh, and yes, I've become those annoying pet parents that I used to make fun of. She does not, however, sleep in my bed... yet....

I'm apparently a bad aunt and I did not get pictures of Baby Ava, but the other three are holding up the cuteness factor quite well by themselves.

We had a great Easter and dyed eggs at "Aunt Lala's" house the day before, which I hope to become a new tradition. I really think my mother just passed it on to me to save her own house from multi-colored hand prints on the fridge, table, carpet, etc. Easter egg dying is by far one of my favorite traditions of any holiday. Not to mention all the hiding and finding... And a few kids may have been knocked down in a race to the eggs. Don't judge.

Two topics on my mind...

1. I am so excited about Devon's announcement of a new building I can hardly stand it. I think it is an incredible boost for OKC and aids in our city's continual growth. I'm excited to live here at such a time of change. It's fun to be a part of it. If you haven't read anything about yet, there are about ten stories on newsok.com just from today and yesterday.

Another exciting tidbit is that this new skyscraper will be LEED certified. (Thanks laurendean for infusing me with your LEED knowledge hipness a couple weeks ago so I could feel cool and knowledgable when the announcement came out and I was the only one familiar with it. :) ) Anyway, I'm super excited, I love my job, and in case you haven't noticed I've apparently been drinking gallon jugs of the kool-aid.

2. As for this boot camp situation, I finally realized that the trainer's "nutrition" plan was only allowing me about 500-600 calories a day so I'm on my own healthy plan now. Apparently he's an idiot and I'm sad it took me almost passing out and experiencing narcolepsy at work to realize that he's an idiot and add up the calories myself. I was almost rockin' an Ethiopian belly and was miserable because I had no energy and got really shaky. I totally felt like DJ Tanner on Full House when she stops eating and passes out at the gym. Not to mention the EXTREME workouts. I was probably burning way more than I was eating. So he's on my idiot list. Although I do think the workouts are good and plan to continue crab walking, carrying people across soccer fields on my back, etc.

The funniest part of this bad diet realization is that I had been taking naps in the car to and from work. I didn't think anything of it until I showed up at boot camp and two girls from my work started laughing and asked, "So did you have a good nap on the way home?" Pretty embarrasing. Apparently they say I had my cheek smooshed up against the window. 

And that's just sad.  

Unless you are more than 80 years of age...

When I rub my eye and say, "Geez, I've got something in my eye and I can't get it out,"

Please do not ever respond with, "Yeah, it's your finger." (insert stupid chuckle here)

It's idiotic. It doesn't help my situation and it's not even funny. And it renders my finger totally useless because now instead of finding the foreign object in my eyeball, I now want to poke it out completely because I am so annnoyed.

It's a totally inappropriate response to a somewhat serious situation. So just don't do it. For the sake of my otherwise completely attached eyeball... and sanity.

I stayed out past 11 p.m. - kind of a big deal considering I'm usually in bed before the 10 p.m. news is over. And we almost stayed out until last call...

Millie was the best student next to a freakishly well-behaved doberman pinscher in her first big girl obediance class. She was also the youngest. She's back in my good graces again.

I learned how to make sweet potato chips from a friend of mine and made them twice this weekend because they are so delicious.

I found out that Millie does not enjoy being tied to a swing set in my mother's back yard. (She is not allowed in her house and she'll rip the screen door off if I let her loose.)

After living in Oklahoma for more than 25 years now, I still don't believe the weather man when he says that  today is 70 degrees, but tomorrow the wind chill will be 10 degrees. He was right.

Millie apparently learned to MacGuiver her way out of her crate while we were out Friday night and the only thing she chose to tear up was one of two books laying next to my bed. Ironic that the one she chose just happened to be by Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer. Apparently that book pisses her off... There was paper snow all in one corner of our bedroom. I'm talking pages ripped out, slobbered on and as you can see, the cover is missing and the hard bound part is chewed in both corners. The other book was untouched. Such an unsolved mystery. 

John and I have decided that from now on, we will only give her commands in spanish. We want her to be a bilingual puppy. It was between that and Harry Potter spells, which still may be on the horizon.

Only in Arkansas can you find something better than a dillybar at Dairy Queen. You can find tacos, burritos, unidentified beverages and smiley ice cream men at Dairy DeQueen.

And please don't be confused about your opportunities to make money marketing this franchise. As the sign directly below "Restaurant" explicitly states, "Not a Franchise." Bummer, huh?

Girls weekend was a good time for those of us who could keep from tossing our cookies (and by cookies I'm referring to the millions of spring Oreos we ate.) And I'm sad that one of us got sick, but we'll make up for that again hopefully some day.

On the way home, we got gas at what I consider to be a historic landmark. And yes, that is a gas station chicken taquito I'm sampling. It was not so delicious. I'm pretty sure this photo is taken right before this car full of girls gets abducted by the Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy.