The newest member of our family

World, meet Katie!!

Those of you who have kept up with this blog from the beginning might remember Sandy, the adorable pit bull whom Justin and I fostered for 4 months before leaving for the Peace Corps. We absolutely loved our time with Sandy and had been itching to have a dog to call our own since then. Two and a half years later, we're so happy to have this wonderful dog join our family!

Overlooking the Potomac River in Georgetown.

Katie is about a year and 2-3 months (we don't know for sure), a beige and white American Staffordshire Terrier mix, and 43 pounds of goofy, loving, energetic adorableness. 

At the dog park, an example of her goofiness!

We adopted Katie from Lucky Dog Animal Rescue, a foster network of volunteers who work hard to find families for homeless and abandoned animals (I would definitely recommend them to anyone in the DC area!). We knew that we wanted to adopt a pit bull, for several reasons:
1) They are ADORABLE and have a wonderful disposition, and 
2) Pit bulls get a terrible rep and more than anything we want to try to change people's perceptions. Our hope is that by seeing us on the street with Katie, or in reading about or meeting her, perhaps people might start to think a bit differently.

Who could think these dogs are anything but adorable?!?

If you've read this long, then here's your present - Lots more adorable Katie photos!! Enjoy :)

Katie gets to know Pimento, our pet turtle.

Surrounded by her toys. 

With Justin and our friend Bryant.

Playing with a Chanukah present from her
Uncle Neal, Aunt Erin, and Cousin Maple (the dog).

Sandy update!

In previous posts, I mentioned quite possibly the greatest dog in the history of the universe - our beautiful Sandy. We fostered her from late December through mid April and attribute her joining a wonderful forever family largely to our "Adopt Sandy!" campaign :) We think of her often and have (perhaps over-enthusiastically) shared pictures and videos with many of our fellow Peace Corps colleagues.

We recently received an update from her great parents along with new pictures, and I wanted to take a break from the Morocco-related posts to share. She is not surprisingly doing wonderfully! She had some health issues around the summer, but those seem to be resolved and she is healthy and beautiful. We've been told that she is now what they call a "veggie dog" and her favorite treat is baby carrots. We also hear that she is bilingual which they discovered when a Spanish language program came on the TV. She reacted to it, and they tried out some commands in Spanish, and you can guess the rest - we always knew she was a smart girl! We feel so privileged that we had her in our lives for even a few short months and are very grateful that she has found a wonderful family who is willing to keep us in the loop :)

Here are some recent photos - hope you enjoy.

P.S. - while she still doesn't like the rain, she enjoyed playing in the October snow in New York!!

The Week in Review

Here's a photo review of the week for your viewing pleasure!

Veniero's in Manhattan. A few years ago Justin and I
did a taste-test of cannolis throughout NYC
and we determined that this one is the best :)

Justin and our friend Emily at a Metropolitan Opera
concert/picnic in Central Park

Justin and our friend Mike enjoying an ENORMOUS quantity
of bbq and fixin's at Blue Smoke (Justin and my first date
was in their jazz club downstairs!)

View of NYC from the Empire State Building

The Cloisters - one of our favorite museums, in upper Manhattan

One last goodbye with the adorable Sandy, our foster dog.
She and her new parents are doing wonderfully!

In 9 hours, Justin and I are flying to Vietnam for 12 days, followed by Bangkok for 3 days (going to a friends' wedding there), and then to Scotland for 4 days (visiting my sister-in-law and her husband for a wedding celebration across the pond). I can't promise that I'll be able to blog during the trip but I will post a full trip update once we get back to NYC!

Life is Calling*... Part Three

(continued from parts one and two - click back to read them first!) 

After the summer ended, Justin and I realized that our Peace Corps dreams would likely not come to a reality until the following summer, and as much as I wanted to stay in my volunteering bubble for a while longer, I thought it might be best to combine that with working full-time. So I started freelancing back in ad agencies to keep the paycheck coming in, and I continued my work with the Taproot Foundation as I mentioned in my last post… but alongside these, we had a lot of other incredible experiences, including:

Trips: Justin and I were fortunate to be able to take a massive amount of wonderful trips, both together and separately, over the past year. We traveled to destinations for friend’s weddings (Austin, Boston, Connecticut, Pittsburgh), visits to friends and family (Alabama, Memphis, Wilmington, Monroe, Philadelphia, Atlanta, New Jersey), and some very fun travel experiences that also included friends and family (Baltimore, Santa Fe, Iceland and Scotland!). We were even fortunate enough recently to have the whole of Scotland come down to Brooklyn for my wonderful sister-in-law’s wedding (we’ll be traveling back to Scotland over the summer for more wedding shenanigans, so more on this later!).

A gorgeous wedding in Austin
with friends from Justin's law school

Running a 1/2 marathon with my bro
in Atlanta (I only joined in for 6 miles)

Visiting my sister-in-law and
now husband in Edinburgh

Snowmobiling on a glacier
in Iceland

Visiting our friend Sarah
in New Mexico

Visiting my parents in North Carolina

Looking out over the Ring of Kerry
in Ireland

Visiting my second family in Louisiana

Sandy: This is by far the highlight of my last year. Probably even my last 10 years. Justin and I decided to temporarily foster a dog, since we both wanted to have a dog together and as I was freelancing, I had far more time than ever before. So we found Sandy, a stray from the south, who had been brought to New York by a foster organization. We spent 4 months with this sweet, amazing dog who we opened up our hearts to. We fattened her up (from 52 to 68 pounds!), taught her tricks, and generally just gave her lots of love and affection. After we launched an intense marketing campaign in the spring that included YouTube videos, a Facebook page, and lots of emails, we found Sandy a wonderful new home and had to say goodbye. It broke our hearts to part with this dog who truly became a part of our family, but we know that we did a great thing for her and that she will have a wonderful life!

When we first got her (very skinny)

Justin gives Sandy a big hug

How can you not LOVE that face?

Family portrait

So there you have it. I summed up an entire year in 3 blog posts which isn’t too bad. Now we are spending our time planning for THIS SUMMER which I’m sure you will be reading more about soon:

• A trip to Vietnam, Thailand, and Scotland
• A road trip across the country to say farewell to friends and family
• A goodbye NYC tour of all of our favorite places 
• And packing up our lives for the next 2 years… OY!

* Footnote: In case you are wondering, “Life is Calling” (also in my header on top of the blog) is the current Peace Corps motto.  The whole thing reads “Life is calling… how far will you go?”