How many licks does it take to get to the center of a grape?

I have crazy dogs. Truly, they are both neurotic on different levels. The more crazy of the two, Bitsy, is OBSESSED with chasing shadows almost 24/7, can't stand water, has specific texture and moisture requirements for the terrain she will or will not walk on, takes literally five minutes to decided the EXACT right spot to poop or pee on, and has to be comfortable at ALL times and will spend hours searching for the most comfortable position on the couch.

On of her more funny and cute quirks is that she loves to play with any kind of treats we give her. Most dogs just wolf it down, but not her. She gets it, throws it around, chases it, throws it somewhere else, licks it a little bit, takes a little bite, throws it around somemore, and repeat until it is all gone. I have never seen another dog do this! I gave her a grape today and when I saw how funny it was I decided to get a video of it. So here is the video with the second grape. She wasn't as playful with it as the first one, but it still took her over a minute to eat a grape....

Picture Dump!

I have quite a few pictures to share and they don't really go together, so I will just put them all together in one post. Soooo get ready for some randomness :)

The police found Anthony's stolen car! Here are some pictures from the junk yard:

You can see that they took the entire front bumper, the headlights, and the front side panels. What you can't see is that they also took the battery and various engine parts. Here you can see that they took the taillights and the license plate. BUT they left the tow hitch. You mean they didn't want a tow hitch from a Honda civic hatchback? Weird.

This is an example of what basically the entire interior of the car looked like. All of the side panels and the front dash was taken apart and wires and parts were removed. The entire air conditioning control panel was missing, along with all of the ignition and inside the steering column.
The best for last:

They took the driver and passenger side head rests!! Who knew that 10 year old Honda civic head rests were worth anything to anybody?

These next round of pictures are of my blossoming garden. Everyday Anthony swears that it has doubled in size and that I am secretly pumping it with performance enhancers to make it grow. I swear I don't do anything to them, can I help it if I have the magic touch? Now if only I could make money grow the same way... I am beyond excited for the day when it finally starts producing something that I can eat!

Finally, I happened to have the camera out as Anthony was getting ready to drop me off at work before he headed to clinicals (ah, the joys of having only one car) and I couldn't resist taking a picture of him all professional-ed out. Isn't he adorable!!!! I am so proud of him, and it is really neat to see how much he has grown and all that he has learned in just a short amount of time. I can't mention anyone having any kind of medical condition without him knowing everything about it and starting to grill me about what medications they are on and what treatment. Plus, it is cool to be able to ask him whenever I don't feel well and have him diagnose me!

Do really good news and really bad news cancel each other out?

We've had a roller coaster week at the Lagana household. There have been awesome highs and horrible lows, and I haven't decided if the good has made the bad not so bad or if the bad has put a damper on the good...

The good first: I've been offered a full time job with benefits! Basically, I get to do the job I have been doing for the past 5 months I just get paid more and I get to have health insurance. Definitely a win! Plus, I've already gone through all of the growing pains of learning what it is I am supposed to be doing and I can keep trucking along and keep getting comfortable in my position. All of this time at work I have been able to be a apart of some exciting projects for the office and now I get to stick around and see them through. It is all very rewarding!

For more good, Anthony has had wonderful grades all semester and is only a few weeks away from being done with this semester. After that he only has two more semester to go until he is completely done!!! We are so glad that graduation seems to be sneaking up on us!

The bad: Anthony's car got stolen a few days ago. It is so disheartening to realize just how many bad people there are out there. I still want to believe that everyone is inherently good, but it is getting harder and harder to keep that optimism.

In the past few months:

• Anthony's radio was stolen out of his car. We were bummed and filed a report with the police, but counted ourselves lucky that the windows weren't broken and everything else was left in the car.
• Someone tried to break into my car while I was at the gym. A wonderful good Samaritan stranger chased the guy away and stayed by my car until I came back. This was in broad daylight in front of a shopping center and a busy street!
• Anthony's car was completely stolen from our apartment complex. (I'm thinking the same people that stole the radio decided to come back and take the entire thing). When Ant talked to the police while filing his report, the cop told him that the crime is getting really bad in our neighborhood and thieves are actually kicking down doors to rob apartments! No joke, we are going to borrow a gun from a friend of ours and Anthony is going to quit working night shifts so that I'm not home alone at night anymore.

So, we are trying to stay positive. Anthony's school schedule is going to be crazy busy this summer so he wasn't anticipating working very much, but now that we need to buy another car it puts a little more stress on us. Plus, I can't stand the thought of staying in this neighborhood much longer so we are actively looking for another apartment. The sooner we can move, the better! I never thought I would wish that I lived in the country in the middle of nowhere, but I hate feeling so helpless and unsafe. But, I am sure everything will work out for us :)

Spring is in the air

Spring is in full swing here in Tampa! It has been so wonderful to enjoy the beautiful weather and to watch all of the new life popping up everywhere:

First, garden pictures Week... 4(?). I think it has been about a month. My garden is doing great!! I am having a little bit of a problem with bugs chewing on some of my leaves and one plant has totally given up the ghost, but one out of the large number of things I have planted is a pretty good mortality rate! Here you can see my garden expansion. I've added a tomato plant, 4 squash pots, and 4 pots of spinach. I am also trying to get a sweet potato to sprout so I can plant parts of it. So far it isn't working too well :) But, the new seeds are doing well and should be breaking through the surface soon (I had to dig in and investigate a little bit). I am trying not to smother my garden with attention but sometimes I can't resist digging some things up just to see how they are developing!

Second: I try to take walks around the campus during my lunch hour and for the past few weeks I've been keeping track of new ducklings in several of the campus ponds! They are so cute!!!! One day we walked out to see two mama ducks with 19 baby ducks waddling around them! I couldn't figure out how the duck population could stay at a manageable number with so many babies every year, but I was unfamiliar with how many predators there are for those baby ducks.... While we were watching them a seagull swooped down and tried to carry off one of the babies! We threw sticks and yelled at the bird, but it didn't seem to care. The next day we went to check out the babies and there were only five left. The next day, only two. Anthony told me that lots of things eat the baby ducks (turtles, fish, other birds, etc...) I could of died happy thinking that all of those baby ducks went to visit an aunt and uncle duck in a pond on a farm far away and that is why they mysteriously disappeared.

On a more positive note, the other day I got to watch a pair of doves meticulously pick and choose the perfect sticks for building their nest. Now everyday that I walk by I see the mother dove sitting on the nest and I am looking forward to hearing her little baby birds chirping once they hatch!

Third: Yesterday we had an interesting spring-reproduction moment in our house! Anthony's anemone that he has in the little tank for the baby clowns did its own form of reproduction by splitting itself in half! It was really cool and, to be honest, kind of gross to watch. We could see everything since it was stuck on the glass wall of the aquarium. Anthony kept rushing around like an excited father, and he couldn't believe his luck that he was going to end up with TWO anemones. Apparently it is rare for an anemone to do this, much less for us to get to see it. Then, after the excitement died down a bit, Anthony looked over and the anemone was splitting AGAIN! In one day we got to see the anemone go from one big anemone to three smaller ones. Here are the pictures of the process: This is the view of the anemone from the bottom. You can see it is stretching it's stump out in different directions.Split #2 Three anemones!

Anthony wanted me to emphasize how rare it is to see this. Usually the anemone splits at night when the lights are off and no one is around. Plus, if they do split, the usually are somewhere in the tank, on a rock or in the sand, not pressed up against the glass so we can see everything. Isn't that neat?

In other exciting news, I have a new calling! I'm a bit bummed about being released from Young Women's. I felt like I was just getting the hang of everything and getting to know the girls, and getting released was a bit surprising since I just got called in August... But, on the bright side my new calling is to be a teacher in Primary! This is yet another first for me. I haven't ever served in the primary before so I am excited for a new challenge. I have already started picking my mom's brain about how to manage energetic 5 year olds (she has had a lot of practice). Luckily a lot of the other leaders in primary are professional teachers so I am sure they will have a lot of good tips for me too.

There are exciting new developments brewing on the job front, but since I don't have anything official that I can say yet, just know that hopefully (fingers AND toes crossed!) everything will be settled in the next few weeks.

Anthony is doing well in his classes, studying hard and working hard. This semester is going much better than last semester and it is hard to believe that we are few weeks away from it being over! Anthony's clinical coordinator took pity on him and instead of assigning him to the women's prison for his women's health rotation (where she said, and I quote, "They would eat him alive") she decided to assign him to the heath department. Whew!