Lola's Scary Night

On Monday night we had quite the drama at our house. I got home from work around 7:15pm and we went through our normal routine: the dogs ate, they went outside, I ate dinner, and we sat down to watch some TV. The dogs were all playing while I was watching TV like normal. Around 8pm Garrett came home and as he walked through the door, I heard Lola yelp. I was wondering what had happened and she came running over to me. She was looking at me weird and as I was trying to figure out what was going on, she started trembling. Then she was hunching down towards the floor and at this point, I knew something was really wrong. I started yelling at Garrett to get the other dogs outside because they were jumping around and getting in my way. As Garrett was getting them out the back door, Lola tried to walk over to him, but couldn't walk. She was losing her balance. She sat down, but you could tell something was wrong. Then, all of a sudden, her eyes went back in her head and she started having a seizure. She fell over, but Garrett luckily caught her. At this point, I ran upstairs in a nervous panic to put my jeans on. I ran back downstairs and she was still seizuring. Then I went out to the garage and opened up the car door and Garrett carried her out to the car while she was still shaking. I had to run back in the house because I didn't grab a cell phone, but when I came back out the garage a few seconds later, her seizure had stoped. And about 2 minutes into the car ride she was acting completely normal again.

We drove down to the Sumner Vet hospital which is less than 10 minutes from our house. When we got there, the emergency doctor on shift had just gone into a surgery, so the nurse was relaying between us and the doctor in surgery. We had a couple of options at this point. The first was to just take her home and watch her. If she seizured again, they told us to bring her back in right away. The other option was to wait an hour to see the doctor and he could run blood work to see if there was anything wrong. We ended up just taking her home to watch her, but we made an appointment for her on Tuesday to stay the day at the hospital under observation while we were both at work.

When we got home after the hospital, Lola was still acting just fine. She wanted to play, but I made her just relax and take it easy. I slept downstairs for most of the night because I was so afraid she was going to seizure again and I wanted to be able to watch her closely. I got about 3 hours of sleep that whole night because I kept hallucinating in my sleep that she was seizuring, so I woke up about every 10 minutes.

Tuesday morning, I took her back to the hospital so she could spend the day there. I called them around 12:30pm to check on her. The tech told me she was resting at the time, and still no more seizures. I made an appointment with the doctor at 6:30pm on my way home from work. When I got there, he discussed things with me. There are many different reasons dogs can have seizures. Labs are one breed who are prone to them. He said it is most common between the ages of 2 and 4 and usually these seizures are not anything bad. He said I can either take her home and wait to see if she has any others or start some testing. I choose to have the first step of testing done, complete blood work. This is mainly for my sanity so I can sleep. I need to know that nothing is wrong that they can prevent. The next step would be an MRI, but that would only be necessary if she kept having the seizures.

I should find out part of the blood test results today, hopefully sooner than later. Then the second half of the tests I will find out the next day or two. The part I find out today is the most important part, so that is good. I will keep you updated. Say a prayer for my little girl, we love her so much!

The Postponed Christmas Eve

Last night we finally celebrated a late Christmas Eve with the Spino side of the family. There was a ton of food and as usual we had our gift exchange which never disappoints. For those of you who may be reading this that does not know the Spino family well, it is our goal to buy the worst / funniest gifts possible for our Christmas Eve gift exchange. Not too often are they serious gifts. With that said, I took many pictures and recorded a few videos that I will send to you Spino's through email because as I was looking through them today, I realized most of them are not blog appropriate :)

On another note, I promised Uncle Jimmy a shout out on the blog, so here you go......



Does anyone have their tickets to the gun show?






At least he knew what he was getting into long before we were married :)



Dad's new yard inflatable to go with the snowman.

Christmas Day

Since we did our usual Christmas morning at Mom and Dad's on Christmas Eve this year like I explained on the last post, Garrett and I were able to relax at home on Christmas morning for a while until we had to go to Grandma's house in the afternoon. The babies woke us up at 6:40am, I think they knew it was Christmas.



Santa came while the babies were outside, when I let them back in, Lola and Casey went straight to the tree. They knew it was time to open presents.



So interested in what each present was.



Their favorite part was sampling each treat they got :)



Lola and Casey played all morning with their new toys.



Rusty even played with the new squeeker toys (very rare).



Casey was so tired after a morning full of playing.



Lola too.



And Rusty, cuddling with Mommy as usual!



At Grandma's house in the afternoon.

A Unusual Christmas Eve

This years Christmas Eve was a bit different. Usually on Christmas Eve we go to Mom and Dad's house and spend time with the Spino side of the family but since there was another 5 inches of new snow that day in Maple Valley, it was postponed until the day after Christmas, LAME. Garrett and I still went over to my parents house though and did our normal Christmas morning on Christmas Eve. It was a bit hectic. We had 5 dogs and 1 cat running around in the house. And of course the animals get way more presents than any of the humans do. It took forever to open all of their presents but they had so much fun playing with their new toys!

I got a new digital camera for Christmas from Garrett and I had so much fun taking pictures and playing with all the options. My favorite thing is that it can record videos, so look out for some of them to be posted soon :) I also found that I can edit, crop, and change the colors of my photos right on the camera. It's so fun. You'll notice I experimented with Sepia on a couple of the pictures below.






This shirt explains itself, I don't really have to elaborate for you :)



My dad made these cool dog bone shaped signs with each of our dogs' names on it. We are going to hang them in our backyard along the fence since they are indoor dogs and do not have doghouses.







No more stockings will fit on my Mom and Dad's stocking wall. I guess that means no more dogs :(

2 Days Till Christmas

Christmas is almost here and it looks like Washington is going to have a white Christmas after all. We keep getting blasted with new snow and there is more to come tonight. If only the snow plowers would come down our road, we would be completely stocked. Yesterday, Garrett ended up in the drain ditch out front of our house because he attempted to drive his 2 wheel drive in the new snow we got. He had yet to have any trouble in the snow until yesterday. There was just too much accumulation on our street. So at 4am in the morning we were outside trying to dig his car out of the 2 feet of snow it was stuck in. I can't believe I didn't take a picture, I do of everything else. Maybe I was too tired and cranky at 4am to think about snapping pictures. Anyway, we were not able to dig his car out, so he drove my car into work which is 4 wheel drive and did just fine. Later that morning my dad came over and pulled his car out with his truck. Dad to the rescue once again :)

On another note, I found this really cool website where you can create online scrapbooks and pages. www.scrapblog.com. Check it out, it is super fun. There are all sorts of scrapbook themes, or you can create your own from scratch. When you are finished, you can save the images and even print if you would like. Here is my first creation....

Snow Day Part II

Washington's "December Storm" has sure brought a lot of snow with it. Yesterday we got about 5 inches of new snow at our house on top of what we already had from the previous week. Today we have been outside shoveling and playing in the snow. Even though their ball kept getting lost in the snow, the babies were having a blast.


This is Casey trying to play with Rusty because Lola didn't want to play. As you can tell, he wasn't really having it.




I was going inside and usually they will follow me anywhere, but they just stood there....they wanted to keep playing.

4 Days Till Christmas

Because it was snowing all day, I spent most of yesterday inside wrapping Christmas presents and many of them were for the dogs surprise, surprise :) The babies were so interested in what I was wrapping that I couldn't resist letting them open one early.


They love to help open their presents....




Lola and Casey loved the new toy.......



Rusty would rather just lay with Mommy.....



And Garrett was sad because I told him he couldn't play with his Rubik's cube the rest of the night. He is obsessed with that thing, but he's getting pretty good :)

Mastering the Rubik's Cube

Last night Garrett solved the Rubik's cube with his fastest time yet, 4 minutes 28 seconds. His goal is to solve the cube under 1 minute and after that, he wants to solve it blind folded all because he saw it done on YouTube.

The Dancing Cornatzer's

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

You Spino's Will Appreciate This.......

Okay Spino's...... here is our family photo with the infamous hunter snowman. We went over to Mom and Dad's tonight for dinner and even though it was colder then heck outside tonight, we had to take a minute to capture the moment. And guess what......Dad has another blow up character in the works for this Christmas. Let's just say he has to make a special trip down south to Cabela's to pick this one up! If that doesn't make you excited for Christmas Eve this year, I don't know what will. Only 10 days to go until "the most enduring traditions of the season are best enjoyed in the warm embrace of kith and kin." ---Clark W. Griswold JR.

CHEERS :)

Picture Time

We had plans to take the babies to Petco yesterday to have their picture taken with Santa, but we ended up not having enough time. But this morning we tried to take some pictures in front of the Christmas tree. We couldn't get the whole family because someone had to take the picture, so we took them separately. As you can see Lola (far right) never likes to cooperate for pictures. At least we could get her to stand there long enough to get the picture. If you are wondering why there are no ornaments on the tree, well we opted out this year because we were afraid they would be mistaken for chew toys :)

Christmas Countdown........11 Days Away!!!

Snow Day

It's the "December Storm" as the local news would say here is Washington. We only got a couple of inches, but the babies love it anyway. At 4am this morning I let them outside and the first thing Casey did was start sprinting back and forth across the yard. They have been chasing each other around all day.

15 Weeks Out

As some of you already know, Garrett has begun his preparation for his next bodybuilding competition. His plans are to compete on Saturday, March 28th, 2009. It is the Vancouver USA Natural Bodybuilding Championships at Skyview High School Auditorium in Vancouver Washington.

For his past competitions, Garrett has started his diet only 12 weeks out, but has lost a little too much weight because of the crash dieting. His hopes with starting 20 weeks out was to diet slower and not lose as much weight this time around (keep more muscle mass). Although it is more important to have the right look rather than be concerned with the weight, you would have to admit his low weight has made him look a little sick in the past. So far, the diet is not too tough. He has still enjoyed pizza, pasta, and a hamburger from time-to-time, but once January 1st comes around, no more of that :( Fortunately he is one of the lucky ones....his body does not want to hold weight and wants to be skinny. As soon as he cuts down his thousands of calories each day, his body loses weight. Although the rest of us would welcome this metabolism, he unfortunately wishes it were easy to gain and hold weight. I know what you are thinking...must be nice huh?

The Cornatzer Family Blog

This blogspot has been developed by Garrett and Jodi to share our thoughts and everyday experiences with our family and friends. Please check back frequently for new updates and pictures. You may see many pictures of the 3 dogs, but if you know Jodi you will understand. She is a little camera happy when it comes to them :) ENJOY!!