Learning Curve

Oh, our poor little puppy!  We intend to groom Bruiser all by ourselves, but we've never done this before.  So we're learning.  His hair was getting really long and the Summer heat was not letting up.  Consequently, we decided to give him his first Summer cut.  My Nana and Grandpa gave us some great clippers, but there's no guard.  That combined with Bruisers aversion to ANYTHING coming near his head or face during grooming, and we have a tiny-bodied, big-headed puppy.  Shih Tzu literally means "little lion"; he embodies that definition!  He looks pretty ridiculous, but at least he's not pantingly hot all the time.

In other news B.dawg is still spending every spare moment working on the living room.  It has been quite the challenge!  We planned to simply expose the beautiful ceiling beams, but we knew we'd risk finding unwanted issues.  We had no idea we'd end up redoing pretty much the entire room!
We discovered an ant's nest in one of our exterior beams.  The damage was minimal needing no repair, but work was stalled while we got an exterminator up in here.  The kids were fascinated to observe the ants trying to save the eggs by carrying them out.  Daddy even dissected a few abandoned eggs for them.  Crazy stuff.
On the perpendicular exterior beam we discovered old rot.  I posted a pic of it in my first post about the project.  We found out it was probably from "Powder Post Beetles."  They no longer exist, but you can tell by their name what they did to houses.  The damage just happens to be where the cross beam sits.  B.dawg has tirelessly sought the best solution to that problem, and finally found a way to support the beam and rid us of all worry that our ceiling will cave in at some point.  Yesterday he and a friend tore down all the plaster on the walls, blew in insulation, and hung new drywall.  They tried to update the electrical for the room, but it is a horrible mess.  We'll have to have a professional come and figure it out.
After...
sanding the walls,
cleaning and painting the radiator,
removing the last of the paint on the trim and baseboards,
hanging new trim around the windows, (what was up was not original, and bulky to boot)
and cleaning up all that debris and dust, we'll finally be ready to paint!!
It has been a long, hard project, and B.dawg has done most of it by himself.  I cannot brag on him enough--but I will still try!!
We are very excited to enjoy the finished project!  I will most certainly post pics as soon as there is something worth seeing.