All Things Hoyt: Catching up

So, I know it's been a while and lots of things have happened :)

Here are some Fall tidbits to get you all caught up on all things Hoyt..

It's official, we have a FOURTH dog. I was determined to find her a home and even got Nate to agree to it but alas, no home was good enough. She has an amusing personality and fits into our little herd perfectly.

For some reason, she is frequently found rolled over on her back playing with the other dogs or chewing on toys. Sometimes we find her upside down while she sleeps, who knows why, none of the other dogs do this just her. She's one of a kind. Here I've caught her on video upside down and chewing on a bone.

I was asked to make a cake for our friends wedding in Charleston last month. It was for their rehearsal dinner and a topper of their two dogs was requested. The first dog, Batto (for her HUGE ears), is more of a shepherd. The second dog, Roxie, is a pit bull.

Roxie

Batto

The cake turned out great, it was half carrot cake, half red velvet and all cream cheese frosting.The dinner was outside and about 100 yards from the ocean so the humidity was impressive. My flowers were a bit droopy (I was trying to tie in the sunflower theme from the wedding) but it tasted great :)

I was challenged with sculpting the dogs, this is not something I am skilled at in ANY way. Everyone loved the way they turned out and I was just as surprised. Below are photos of the unpainted dogs, Batto is older so I sculpted her laying down and kinda slouching down on one hip. Roxie was difficult, I wanted her sitting up to contrast Batto laying down. Pit bull heads are so big that the clay couldn't support it's own weight so I had to hunt down a super light weight clay and use that for her head.

Batto

Roxie

And the finished cake!

Nathan's boat is coming along quickly. It would take forever to explain every photo so I'll just put up a few, it's pretty self explanatory. Once the pieces were put together it was day after day of layering epoxy, sanding it all down, another layer of epoxy, sanding, epoxy... you get the point.

So far it's going great, he is loving the whole boat building process. It is still a few months out from being finished but it's mostly a lot of detail work from here on out now that the base is done.

In other news Nate and I made a promise to start running together, actually it was more ME promising to start running in hopes that I could someday keep up with Nate :)

Nate began coaching me along in September. It was interesting, he really thought it through. He started me off jogging lightly for one minute then walking for 4. Slowly each week we progressed to running longer and walking shorter. It happened so quickly, all of the sudden I was running for miles!

Our neighborhood hosted a 5k a few weeks ago and it was the perfect goal to work toward. The 5k went great :) Nate ran his own pace and I ran my own, much slower, pace. Once Nate finished he turned around and ran back to me so we could finish together. It was a pretty awesome day :) I even managed to get him to put his medal back on to take a photo!