Grandma Dedi got Lainey an indoor/outdoor pop-up playhouse that is the size of an apartment!   We put it up in our family room (temporarily) just to see if she’d like it and found out that all 3 of our Great Danes liked it as much as Lainey.  It’s so big that it has 2 rooms and comes with furniture.  It also has an opening for us to attach Lainey’s crawl- thru tunnel, but we couldn’t even get it in our family room if we attached the tunnel (and our family room is pretty big), so we’ll have to wait until we put it outside in the Spring to add that piece.  Here is a picture of Vedo (our tallest Dane) in the playhouse with Lainey this morning as she had her morning coffee (actually warm milk, but she doesn’t know).  Keep in mind that Vedo is only 3.5 inches shorter than the World’s Tallest Dog and he has plenty of room in there.  The second picture is before we let Vedo inside and he kept peeking in at us through the window.  He looked like Dogzilla stalking us.  

So first things first, we should probably explain our title. There would be no blog of our family – or our family at all – if it was not for Clark W. Griswold. That’s right, the Patriarch of the family featured in “Christmas Vacation” and other Vacation movies gave Jay and me so many one-liners that we fell in love… with each other. You see, Jay and I had many things in common but it was giggling over those stupid one-liners that really brought us together. Some couples have romantic stories of how they met…. we have Clark and cousin Eddie.

Every day after Thanksgiving we put up our family Christmas Tree while watching “Christmas Vacation.” Ironically, last year as we were putting up the tree (and Jay got somewhat stuck under it) the exact same scene was on TV… little full, lotta sap! Luckily I always have my camera near-by…

It wouldn’t be the holiday shopping season if the stores were any hooter-hotter than they are… here is Clark W. Griswold shopping for something ’special.’

Another thing to know about us is that we are crazy about our Great Danes. We now have 3 even though we vowed only to have 2 (you can never have just one). We just adopted Duke from a friend who was unable to keep him so he has moved right in as if he was always meant to be with us and even attemped to take over Vedo’s “Alpha Male status” to no avail.  Maximus meanwhile continues to be our “old man.”