Chris and I are leaving for our belated honeymoon to Italy in two weeks. I feel very unprepared. I'm going to hit the internet hard this weekend doing research, except of course when UT is playing LSU for the SEC Championship! I'm very excited about that.

We got our Christmas tree the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I had talked about getting our tree for a month and I'm sure Chris was starting to get tired of hearing about it! It turns out that Chris is highly allergic to our Christmas tree so I think we're going to have to move it out to the patio. It will be very odd to have a Christmas tree on the patio, but you gotta do what you gotta do. We are having our own Christmas morning celebration on Saturday December 8 because we're leaving for Italy at 6:30am on Saturday December 15. We weren't going to do any "Christmas morning events" but I thought of doing it before we left because it's our first Christmas as a married couple AND I'm such an impatient person I can hardly wait until December 25!

Riley has not even acknowledged our tree. I think that is very odd because it's full of smells and I know it's got to be driving his nose wild! It has taken over the room that he hangs out in most so maybe he's threatened:)

If you'd like to see all of our wedding pictures, including non-professional pictures of our rehearsal dinner and our mini-honeymoon, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/wittliz

It is going to rain tonight in LA. I'm so excited for rain. I just read that there has not been any measurable rain in Los Angeles since April. I just realized that it hasn't rained since I've lived in my new house so I wonder if it's going to leak...

This weekend, just after our daily "howl session" with Riley, Chris made a funny noise with his mouth. Riley looked at him and perked his ears up so I told Chris he should keep doing the noise. You could see that Riley was very curious (getting in Chris's face, sniffing, etc.) and he was "threatening" (as I like to call it ) to howl. I started howling myself and soon after Riley howled along with us. It was so funny. What a site that must have been with the three of us howling. Chris and I started to get light headed because we'd been howling for so long. I want to get it on video.

For those of you who know our dog Riley, you know he's pretty much a silent dog. He very rarely barks. Just before Chris and I got married I would wake up in the middle of the night to hear Riley howling in the other room, but it didn't really sound like a howl. It was very high pitched. I thought it was a child crying at first. I was so alarmed that I called Chris in the middle of the night but by the time he picked up the phone Riley had stopped howling. I ran into the living room where Riley was sleeping and he didn't look disturbed. I was baffled until the next night when it happened again. This time I caught Riley in the act. He was still laying down but he had his head thrown back in a howl. I figured out he was howling to sirens, but I didn't realize until later that he was only howling at fire truck sirens. A police car could drive by a few streets away and his ears wouldn't even perk up, but if a firetruck was anywhere in the vicinity he'd let out his howl.

Of course I think this is the greatest thing in the world. I got the idea to download several different siren sounds and try them on him. Only one of them worked--it's a certain pitch that makes him howl It's like he's trying to "match" the pitch and he always starts howling at the same point in the audio clip. So now the highlight of my day is coming home and making Riley howl to this siren noise. Chris is afraid that Riley will eventually get used to the siren and not howl anymore but I literally cry every time he does it because I'm so proud of my little Smokey in the making. I've always wanted Riley to howl on command so when Tennessee makes a touchdown I could make him howl like Smokey...well now I can (it's a bit of a process though!)

Chris and I booked our belated honeymoon....we're going to Antarctica! We're very excited and will definitely post photos when we return Dec 31. We leave on December 16 for Argentina. We'll spend two days in Ushuaia (the southernmost city in the world) and the board the ship from there. There are only 98 people on the ship and its going to be a rough ride across Drakes Passage! It will be worth the seasickness to see the great white continent!