Needless to say, it’s a good thing for the other dogs that Bailey is ineligible for the contest. The winner is announced in Thursday’s issue of DFW Ink, but satiate your desire for more cute dog pics in their 100 or so photos of the finalists.

We took a road trip to Mount Magazine, the highest point in Arkansas. Let’s forget about the six-and-a-half hour drive up there, and the seven-and-a-half hour drive back (Dallas rush hour!). Everything else was awesome. The Arkansas state park-run lodge was beautiful. Every room has a great view of the surrounding mountains and the huge lake in the valley below. We spent our days hiking (short ones, at Maya’s request), swimming in their huge pool and taking drives throughout the park. We had a balcony, which was nice for the adults after Maya headed to bed at 8!

Swimming was a huge hit for Maya. She LOVED her first dip in a pool, so we made many trips back while we stayed at the lodge. Must have worn her out because she slept through torrential rain and constant lightning that lit up our entire room our last night there.

We spent the afternoon at home playing, and then the entire family took an hour nap! That never happens! Then it was Bailey’s turn for some fun, so we all headed to the dog park. Maya likes watching all the pups run around, too.

Missed being able to spend the day with my wonderful mom, but hopefully she’ll get down here soon for another visit with Maya!

The beautiful photos in this slide show are thanks to our wonderful friend Amy who took some family photos for us at the botanic gardens last weekend.

Comment on this post and let us know. We want to be sure everyone who wants to is seeing as many photos of the munchkin as they want. An example slideshow that’s also on another post is below.

Thanks for taking a minute to give us your feedback.

Update (May 9, 2010): I just fixed a bug that may have prevented some or most of you from viewing slideshows that accompany our posts. If you still don’t see them, try refreshing the page. If then you still don’t, let us know. That’s a lot of photos you may have missed, so I’ll try to find a way to get all them in one place for you. Or you can go through some of our old posts to look for slideshows. Sorry about that, hope you get to see more of Maya now.

We had lots of fun doing a whole lot of nothing. The weather was perfect (sunny and in the 70s) so we spent many afternoons lounging on my parents’ deck. We did take Maya to the Como Zoo (St. Paul’s free, yes free, zoo) and Conservatory one afternoon. She’d been to the zoo before, but usual slept through the trips. This time she was actually interested in a few of the animals, especially the giraffes. She started sitting in her stroller like a “big girl”, without the car seat, so she had a good time sitting back and letting us show her the animals.

Maya was also pretty into my family’s two cats, Tiger and Freddy. But something we need to work on: learning to pet, not pinch! She doesn’t quite have that down yet. Doesn’t matter with Bailey too much. Her pinches don’t do much to our 90-pound dog. But the cats weren’t too thrilled. But they were very sweet to just get up and run away when they were tired of her!

Maya also got to take her first wagon ride. The family who rents out my dad’s old photo studio had one they let us use. (Along with lots of other toys, too.)

And I was very thankful that once again our flights were fairly uneventful. They were kind enough to find us a spot next to an empty seat both coming and going. This time around was trickier than Maya’s first flights in December because she doesn’t sleep during the day like she used to! So I had to do a lot more entertaining, but overall she did great. Hardly a tear was shed.