Dog Days

So...as you now know, we got another dog last night! Yay! I have always wanted a great dane because they are so BIG! I love it! Stuart and I have been talking about getting another dog for awhile but the timing never seems to be right. Yesterday he was looking on craigslist when he came across an add for Scout (our name for her). He showed it to me and we decided we would go take a look. After talking to the owner we found out that he had purchased Scout for his girlfriend and then his girlfriend took off, leaving him with a gigantic puppy. He works quite a bit and just couldn't take care of her anymore. So, we pull up to his house and she's tied up to the front porch. Hm. We get out and greet the owner and Scout. The first thing I notice is how incredibly skinny she is. Her hips are sticking out, you can count all her ribs and vertebrae and there is absolutely no fat on this puppy. Hmm. She was very pleasant with us, didn't bark, didn't jump, didn't shy away from her owner...so we decided to take her. Thank goodness! After talking for a few more minutes with the the OLD owner he provided us with her papers (she's a pure breed) and informed us that she had been tied up in the yard all her life and that the neighbor kids would come over and feed her. Do people really do this to animals??
We get Scout home (she did marvelously in the car) and let her sniff out the place. We kept Turbo locked up in the bedroom so that she could get a sense of her new house. The boys petted her and talked to her but frankly all she wanted to do was lay on the couch. Rock on! Alright, time to meet her brother...
As soon as Turbo can out of the room, Scout was on the floor closing the distance between them and baring her teeth. Uh oh. We quickly cut off Turbo and grabbed Scout. Apparently she wasn't quite ready to meet and greet with another dog. It was then that we noticed that Scout's ears were torn up and had scabs galore. Man. That stinks. No wonder she didn't want to meet Turbo. After putting the boys to bed, Stuart decided to give Scout a bath. When he was done, she shook like any normal dog but instead of water flying across our bathroom it was blood. E.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e. Stuart realized that during the bath several of the scabs on Scout's ears came off and thus the reason for the murder scene in out bathroom. He ran out of the room where I met him with a horrified expression. 45 minutes and a bottle of Clorox later, the disturbing scene was no more.
We brought out crate in and set it up in our closet area and settle Scout into her new, clean, warm home.
This morning I woke up to nerves about how Scout would respond to Turbo. After Stuart got up I suggested that we try and introduce them again. Magic! Scout didn't bark, hair-raise or bare her teeth. Amazing. They took turns sniffing each other (in rather gross parts) and continued to do their businesses outside. Good good. This was highly important because Stuart was leaving today to drive to Houston and back and I had no clue what I would have done if the dogs didn't get along.
Fast forward a couple of hours. Since we are crate/kennel training Scout she's spending more time in the kennel than just out in the house so that we can work on pottying and not chewing up the house. I let Scout out to go potty and then back in the house to play for a bit with the new chew toys we got. We were all standing in the kitchen when I noticed blood all over the floor, then all over the cabinets, and on Tyson's shirt. What?? I get Scout and start examining her ears. All the scabs looked good and nothing was bleeding. Huh. Just then she wagged her tail, hitting my arm and leaving a trail of blood. No way. I grab her tail and sure enough that's where the blood is coming from. Now I don't know if this is an injury from her old house (I think so) or if she was chewing on her tail while in the kennel. So, I pick her up, take her outside, turn around and notice the hip-high line of blood throughout my bedroom and kitchen. Great. An hour later and we are all cleaned and disinfected.
Poor dog! What a horrible life she had before. I can't even begin to imagine how sad she must have been. After talking to my sis-in-law who's a vet tech and one of the smartest pet people I know, we decide to watch the bleeding, leave her outside if it's still bleeding so that we don't have another horror show on our hands and take her to the vet first thing Monday morning. Scout seems to be ok outside. She's not whining or jumping around and it's not cold outside otherwise I would bring her in and just deal with cleaning the bathroom again later. My heart just breaks for her because she desperately wants to be inside with us and Turbo really, really wants to play with her.
AND to add insult to injury, 30 minutes after I put the boys to bed Tyson wakes up screaming. I go into their room just in time to watch him throw up all over himself and his bed. No, no, no! This seriously can not be happening. Not-to-mention that I have been by myself all day and I do NOT handle throw up well. Tyson's crying and messy; Tucker just thinks this is a perfect opportunity to get out of bed and play. Ugh! 15 minutes later, Tyson is cleaned, has new pajamas on, new sheets on his bed, both boys are tucked in, and the nasty sheets have been dunked in the toilet and thrown into the washing machine.
Now, I have cleaned the bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, moped the floors, cleaned vomit, and taken a shower. :)
Stuart should be home by midnight.
Tomorrow has to be a better day, right?

Introducing

Scout
The newest edition to our family
She's an 8 month old Great Dane
Welcome girl!

Ode to My Pajama Pants

My dearest pajama pants, why do I love you so? You are comfortable and warm, light and breezy, colorful and wonderful. You are perfect for morning, noon and night. Mornings when the boys wake up too early and breakfast gets dropped all over you, noon for daily run-ins with the mail man and nights for chats with Stuart before work, blogging on the couch and my ever growing addiction to DVR. You change shapes very nicely with your pull string band and baggy legs. I feel neither small nor big in you-just right. You make me smile when I put you on and you keep me company (along with Turbo) as I sleep at night. You have walked with me thru millions of phone conversations and seen more than your fair share of company. Yet you are always there. Beckoning me to come back and swim in your embrace. Ahhh, what a good friend you are. There will always be a special place in my heart for you, my dear pajama pants.

This Morning...

...we woke up to this. Not that we weren't expecting as much, but it's still an amazing sight none the less. Yesterday, Stuart's phone starting ringing about 4 pm. Of course he was sleeping so I woke him up. Luckily the call was from work informing him that his shift was being canceled for the night due to bad weather. Yay!! I was swimming in excitement. As was Stuart for that matter. All day Monday it rained and the temp outside was dropping. So we bundled up and settled in for the night. This morning was freezing-literally. It was around 20 when we woke up and only got to 28 in the afternoon. Stuart woke up and checked on school, no surprise, classes were canceled for the day. Woo hoo! We were stuck inside, again, literally all day. There was a sheet of ice formally known as our street outside and sleet was coming down hard. Tyson kept telling me that there was "Christmas snow" outside. Too bad this didn't happen at Christmas. Anywho we watched movies all day long and no one got out of their pajamas. Bliss!! Stuart got a call later on in the day again informing him that work was canceled tonight as well. Can this really be happening?? I am going to get two whole unexpected nights sleep without being scared of the monsters in closet! Yahoo! Nothing is better. :)
Quick shout outs:
Weather-even though I despise you sometimes, you really pulled thru today!
Hot chocolate-you make me giddy
Quilts-with out you it would be impossible for my family of four to snuggle on the couch together
Tootsie roll pops-you make my boys really happy and shopping trips are much more attainable with you

New Bikes, New Hair

Here and There

So it's Sunday. Late Sunday...almost Monday, but Sunday people! I'm sitting here looking at my calendar, thinking about the week to come and looking back on the past week. Is is possible that there is nothing written on any day last week? Nothing? Wow. I really do live a boring, SAHM life. So my goal tonight is to think of anything that might make somewhat of an impact of describing my week. Since I have nothing written down, I can't really remember that order in which things may or may not have happened. (Sometimes I think my reading seeps into my real life. So I'm not sure if I just read it or lived it. Comes with the crazy-mom territory)
The boys got haircuts. This is always an adventure, particularly when it comes to Tucker. He's had two haircuts in his entire life (and he turns two on Sunday). Wait! My baby is turning TWO?! In a week!? No! This can't possibly be real. I must be thinking of one of my books again...where was I? Oh yeah, so we went to the barber shop and chopped/buzzed the boys hair off. They look so stinkin' grown up! Tyson looks so much like his daddy and Tucker looks like a 5 year old. I'll have pictures tomorrow. When I went to download the pics from my camera, the battery was dead and so I am recharging it right now.. Sigh...
We went to Home Depot today and spent a nice chuck 'o change on a new fan for the livingroom, a new light for the porch, a new chandelier for the diningroom, a new curtain rod(s) for our bedroom and some other miscellaneous items. Stuart then proceeded to come home and start installing the aforementioned items. The fan is in and working. The porch light is installed and on. The chandelier is sitting on my diningroom table because Stuart ran out of time. The curtain rod need to be cut and assembled. Plus we still need to buy some new, thicker curtains. Honey-do-list is growing!
Stuart started classes on Tuesday. It was kinda a rough day since he left Monday night at 10 pm for work and didn't walk thru the front door till 12:15 pm Tuesday afternoon. Man, this is gonna be a trying semester. Funny story- Stuart still hasn't gotten the hang of sleeping for mid shift and now going to school. On Thursday he was awoken by his Accounting professor letting him know that class was over, all the students had left and the instructor needed to lock up the room. Ha! Umm, I mean, poor Stu! He quickly apologized to his professor and sheepishly explained that he was on mid shift and yadda yadda. He skipped his next class, came home and crashed.
And that's about it. I honestly can't think of a single thing that we did. Isn't that sad? BUT my friend Autumn finally had her little boy! Yay! And again, I don't have anything else..hmm...alright so I guess that's about it.

Cleaning Advice

So I need some advice, cleaning advice. I openly admit that I am not the biggest fan of cleaning. I like for things to be clean but I usually find other ways to spend my time. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a slob! My house is picked up and looks presentable but it may or may not have been dusted in a week or so. You get the drift. (On a separate note, I love to organize! Clean House anyone??) So my question is...what would you recommend for cleaning a large, thick rug? Some history-the rug is a hamey-down (sp?). In it's original glory it was in a very stately home and probably was not walked upon by shoes. It then was passed on to a home where dogs thought it resembled grass/lawns/pottying grounds. From there it traveled a short distance where it was cleaned, rebound (again because of chewing from the ignorant dogs) and then rolled up to be sold. Henceforth it has taken up residence in my home where it has been peed on (by children, not dogs), spilled on, vomited on and laden with a plethora of smelly (good smelly) carpet cleaners. Nothing has really taken out "the smell." It's not horrible, but I would love to give it a good once over so that it has somewhat of a fresh start. Suggestions?????

On another subject, my friend Autumn should (fingers crossed) be delivering her 2nd baby tonight/tomorrow. Go Autumn! Kinda makes me want to have another baby....no, not really but I do love the way little babies smell and feel all warm in your arms. And then there's the whole not sleeping thru the night, feeding round the clock, and the fact that we are DONE having kids...alright, so have fun!!

Nothing much else is new. Well there has been a lot of drama happening in WF but that's a whole 'nother hour of typing and quite frankly I need to get to bed.

The Office comes on tomorrow! (Sorry I don't watch Lost so I thought I'd plug one of my shows) Oh and I got my next Karen Kingsbury series, The Firstborn Series. Woo hoo! :)

Thank You Stuart

Why I Love Stuart

1. He can fix anything
2. He is an amazing father
3. He to find anything and everything on the web
4. He doesn't loose his cool
5. He can recite every line from Office Space but can't remember the names to our friends
6. He doesn't surprise me often but when he does it's awesome
7. He loves God
8. He makes me laugh
9. He has more of a "fashion sense" than I do
10. He loves me :)

Just needed to write that down. This weekend 3 of our friends started marriage separations in varying degrees. Stuart helped one couple move out of base housing and into separate apartments and then another friend came to stay with us with her kids for the night. Her husband left Friday night leaving her car less and in a terrible state of shock. He still hasn't called or come home. Please say a prayer for marriages as a whole!
The reality is that I have an incredible husband and I not only need to tell him that everyday but I need to remind myself of that. E.V.E.R.Y.D.A.Y.
Quick shout out to Kevin for taking out the trash without being asked. And another shout out to his wife for being so cool. ;)

Click

18

Yes, that's the temperature that it was this morning. 18 degrees. It only got up to 30 degrees this afternoon and now that the sun has set the temperature is falling-fast. I'm shivering, my teeth are chattering, I may loose a toe or two to frost bite, my lips are a beautiful shade of blue...all this with the heater ON! Ok, so all those things may or may not be happening but I AM cold. Too bad it didn't snow. :(

So this morning I actually got myself ready and headed to the DMV to renew my driver's license. The last time I was at the DMV was when I was 18. Since then I have taken the easy choice and renewed online. Unfortunately I waited till my license was already expired to go online this year only to read that you can't renew expired licenses. Grr. So I have been procrastinating going in and finally made the push to go there today. I was expecting long lines, grumpy people, and an overall dumpy experience. Pleasantly, it was none of the above. Apparently since WF is the size of a peanut, you can be in and out of the DMV in less than 15 minutes and are treated to some sincerely nice people. Way to go small town USA!

That was the only time I was out of the house today. I am in need of some melatonin. Sunshine please. Fresh air. I think it's suppose to warm up on Tuesday before another cold front comes thru on Wednesday night. Maybe the boys and I can get outside for a couple of hours...

I ordered the Firstborn Series by Karen Kingsbury this morning! Can. Not. Wait. I told you, I'm addicted to this writer right now. And yes Marci, I'll send them your way when I'm done. :)

Let me give a few shout outs here:
Spellcheck-you forever have changed my life.
Amazon.com-what would I do without Free Super Saver Shipping?
Febreze-you make my house smell awesome and Stu doesn't make me throw you away.
Sippee cups-wow, I would be a much madder mom now.
Milk-my children are gigantic thanks to your calories. My almost-two-year-old is in 3T/4T because of you.

Prayers

Please say a prayer for my friend April and her husband. They seperated today and both need some healing grace.

I Should Just Stay In Bed

(the title of this blog really has nothing to do with this post, but I thought it sounded catchy)

I LOVE play dates! First and foremost because my children get to spend time socializing with someone other than mommy and secondly because I, mommy get to socialize with someone other than my kids. Eureka! One of my great friends SL and I have been trying to get together since the holidays passed and this morning was the day. I have to wait to tell the boys about such ventures until the day of or else they just get too excited and don't understand why they have to wait. So...we got up this morning and waited for Stu to get home to say hi and then headed out to SL's house. She has two girls (3 yrs and 9 months) so it's always fun to see how Tyson and Tucker handle "girl" toys. Side note-I think I need to buy the boys a little kitchen. They go crazy every time they get to play with one and it's so fun watching he creativity jump out of them. Anywho, the time went by way too fast and then it was time to head home. The boys loved playing with K and L and I loved talking with SL. I really needed the break.

On the way home we stopped at Sonic to get some lunch. PS-they don't have the Sweetheart Shake yet. Maybe at the end of the month. I live for that shake. Yum. Tyson calls it the "tater-tot-store" but we didn't get tater tots, we got bananas with their meals. Good job Sonic. Headed home and found Stuart asleep on the couch. Man, I didn't get him anything because he said he would already be in bed and just sleep thru lunch. Bad wife. So I go about getting the boys set up and chatted with Stu about his night and our play date. It was nice to catch up. Oh, another side note-the horrible slime ball that attacked my sister two years ago finally had his day in court. He got 7 years in prison. I personally wanted to string him up by his boy parts or leave him alone in a room with my dad, husband and brother-in-law. But I guess that's why I am not a judge.

Then it was nap time. Oh, heavenly nap time. Today though it was hell. During the past week, Tyson has started making a HUGE deal about taking a nap. He cries, whines, throws a fit, complains about being scared (I have no idea where that comes from) and does everything he can to not go into his room. Today was no different. I eventually get them both in their room with their mooses and blankets. It's really a ridiculous ordeal. Anyway, naps start...and are very quickly stopped. In the span of 2.5 hours, neither boy fell asleep and I went into their room no less than 20 times. They jumped on the beds, pulled their sheets off the beds, pulled everything and I mean everything off the bottom rod in the closet, emptied the bottom three drawers of the dresser (including sheets, Tucker's pants and shorts, all their socks and shoes) AND dumped the content of their hamper in the middle of the room. To say that I was mad is an extreme understatement. I know the phrases, "This is RIDICULOUS," "Go to sleep." Please go to sleep," "Mommy is not happy right now," "Do you know who has to clean this up?," "I give up" all came out at one point or another. Eventually I did give up and just let them come out of their room. But there was no tv for the rest of the day and no snack after non-nap time. Good Gracious. And just for the record, neither of them had any sugar before non-naps.

I can't recall what happened the rest of the evening but the boys weren't as cranky come 5 pm as I thought they would be and they went down at bed time just as well as they normally do.

Top Chef comes on tomorrow...yipee!

Blur

Ok, so for the past week I have been in a fog, a reading fog to be more specific. When I was in hs (or college for that matter), I didn't really care for reading. It was something that was imposed upon me and I didn't really appreciate the inconvenience. Fast forward 10 years (seriously, my 10 year hs reunion is this summer. I'm ooooolllldddd.) and I can't get enough of it. With Stuart working mids it lends itself wonderfully for me to read into the wee hours of the night/morning. All last week I was totally engrossed in the Redemption Series by Karen Kingsbury. Fantastic! I thought I cried over reading Francine Rivers-wow. It might have been the connection that I felt to every single daughter in the series or the fact that my mother-in-law just passed away or that I am just an emotional basket case most days, but I could not put these books down. Seriously. My sister laughed at me because I would call her and tell her I had finished one book and the next day call with my thoughts on the next. It was such a blissful thing, but now I'm done and am anxiously awaiting payday so that I can order the next series.
As for the rest of the week, here are some of the highlights....
Tyson is still not using the potty. In fact, her refuses to use it. It's so frustrating. I'm really going to have to stick to my guns and just make him walk around without a diaper and sit him on the toilet every hour. Ugh, I sooo don't want to do this right now but I really want to get him out of diapers.
Stuart filed our taxes. Whoop! And can I say for the first time since we bought our house I am actually glad we did. We got a nice little tax credit for our remarkable endeavor. We'll get our return sometime in the next two weeks. So excited.
We sold our truck! Hallelujah! No more payments to NMAC. No more $100 gas fill-ups (it hasn't been that high since gas prices have bottomed out but last summer...good heavens it was not fun). No more ridiculous trips to Nissan of Wichita Falls and going round and round with the service department. Stuart figured out that he bought his first vehicle when he was 19 and has been making car payments on one vehicle or another since then. That makes it 11 years. I bought my first car in 2001, thus making my vehicle payment history 8 years. A combined 19 years of car payments. NO MORE!
Stuart found a way cool car that we are going to buy with some of our return. Yay, I'm gonna have a wagon (if all works out).
Tucker is NOT a good filer. He spent less than 3 minutes by himself while Stu and I said goodbye to his brother and wife and when we returned inside, Tucker had completely emptied the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet AND removed all the contents of the files. Love that boy.
Pretty successful week. Another one down for 2009.

Resolve

So I have never really been one for resolutions. Too many times they don't get resolved and then I just feel bad... I have decided though to make a list of things that I would like to see happen or done in 2009. If they don't come to fruition, no biggie. Here's the breakdown:

~Potty train Tyson
~Paint the boys' room
~Paint the playroom
~Do some gardening in the front yard
~Do more cooking/less eating out

The painting part involves Stuart more than me, but I will try to help. The potty training obviously depends a lot on how Tyson reacts (again) to the situation. The gardening is an attempt to be more homeowner-ly. The yard doesn't look bad, but after we moved in we took a lot of things out. The previous owner loved to plant anything and everything so we had quite the jungle for a yard. I just want something that's easy to maintain and looks respectable. And as for the cooking-that's more of an income buster than a desire. 'Nuf said.
So there it is. Not too much. Just a few things that I would like to see happen before 2009 is over (and we all know how fast time is going by now. why didn't anyone tell me that once I had children, ten years would go by in a day?).
Good stuff.
Side note, another day down with nothing majorly crazy happening. I'm liking 2009 so much better than '08. :)

Day Four

Yay for 2009! So far nothing crazy has happened in my family. We rang in the new year at our friend's house with a couple of our closest friends. It's so nice to no longer have the youngest child-both Tyson and Tucker stayed up till midnight but played the whole time very well. And since they are bigger now I don't have to keep such a close eye on them; I actually got to partake in a few tasty beverages! Woo hoo!
New Year's day was very lazy. We stayed in our pajamas all morning then got dressed to go to Wally (aka Walmart) and cash in on discounted Christmas decorations. We got some more icicle lights and some new ornaments since Tucker broke about 10 of them this year. He's such a boy...
Friday I took Christmas down. We didn't put much up so it didn't take too long to make it all disappear. One thing that I especially loved was not having to pack the tree up. We just threw it into our side yard awaiting tree pick-up. Fantastic! I think we all stayed in our pajamas all day. I could do that every day!
Saturday was our unofficial "work" day. Stuart started to clean up and organize his carport/garage. It desperately needs attending to. We also cleaned out more flower beds and finished ripping out all the wood planks from the beds. I did more laundry (I was really hoping that it would somehow already be done) and made fudge. Stuart started up the grill for dinner and let the boys enjoy the 70 degree weather we were having. After the boys went to bed, we finished painting our room (all we had left to do was cut in) and then went to bed at a reasonable hour for the first time in several days.
Stuart got up with the boys this morning-the best gift-and then we go ready and headed out to church. Last night a cold front came thru so we were quite shocked at the 37 degree temperature. The rest of the day has flowed like any other, it's been

NORMAL

I balanced the check book, paid some bills, did the dishes, started more laundry, moved furniture back into place in our room....wow, it's good to feel normal again!
Here's to the rest of the week! *clink clink*