Introducing Allie!

After church this morning we went to Shepherding Group at the park. We get together with a group of families from church once a month for Shepherding Group. A family visiting our church came to our group today. In the midst of conversation, Jenny (new to town) mentioned that her dog had had 8 puppies on Aug 1st. Her landlord did not like the dogs in the townhouse, so she was taking the whole families to the "adoption center" on Tuesday. Two of the families in the group were looking for a dog, so she drove over to her house and brought the puppies back.
We fell in love right away. After playing with the puppies for fifteen minutes we held a family meeting and Jon basically said "This is your cup of tea." So we took home the one I wanted --since it was my cup of tea.

We tried putting her in a laundry basket, but we soon discovered that she could climb out of the laundry basket.
We introduced the puppy to Shiloh.
She is so small. You can see here that she is shorter than our front porch step.It took awhile and a lot of debate, but we finally settled on naming her "Allie". The boys wanted to name her after my sister Ruth Allie who is a missionary in Africa. Ruth was honored (we think), but wanted us to know that she still intended to name a daughter Allie -- we told her that was understandable. Jon and I had planned to name a daughter Ruth, but never had one, so we thought this was a good compromise for now.

Jonah with Allie.Elijah with Allie.Isaiah with Allie.Ezra holding Allie.Malachi with Allie.
Everyone enjoys getting to hold her and love on her. She is precious.
It was a rough first two nights with her. She woke up every 1 1/2 to 2 hours of the night, but when I took her outside she went to the bathroom right away. Hopefully she will be an easy dog to housebreak.

Invincible Army

Tonight Jonah and Isaiah build an army with every toy in our playroom that can stand up by itself. They wanted me to be sure to take a picture of it and put it on the blog. So here are the pictures:
Quiet an army!

Good-bye Shiloh

We are going to have to get rid of Shiloh. Over the past 6 weeks she has gotten to be more and more of a handful. She is not making any strides to stop having accidents the minute she gets on the carpet. She has chews up every thing she can find--besides many toys and other things, she chewed up two shoes (Stride Rite tennis shoes and a pair of Crocs), my drapes and Mimi's sweater. She also steals things off the table. Two times we even found her standing right in the middle of the table. And she doesn't just get food off the table, she also gets pencils and toys that were left on the table and chews them up.

Additionally, she is wild. We knew this when we found her, but we thought with training she would calm down. She hasn't. She has actually gotten worse. Now she jumps up on us with her mouth open and teeth exposed. She is not violent, just wild. She bites at all of our feet and hands. She jumps up at the boys faces with her mouth open. When she started doing that, I was done.

She has a sweet way about her, once I calm her down. Malachi and Ezra are terrified to walk near her and that is definitely not what I want. Even Jonah and Isaiah run away from her screaming. Once she is calmed down, they love on her, but I am really the only one that can calm her. We have to keep company away from her and protect Granny from her.

Elijah and Jonah are very attached to her -- despite her faults. They both cried when we broke the news to them this morning. We told them that we would look for another dog before we got rid of her. So they wanted to go right away.

We went to two "pet adoption" places today. Most of the dogs that we saw were under 2. I didn't really fall in love with any of them, even though the boys found several they wanted to adopt. We came home without a dog, but I came home with a new perspective: teaching an older dog good habits involves breaking bad habits. I starting wondering if teaching a puppy from infancy to behave and obey, might be easier. Shiloh's bad habits overshadow her good ones, but it isn't because she couldn't be taught to behave, I am just not sure I am the one to teach her (when it means protecting my children from her while I am doing it).

Potty Time

All but one of the boys potty trained at 2 1/2. Malachi is 29 months, so he is ready to start thinking about the potty. Today we borrowed a little potty from Gretchen. He pooped once and pee-peed twice. Yeah for him!
Of course he is getting a lot of support and help from all of his brothers, but this picture just has Ezra in it. He loves M&Ms, so he gets 3 M&Ms every time he goes on the potty.

Hopefully he will be as easy to train as Jonah, Isaiah and Ezra.

11 years

Today is our anniversary. We are not doing anything too exciting--in our tradition. But at some point we will go out to eat to celebrate.

11 years ago I had the privilege of marrying one of the best guys on the planet. He isn't perfect--believe me, I know that full well--but I am so thrilled with him just the way he is.

Jon is loving, thoughtful and helpful. He is so others-centered that he never does anything "out of selfish ambition" and I can truly say that I have never in our 11 years of marriage and 10 months of dating heard him criticize or speak unkindly about someone else. He sees a lot of horrible and ugly things in his role as a counselor, but he doesn't judge anyone friends, acquaintances or clients (at least out loud where I can hear it.) He understand that we all our sinners and sin is affecting all of our lives and he judges no one.

He loves me (and others) through his actions and is always willing to go out of his way to do things for me. This is hard when you are a selfish person, because I could easily take advantage of him -- so I try to watch myself.

Jon wants to grow in the Lord and to serve Him foremost. He keeps his eyes from evil and his feet on good paths. I am so thankful for his desire to become more Christ-like.

I could go on and on, but no one would believe that all the good things I could say about him were true--but believe me they are. Once again I say, I know he isn't perfect, but he is a gem.

I am so thankful that God gave him to me and that get to be part of his life and his family (who are also gems).

First Day of School

The boys were all very happy to start school this morning. New adventures and seeing old friends. Not one of the boys have their best friends in their classes this year, so we will see how that goes. Sometimes that can lead to hurt feelings and some times it is no big deal because they still have recess together.

Jonah starts 4th grade.
Elijah starts 3rd grade.
Isaiah starts 1st grade
(although we messed up and he got the wrong sign --it says he is starting 4th grade).
Isaiah's corrected picture.

Katie and Sara

For the past 4 years, Katie (for the past 4 years) and Sara (for the past year) have stopped at our house on their way between college and home. Katie and Sara are the boys' oldest 1st cousins--Jon's older sister's daughters. We are around 9 1/2 hours from their home and 2 1/2 from their college, so they stopped almost every time.

In May, Katie graduated, so we knew that she would not be coming through anymore. However, Sara was supposed to come back to start her sophomore year this Aug. Sara changed her mind and decided to stay closer to home this semester.

Monday, Katie and Sara stopped in for the night. They were driving up to the college to get all of Sara's stuff out of storage and bring it back home. After going up for the day on Tuesday, they came back and spent the night we us Tuesday night too.

This morning we said good-bye to them and their visits. The boys loved, loved, loved their visits. Jon and I appreciated their helpful attitudes and loved getting to know them a little better while they were here. We all especially loved when they would come down for a whole weekend and we really got to be with them.

We are so happy for the adventures they have ahead...but we will miss them.

Desk Day

Today was "Desk Day." The kids got to go to school, meet their teachers and put their school supplies in their desks.

Isaiah got Mrs. Gardner for 1st grade. Mrs. Gardner is great and so sweet. Jonah and Elijah both had her and we were thrilled for Isaiah to get her too.The 2nd and 3rd grade hallway got remodeled this summer. It was the original building of the school and the class sizes had long since out grown the rooms. Since the school doesn't spend any money they don't have in the bank, the hadn't been able to expand the rooms until this summer. So this summer they turned 3 classrooms into 2. So Elijah and his 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Vetterick, get to enjoy a brand new (very large) classroom.
Jonah's teacher is Mrs. Levenger. She has been teaching at our school for a long, long time. The 4th and 5th graders have their own building too. So all three boys are in different hallways this year.
One day break and then school starts on Thursday.

Overnight Guest!

We have had a fun week with Mimi, Aunt Kathy, Christopher and Andrew. It has been a big help to me, especially considering the fact that Jon had a 4 day training out of town (Thurs - Sun) and so I was distracted and busy while he was gone. We did battle pink eye and herpes all week. Malachi, Ezra, and Jonah battled the pink eye and Jonah and Malachi battled the herpes (which is fever and mouth sores).

Aunt Kathy bathed and dressed Malachi one night and then read to him.

Mimi and Ezra build some Lego creations.

Mimi read a lot of books to Ezra and Malachi.

We enjoyed dinners together (before and after Jon left).

The boys ate popsicles on the front porch almost every night.

Sometimes ice cream.

It was an extremely fun time with our Florida family.

The Old Stomping Grounds

After the incline and pizza, we went up the mountain to see the college that attended and that Jon works at twice a week as a counselor. Mimi and Kathy had never seen the campus before, so they were interested to see it. Mimi didn't feel like she could walk the whole campus so one of the ladies in the Visitor Center took Mimi and the boys in the golf cart and Kathy and I walked.
We didn't cover the whole campus, but we past the academic buildings and went into the chapel and science building. We wanted to take some pictures of the view but it was too hazy to see the city below.
The boys were definitely more interested in the fish pond (under the arch way) than the view.
It was fun to show them the place where I spent 5 happy years of my life (4 in college and 1 working at the college).

Up, Up and Away

Even though we are "mountain folk" we had never taken the boys up the incline railroad on the mountain. Our Florida cousins were interested in doing things they couldn't do in Florida so we took a trip to the mountain and road the incline.

It was a very hot day of waiting in the line to get on the train.Up, up we went.

At the top, it was too hot to do any exploring, so we got a drink in the gift shop and headed back down.After the incline ride, we met Mimi at the deli at the bottom of the mountain and then went to lunch at the pizza place at the bottom of the mountain.

It was fun and interesting, but not as "cool" as the boys thought it would be.

Warning:Breakfast can be Risky

If you come to our house for breakfast, you are at risk of getting shot. This morning at breakfast, one of the boys shot a Nerf gun from down stairs and the bullet came up the stairs, over the rail and landed right on Mimi's spoon. Let the fun begin!

Happy Birthday Mimi!

It is not very often that we get to celebrate Jon's mom's birthday with her, so it was a real treat to get to do that this year. Jon's mom, sister and two sons came to stay with us for a week (Papa and Uncle Lee were working). They arrived yesterday afternoon, so we were able to celebrate Mimi's birthday at my Mom and Dad's after church on Sunday. Kathy (Jon's sister) and I made her ice cream pie for dessert.

Later that afternoon, we let Mimi open her gifts from us and Kathy and her boys. My boys each made her a card.