Our Tree

So, in between all the soap opera drama of the house buying, mother moving and surgery, puppy parvo having fun, we DID put up our Christmas Tree. It was a fairly low key event and we let the kids do most of it while *I* tried to not say anything. It's a tree with no rhyme or reason and they LOVE it. The bottom third has hardly no decorations with the logic from the 6 year old that the cat would play with them. The top third is also bare because they are still too short. But that middle section. WOW. It is festive.

We're going to do our traditional gingerbread house this week or weekend sometime - which is good since Christmas is less than a week away!


We also too the kids to Bass Pro because they offer free pictures with Santa. I have yet to get a GOOD picture of the kids with Santa. Never ever has this happen. The Boy has been particularly reluctant the last few years and before that This Girl was animatedly resistant. This is the picture (after 4 tries in 5 minutes at that) they managed to get of them this year. Yes, this is the *good* one.

The world may be falling apart around them, but it's still Christmas Time for them and we have to play along despite the want to roll around and ignore it. They don't know about the rest of the dramatic sagas and they shouldn't have a craptastic Christmas because the Hag of Hecktosville can't figure out how to file paperwork or the accountant's assistant is a nimrod. So.

Enjoy the kids joy of the simple things like decorating a 1/3 of a tree and putting icing on dried out crusty gingerbread and licking it.  There are many who won't this year.

House, Holiday, and a Puppy!

It's been very busy here for the last month since I've posted last. Since Timmy found his perfect new home we accidentally stumbled into a new puppy.

We hadn't been planning on a new puppy right now. But. Joking around it was said - repeatedly - wouldn't it be great if we found a puppy just like Bear because he's such an ideal dog for us right now? Well, I was on Craiglist and saw this guy and got information about him and stopped by where he was. We were going to think about it for a while UNTIL the guy said he was going to take him to Henryetta the next day to euthanize him. WHAT? Yep. They couldn't find anyone to take him, so they were just going to put him down and he wasn't even 3 months old. He's got a great temperament, he's fairly calm most of the time, he's easy to train, but they were just done with him. Awesome rescue shelter. So we took him home.

Well. We get him home and settle and he's doing really well with the house training and all. 4 or 5 days into him being here, he stops eating and gets very lethargic. I get worried and take him into our vet, thinking he's got a virus or needs a different food or something benign. Nope. He's got Parvo. The vet is fantastic and spends 45 minutes with us explaining our options from as simple as sending us home with antibiotics and hoping for the best and bringing him back if he gets super bad and we can't stand it. Putting him down because we don't want to spend the money on him. And letting them keep him in vet hospital with an IV and medications and seeing if they can keep him alive. They gave him about a 50% chance of living with the in hospital option since he is a Rottweiler/Great Pyrenees mix (Rottweilers apparently get parvo worse than some other breeds?).

We went ahead and opted to leave him in vet care. After several days, the vet called and said he was looking MUCH better and we could come get him! Since then, the little guy has only gotten bigger. He still hasn't regained all his weight from when he originally got sick, but we're working on plumping him back up. The little guy has more energy than before - but since he has Parvo when we got him, that only makes since.

Rupert, the Parvo Puppy

To go along with the theme of "Unplanned Events", we are in the process of buying a new house too! It's taking longer than we had hopped, but the house is exactly what we had been looking for. It's just a little bit outside of town, but not so far you can't easily get to stores, coffee, gas, emergency care, etc. It's got 2 acres and is unplatted so we can have whatever we want on it - goats, dogs, chickens (*shudder*), buildings - whatever without anyone complaining. The plan is to have my mom move out there with us too. The house is plenty big enough and with the land we're going to build her a little building of her own.  The nice thing with the building is that once she no longer needs it, it will be available for an extra office space for C, an apartment type thing should one of the kids need it later like a step before they are ready to *move out* to learn how to be on their own, we could always rent it too. Options are always nice. Unfortunately, the paper work is dragggggging out.

We had hoped to be moved before Christmas, but since it's the 10th of December it's not looking like that will happen. Also, the Realtor came by to get something initialed because the Sellers are stingy fools and had the tenacity to ask if the Sellers could "rent" the house for a week or 2 after closing to move. Umm. NO. That would move this show past New Years and. No. C opened his mouth before his brain caught up and agreed way too eagerly, but the Sellers have made NO concessions whatsoever to us and I am simply NOT that generous. He did correctly that in a very appropriate and kind way, but cheap hookers not making a single concession to us then dare ask that?

Anyhow, Christmas is coming soon and in the car after swim lessons #2 was chatting about how we had gone to Bass Pro yesterday and we saw Santa. He HATES Santa and I asked him why. He explained that Santa wasn't real. I asked him to explain why he thought that Santa wasn't real. He backtracked and tried to explain that the Bass Pro Santa wasn't real. I *think* the Boy knows that Santa isn't actually real, but was smart enough to keep him big trap shut for his sister. Plus, we've had the chat about how if you don't believe you don't receive. This applies to Fairies, Santa, Easter Bunny.. Any and all mystical creatures. It could also be that I gave him the master of all stink eyes when he started to say that he didn't think Santa was real. The Girl thinks Santa is very much real. Though The Girl believes whatever I tell her and is denser than a fruitcake. But if she believes in Santa Clause at 8 still, *I* am not spoiling it for her and I will not let her 6 year old brother either. He may be a little more cautious about things than she is.

Best Santa Picture EVER

We did take a picture with Santa. It took them 4 tries and 5 minutes to get this *Good* picture. Yes. This IS the good one. I don't have a single picture of The Boy sitting with Santa or near him really. He's always several feet away. Ahhh well.

New Home for Timmy!

Timmy found a new home within about 2 hours of actually *trying* to find him one! I placed a posting on Craigslist and a guy sent me an email, a very excited email, that he was interested. I asked him if he wanted to meet. He said of course. And with in an hour Timmy was at his new house! The guy said that as soon as he saw the picture (which happened to have been the same one I posted here) he KNEW he had to meet him and that it was a perfect match for his family. It really did melt some of the guilt of rehoming him away. I haven't heard anything else from them, nor do I expect to. But I'm going to assume that all is happy in his new home.


Now if everything else were just that simple! We've been slooowly looking at houses (ok, we've looked at maybe 6 houses total..) for about a month now. We've compiled a list of things we *don't* like. And a smaller list of things we DO like. But it's seemingly rather difficult to find a house, in a location we can settle upon, with a reasonable amount of features we can settle with, for a price we can live with, with enough but not TOOOOO much space. It's really just a huge mess. We came across one really nice house today that is almost perfect. But it is REALLY pretty far outside of town. I mean. Really. really. far. But is is so almost exactly what we're looking for. But it's just so. Far. Sooo. We're already scheduled to go look at a slew of houses with the realtor guy on Friday and there's another one we found that has some feature that seem pretty cool, soooo ya never know.

And then of course as we look at houses to potentially BUY, we're starting to do projects around this house because we know we'll need to fix this house up to sell, but can't sell it until we move because of the animals and kids.. SO. On the weekends (with the exception of these last 2 because of the Girl's birthday and party..) we've been doing random fix its. Filling holes, taking loads of crap to the dump, sorting just from the house (because all this crap isn't moving to become boxes of unopened crap somewhere else.) I just want to flush it all down the great big toilet of life and start all over again with a great big never ending supply of free money. Wouldn't that be totally great? Eh, I'm tired of ALL this stuff! Let's throw it ALLLLL away! Shovel it all into a dumpster and start all again. Yeah, I know, it's not happening here either.


Anyone else had the "Where Did The Year Go" or the "Oh Crap Christmas is Almost Here" freak out yet? Yeah. I did tonight. Did online Christmas shopping earlier. Should almost be done for the kids. I *think* our plan for this year is have each kid get 1 big present and have that be just about it. The Girl has decided she REALLY really wants an American Girl doll. Don't know why, but has her little wee heart set on it. So. That can be her big 1 present. And the Boy has been wanting Skylanders for at LEAST a full year now. Soooo he can have that for his (not the new Giants one but the now cheaper "old" ones) and a couple of those figures and call it done. If that's what they want to the exclusion of anything else, why not. They'll get a few smaller things from relatives and what not. And if they aren't pleased with the idea of only getting 1 BIG item on Christmas, then they can stop asking for them. Their Santa isn't rich and they're gonna have to realize that as they start to get older. Santa has a budget.