Bunk Beds

Lily thinks bunk beds are pretty cool and was really excited to see that Cami and Rory have some when she visited them in Columbia.  Since she will most likely never have her own set of bunk beds, she and Henry have to make do.

Yes, that's a sofa table and of course Henry gets the bottom bunk.

My Yard!

Our fence was replaced yesterday. It looks gorgeous and was done in lightning speed. The company showed up at 8:00 a.m. and drove away at 1:30 p.m. Wow. I've now reclaimed my yard. I watched over my domain while my people ate their dinner. It was great.

Halloween 2011

The kiddos had a great time on Halloween this year. My people went to the Trunk or Treat at Grandma Gail and Papa Dean's church again. They had a great time getting candy, making crafts and running around on the parking lot.  Of course Lily was a princess, Belle this year.  Last year was Cinderella and the year before that Snow White.  She has every Halloween planned out until she's 11 and they all involve a Disney princess of some sort.  Henry was Superman.  My people figured with the way he runs around, he needed a cape flying out behind him.



The car next to theirs at the Trunk or Treat had a train theme.  The little boy, Eli, is close to Henry's age and they're good buds whenever the kids go to church with Grandma and Grandpa.  They spent most of the night parked in front of the train set.  Eli was dressed as a train engineer.  

Last night my people learned that Henry is scared of clowns.  He wouldn't go anywhere near their car and needed a lot of help to just walk across the parking lot a safe distance away from them to get to the other cars for candy.  They thought they were being very kid friendly, they were happy clowns after all, but he strongly disagreed.  Strongly. 

Mizzou Homecoming 2011

Lily had a lot of fun at Mizzou's Homecoming. My people stayed with some friends who have two girls ages 6 and 4. They all had a blast playing together. Lily enjoyed the parade and the game. Her favorite part was meeting Truman. Since they were in the front row, he walked by many times so she got her picture with him and got to talk to him. I think one of my tall girl's goals is to get the entire family to a game so they can get a picture with Truman for their Christmas card. :)

Click on the album below if you want to see more pictures.

Mizzou's 100th Homecoming 2011

We're Home!

We've moved back home! The inside of the house was finished a week ago Thursday (8/11/11). My big people spent that weekend unpacking and getting ready for the kiddos to come home. The kids moved home on Tuesday (8/16/11) and I came home on Thursday (8/18/11). I would've come home on Tuesday, but once the rest of the stuff from Grandma and Grandpa's house was packed in the car, there was no room for me. I see where their priorities are. I have not quite settled in. My wooden fence is still missing large sections and the electric fence has a break in the line somewhere, so that means I have to go out on a leash. Not fun. My people can't put area rugs on their newly refinished wood floors yet, so there's not a good place for me to lay down in the living room and dining room. They went ahead and put my new dog bed down in the bedroom, but it doesn't compare to the Sleep Number bed I got used to at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I sometimes get so nervous I start shaking, which isn't new for me, but it happens quite a bit now. I think I'll settle down soon though.

As far as the house goes, the inside is done. My people just need to finish unpacking and decorating. There's still work to do on the outside. The fence needs to be fixed and the house still needs to be painted. There's still a ginormous dumpster in the driveway and a ton of stuff in the garage, making it hard for the kids to ride their bikes and such. It'll all come together eventually though.

We're all very happy to be home and would like to give a huge thank you to Grandma Polly, Papa Jerry, Nome and Hawkeye for letting us crash at their house for four months!

Pictures (but not of vacation)

Our camera is currently MIA, so until it's found and charged, vacation pictures will have to wait. In the meantime, here are some albums with photos of things we've been doing during our extended stay at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Enjoy!

Extended Stay at Grandma and Grandpa's, Summer 2011

Strawberry Picking 2011

Marine Week 2011

Attack of the Dishwasher

It turns out Grandma and Grandpa have a very dangerous dishwasher. I was licking dirty plates the other evening (which I'm not supposed to be doing) when my collar go caught on the bottom shelf. When I couldn't pull myself free I freaked out and tried to run out of the kitchen except I was still hooked. I ended up pulling the entire bottom shelf and the dirty dishes in it across the kitchen with me. It was loud and scary! I vaguely remember this happening once before, which is probably part of the reason why I'm not supposed to be over there when it's being loaded, but I forgot. I've learned my lesson...for now.

18 Month Check-Up and Other Updates

Sorry for my absence. Surely a tornado is a good enough excuse, no? Let's start with the fun stuff...

Henry is 18 months old! He went for his check-up yesterday and the doctor says everything is good. He's 27.9 lbs. and 33-1/2" long. That puts him in the 75th percentile for weight and 80th percentile for height. These numbers are foreign to all of us. Lily has never seen these percentiles before or anything close to them. Ha!

I had an extended stay at the kennel last week while the family went on vacation. They drove to Columbia, SC to visit Tim and Gretchen and the kiddos for a night and then continued on to Kiawah Island, SC to spend the week with Grandma, Grandpa, Eric, Melissa and their kiddos. Henry's not much of a traveler right now, so I hear the drive there and back was...interesting, BUT the kids had a blast in the pool and on the beach. They had a ton of fun seeing all of their cousins. The best part is that Henry wasn't left on the side of the highway during the long drive. :)

As far as the house goes, things are moving along. They started on the inside right before the South Carolina trip, so my people scrambled to get all of the non-furniture items packed up and moved out of the way. The new A/C and furnace have been put in, drywall has been installed on the walls and ceiling, the first coat of paint has been put on, the hardwood floors are scheduled to get started next Wednesday, new carpet for the basement has been chosen and replacement ceiling fans/light fixtures/etc. have been purchased. There's still a lot of work to be done, but is that a light at the end of this very long tunnel that we see? It's been 11+ weeks since the storm, but who's counting?

A Month Later

We've been out of the house for a month now. I haven't been back to see how things are going with the clean up. I've been too busy learning the new electric fence boundaries of my temporary yard and then busting through them anyway. It's great fun to see either Papa Jerry or Katie sprinting across the lawn yelling my name. Good times. I heard that one morning Lily was looking out the window and told Grandma Polly, "Papa Jerry's running across the yard!"

I've been told that all of the storm debris, tree and structural, has been cleaned up from my yard. It took almost 2 weeks longer than planned for the contractor to get a building permit from the city to start repairs, but he now has one and the roof was completed at the end of last week. No more tarps! I'm not sure which project will be tackled next, but my guess is the siding and gutters. There's still a lot to be done, but it's a relief to know that water can no longer get into the house.

We're all extra skiddish with severe storms now. Yesterday one blew up and I hid under a barstool. Lily crawled under with me and said "This is a good place to hide."

Meanwhile, Mr. Henry turned 17 months old the other day. Time is flying!

Tornado

I got my paws on Katie's phone to give everyone an update on our situation. It's very hard to use this touchscreen with claws, so I apologize for any typos. I also have no idea how the formatting will work posting from the phone, so sorry if everything looks goofy.

Anyway, our house was in the path of the tornado that hit the area this past Friday. We're all ok. Lily was with Grandma Gail and Papa Dean at the time. Me, Greg, Katie, and Henry were in the basement. We felt the pressure change and heard a loud noise. When we looked out the basement window we saw drywall, our first clue things were not good. Greg went upstairs with a flashlight and yelled down "Katie, there are gumballs in the hallway.". Once we all got upstairs we saw that our neighbor's gum ball tree was in our bedroom.

We were able to get the outside debris and downed trees cleaned up yesterday. A company is at the house today to help us get started on the inside.

The neighborhood's a mess, but we're fortunate there were no injuries. The house is a wreck, but can be fixed and the majority of our things have been spared, though Greg and Katie will be doing a closer evaluation of the inside items in the coming days to know for sure. They're calling for more severe weather tonight, so hopefully the tarps on everyone's roofs will hold up. Fortunately, we have a place to stay in the coming days/weeks/however long it takes to make our house livable again.

Thank you for the prayers and offers of help. We'll keep you posted. My people have taken a ton of pictures and will hopefully be able to post them soon.

God is good and will be glorified through all of this.

I know they had to throw away my dog bed. Bummer.

Typical Day

When I'm outside, I'm digging.


When I'm inside, I'm sleeping.

Baldy's not too happy with me. Not only am I tearing up his yard, but I've also claimed his side of the bed.

More Crafts

My people must've been on a crafting kick yesterday. Thanks to grandma, they made gingerbread house placemats...

...and tissue paper candy canes. Lily had a lot of fun with these. She did both of the placemats and one of the candy canes. Hopefully you can tell which one.

Then Baldy made a...wait for it...Darth Vader snowflake. (click the link for the template)

See it?

Thanksgiving Craft

Late one evening at the end of October, my tall girl person decided she wanted to do a Thanksgiving type craft with Lily. She took some construction paper and cut out a turkey along with 25 feathers, one for every day leading up to Thanksgiving. Each day, she asked Lily what she was thankful for, wrote it on a feather and added it to the turkey. By Thanksgiving, the turkey had a big, pretty tail.

When Katie would ask Lily what she was thankful for, Lily would usually just look around the room and pick the first object she saw. That makes for some pretty hilarious feathers like "coffee cups for daddy" and "chairs". There are some thoughtful feathers on there too though like "cousins" and "grandmas and grandpas". I think my favorite is "bones for Norm." I'm thankful for those too, even though I don't get them very often anymore.
Maybe next year Katie will plan ahead so half of the feathers aren't written upside down.

Whatever It Takes

Our satellite provider is currently having a dispute with Fox and has chosen to not show any Fox related channels until whatever they're arguing about (money, I assume) is settled. That means no FX and no Fox Sports Midwest, along with some other channels. This is a huge bummer for my people and I because we weren't able to get the Mizzou/Colorado game on TV this past Saturday...or were we? Take a look at what we had to resort to.

Pretty sad, huh? Or maybe ingenious? Baldy found the game streaming on some website, hooked the laptop up to the TV and we watched it on that awesome picture that fits our 46" screen so nicely. The upside is that we got to see the game, the downside, well you see the picture, right? No worries now though. My people have switched providers and are all set to watch the Mizzou/Texas A&M game this Saturday. Go Tigers!

Bath Time

Baldy got my leash and collar out last night. I was super excited because I thought I was going to go for a walk. Silly me. Instead, he tied me to the telephone pole (the tree that used to be in the yard has been removed) and hosed me down. I hate baths. I got him back though by tap, tap, tapping around the bedroom at 5:00 this morning and forcing him to let me sleep on the bed. I win...I think.

A Story in Which I Wake Up the Kids

So, a while ago there were a series of thunderstorms that came through the area. My tall person put the kiddos down for their naps, but I was nervous because I knew another storm was coming. I was tap, tap, tapping all around the house looking for a safe place to curl up. The kids got to sleep and then the storm came. I decided to nose open the door to Lily's room and curl up on the rug in there. I didn't realize her door would make a really loud noise when I pushed it open, so of course she woke up and screamed because I had scared her. Her scream then woke up Henry and he started crying. It was awesome. Needless to say, my tall girl person was NOT happy with me. That day was a total nap fail in our house.

Friends

I Told You So

I told you I'd end up on Baldy's lap when fireworks started going off.

Although, I have figured out that I can still get behind the tv even though there's not as much room as before. My people are not happy about this. Something about me possibly knocking their new tv off the stand or unplugging some of the cables. I don't understand what the big deal is.

Safe Place

This is the tv set up in the living room. You wouldn't think a 65 pound dog would a) fit behind it and b) want to be behind it. Think again.

See me?

Plenty of room.

Sure I have to push the sub-woofer aside to squeeze back there and then do a special little dance to get over all the power cords before I lay down, but it's totally worth it. It keeps me safe from storms (we won't talk about the possibility of lightning striking and frying the tv) and I've found that it keeps me safe from 3 year olds and nearly 6 month olds. Win-win.

MH25

My people took the kiddos to the park last weekend to celebrate the city's 25th anniversary. There were carnival rides and a fireworks show. Lily rode two rides and loved them both. My people discovered that the older they get, the less excited they are about spinning though. :) During the fireworks, whenever an explosion of pink appeared, Lily would say "Ooh, there's a pink one. That's my favorite!" Every. Single. Time. Henry enjoyed hanging out in his stroller and people watching. He didn't take his normal dinnertime nap and was up from 3:15 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. The longest he's ever been awake in one stretch in his short 5 months. They say he was a trooper though and didn't fuss at all. Meanwhile, I was left at home to fend for myself during the scary fireworks.

Click below to see some pics.

MH25