Christmas Train 2011

Every year there is a Christmas train that comes through our hometown. Last year, we went to it with my parents and my mother-in-law. This year it was just Stephen, Christopher and I that went to it. We went on Wednesday, December 7th. Last year, Christopher was not a fan of Santa Claus.

I have been pumping him up for Santa Claus since November… every time we would go to Walmart, we would go back to the Lawn&Garden Center and look at the Santa lawn ornaments. We would look at pictures of Santa, talk about him, etc.  We told him before the train that we were going to see Santa and that Christopher was going to sit on his lap while we took his picture! He seemed okay with that at first, but after a few minutes decided no, he really didn’t want to sit on Santa’s lap.

When we got into the train where we could see Santa, Christopher was shaking his head NO and saying he did NOT want to see Santa. Yeah… well. Too bad, buddy!

Christopher and Santa, 2011:

Still not so much a fan. I had to sit with him, and he was so upset and scared, I just sat down and let Stephen take the picture, then hopped up. Well, Stephen isn’t used to my camera and his thumb was in front of the flash, which is why the bottom right side of this picture is dark. I ran it through autocorrect in Photoshop and it looks ten times better than it did.

Poor Christopher. He was so upset by Santa that he didn’t enjoy the rest of the train. He was shaking the entire time. Hopefully next year will be a better experience!

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The weekend is here!!!!

Y’all. It’s my last weekend of normal undergraduate school. It seriously feels so surreal.

I am about to start working on some homework, but I have seriously missed blogging and just wanted to post a few things before moving on to schoolwork.

Isn’t he getting SO BIG!?!?

Sweet boy when we first put together and plugged in his very own Christmas tree. (This was in the living room, it’s now in his room.) I had my eye on this tree for the entire Christmas season last year at Walmart but Stephen didn’t think we needed a tree in Christopher’s room because he was only 16 months old. I waited until their after-Christmas sale and snatched it up for 50% off and I’ve been holding on to it all year so excited to use it in his room! It has blue ornaments on it now and I’m hoping to go out of town soon and let Christopher pick out his own special ornament to go on it.

Is anyone else tired of football? I’m so ready for football season to be over. I hate having those four (plus) hours every Sunday devoted to the Cowboys. And usually Stephen ends up watching other teams play, as well. It makes me stir-crazy. And to make matters worse, Stephen is always in a bad mood when the Cowboys lose. Which has been often, this year. Oy vey.

Let’s see, what else did I feel like rambling about? Oh, yes! I don’t know if I ever mentioned it, but we had our house under contract to be sold in October, but about a week after we signed our agreement we found out that the buyer’s financing had fallen through. Boo.  We got a call yesterday afternoon asking for a showing this morning, so I spent most of the evening yesterday cleaning up my Christmas junk and making the house presentable. I feel like it looks crazy right now because of the three (yes, three) Christmas trees and the ten boxer pups (did I mention that we lost a pup? A beautiful flashy male. There were just so many puppies, somehow Bella laid on him and he died. So now we have ten.) our house is just out of sorts. My deep freezer is normally in my laundry room but right now it’s in the kitchen, along with a Christmas tree and a small round kitchenette type table. We haven’t heard anything yet so I assume that they aren’t making an offer. I am really fine with us not selling it right now – just praying about it. If it’s supposed to sell, it will.

I think I’ve mentioned (a time or two. Ha!) that we have been super busy recently. We just got our third tree up on Wednesday and we don’t even have our Christmas lights on the house yet. I think Stephen wants to put them up this weekend but I don’t know if he’ll have time. He has ball games tonight and tomorrow, out of town, plus he has a lot of schoolwork to work on this weekend. Normally my trees and lights and décor are out before Thanksgiving.  I know it’s just the season of life we are in right now – busy busy busy. 

Christopher has really gotten into watching TV recently. He has hardly ever wanted to sit and watch anything. I don’t want him to be a couch potato, but there were times when I just would want him to sit for 5 minutes so I could take a shower or clean the kitchen. This summer he discovered Shrek and then a few weeks ago I pulled out a Sesame Street DVD called “Kids Favorite Song 2” and he really likes the songs on there. He calls it “boom boom” because one of the songs is “The Ants Go Marching” …you know – “they all go marching down, into the ground, to get out of the rain, BOOM BOOM BOOM.”  It’s his favorite part of the whole DVD. Stephen and I recently replaced our non-working TV in our bedroom (thank you, Black Friday sales!) and I can put C in bed and have enough time to take a shower AND blow-dry and straighten my hair. It’s wonderful! (Well, wonderful except for the annoying songs.)

Something else he is really loving right now is Goodnight Moon. My mom got him this book for Christmas last year (I think.) He loves reading books in general but this one is his favorite right now. I have the first half of it memorized. This is him before bedtime. He asked to go to sleep with his ball (from the Ft Worth Zoo, his Aunt Cristin and Uncle Jim bought it when we visited this summer) and Goodnight Moon. In his “belbo” (Elmo, haha) PJs.  Love him to pieces.

I have SO much more to update but I’ve procrastinated enough on homework for tonight so I’m stopping here. Just felt like winding down from a long day (up early this morning to finish up the house for a 9am showing and then I did my first public school teach this afternoon!) with a little blogging.

if you haven’t heard from me within a week, send a search party.

I only have one day of school left – to take a (non-comprehensive) final in one class and in another class, do an hour-long presentation over a 10-page research paper. (Acccckk!)

It’s amazing how much other, miscellaneous schoolwork I have left to do at this point in time.

{I bet you didn’t know that I am the Queen of Procrastination}

unless you’re my mom

I don’t want to be like this. Truly. But somehow, no matter how good my intentions are, other things just get in the way and I end up scrambling at the last minute to get everything finished. Everything must be done by next Tuesday! And as always, I will get it all done and turned it. (I HOPE!) Assuming I’m still alive on Wednesday, I’ll write a million and one updates that date all the way back to mid-October.

It might be Thursday.

Here’s a sneak peak of the day we took family pictures for Christmas cards. (Which I still haven’t ordered and I’m not even sure if I will this year.)

Christopher in the leaves

I feel like I will never get caught up with all my blogging. And I guess that’s okay.

I bought a new camera lens about a month ago and I’ve used it a few times. I looooove this new lens. LOVE it. I haven’t used it much but I am SO happy with it. I took pictures of my brother and sister-in-law today for their Christmas card. I used the new lens and was really happy with a lot of the pictures! I’ll share those later – after she’s mailed her cards.  For now, here’s a picture of Christopher from a few weeks ago. (SOOC)

I’ve also been trying to shoot in full-on manual mode. Not easy but I’m getting better at it!

Now – to bed. I still have a busy 9 days left in my semester and sleep is something that is VERY important to my day-to-day functioning.

reasons (aka: excuses)

The reasons that you have not heard from me recently…

{and why it will be at least December 4th before you hear from me again.}

I WILL be back, and with plenty to blog about. Promise.

Steph

101 Boxers

I mentioned earlier (this post) that we had bred our Boxers and were expecting a litter of pups!

We didn’t know exactly when her due date was but we guessed that it would be sometime in the first two weeks of November.  Bella kept getting bigger and bigger… and I honestly thought the weekend of Halloween would be when she had them. I read that her temperature would fall below 100 degrees within 24 hours of going into labor, so we started taking her temperature.  I don’t know if the thermometer wasn’t reading correctly or what, but her temp jumped all over the place. It would go from 99 to 101.5 and one time it was even 97… I thought for SURE that when it ready 97 it was “time!”

But day after day, night after night, she never had them.  Poor girl was getting so big and uncomfortable – you could tell by looking at her that she was about it pop! I took the following picture this last weekend:

Big Momma

I’ve mentioned before how we are gone ALL DAY on Tuesdays. Stephen and I leave our house at 6am on Tuesday morning and get back in Mena around 8pm at the latest… most of the time class gets out earlier and it’s between 6-7 that we get home.  Regardless, we’re gone for a good 12 hours on Tuesdays, so normally my dad pops by the house and lets Baxter out for us. We set up Bella’s “birthing area” in the laundry room and we’ve been keeping her in there at night and when we were going to be gone for more than a few hours, so he’s been letting her out, as well. I was terrified that she was going to have the babies on a Tuesday while we were gone and something would go wrong and I wouldn’t be here to get her to the vet, etc.

This past Tuesday was one of the days that we didn’t get home till about 7:45. My dad had come by around 4:00 and let the dogs out; I had talked to him and was reassured that no puppies had been born.  We came straight to the house we we got back to town. Stephen was going to head to work and I was going to let the dogs out and then go to my parents house to pick up Christopher.

When I opened the door to the laundry room, I was greeted by this:

She had destroyed her pillow. Nesting. She had also spilled her water bowl all over the floor and peed. She bolted out of the laundry room and ran to our couch in the living room.  She was panting really heavy, so that’s when I knew that she was in labor.  I called my parents and told them it’d be awhile before I came to pick Christopher up; I wanted to clean up the laundry room, mop it, and get Bella back in there before leaving the house. It took me a good 20-30 minutes to clean everything up. After I had finished mopping, I went into the living room to get Bella and put her back in the laundry room so that I could go pick up Christopher… when I got the the living room, I saw Bella standing in the middle of the room WITH A PUPPY COMING OUT OF HER!

I flipped out. I ran back to the laundry room to get my phone to call Stephen, then ran back to the living room.  I guess I startled her when I came back in because she turned and ran back to the couch… except when she jumped up on the couch, a puppy came out and hit the floor! And I don’t think she ever realized it. I think I was already calling Stephen at this point, but all I could focus on was the fact that Bella had just had a puppy in my living room floor, she was on the couch, the puppy was out of her sight on the floor right next to the couch and it was still in its sac and she wasn’t doing anything to clean it. Stephen answered his phone and I told him, Bella just had a puppy in our living room floor!!! Please hurry home!!! I was trying to get Bella off the couch to clean her puppy but she wouldn’t BUDGE, and all I could remember was reading that if the sac didn’t get taken off the puppy quickly, it would suffocate. So… yes, that’s right – I broke the sac and removed it from the puppy, and then showed it to Bella. I really think she had no idea she had just given birth, but as soon as I showed her the puppy her instincts kicked in and she started cleaning it and doing all that she needed to do.  Stephen and I laid down towels on our living room floor but Bella wouldn’t budge from the couch and I remembered reading that when a momma dog goes into labor and starts to have puppies, she picks her spot and shouldn’t be moved because it could mess things up, so we piled towels up along the cushions and back of the couch. I don’t remember when puppy #2 came, but I know that Stephen was home and there were 2 puppies when he headed back to work. At some point I had called my dad to ask him to please bring Christopher to our house because I didn’t want to leave Bella and two puppies alone on the couch.

I was so frazzled all night long. I tried to watch TV but every time I turned to look at Bella she would be having another pup! The couch wasn’t the best place for her to give birth. I was paranoid that she would smother a pup while she was cleaning up after the birth of one or that one might get stuck between couch cushions. I was texting with Stephen and one of my best friends, Jessica, while Bella was in labor. Number three was born right after Stephen went back to work, then number four, five, six… they just kept coming! Number seven, number EIGHT… at eight I texted Jess and Stephen and it said, Eight! EIGHT! Holy freaking cow EIGHT!  Then it was NINE! I was in shock at that point. There were SO MANY PUPPIES.  Bella was cleaning number nine up and Jessica was texting things like Ten! Come on Bella push out number ten!

Probably 15 or 20 minutes later I looked over at Bella and she was still cleaning up number nine. I went over and looked closer and the puppy she was cleaning was pretty wet… like it had just been born. Jess texted me at that time and asked if there were still just nine and I texted her back that I was about to count. I counted twice…. TEN.

TEN PUPPIES.  At that point it was about 11:00. My couch was covered in soaked towels (tmi? sorry.) and ten precious boxer puppies and one boxer mommy. I COULD NOT BELIEVE that Bella had just given birth to TEN puppies on my couch. {My couch, by the way – will never be the same.}

About an hour later – a little after midnight – I decided it was time to move everybody into the laundry room so that my couch could start to recover. I set up a heated blanket, newspaper, and moved 10 puppies (and counted again as I moved them all) into the laundry room. I was going to let Bella outside to have a bathroom break then go to bed for the night.

Except when I came back in the living room, Bella was cleaning up PUPPY NUMBER ELEVEN.

SERIOUSLY.

I let her clean it up then lured her into the laundry room with puppy number eleven. I went to bed at 2am with eleven boxer pups in my living room and praying that I didn’t wake up to twelve.

I didn’t. :) We have eleven precious, perfect boxer pups! Seven boys and four girls.  Bella and all of the puppies seem to be doing really well and they go to the vet tomorrow for their dew claws removed and tails to be docked. One of the little boys has a swollen foot and paw. It’s been like that since he was born so I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but hopefully we can figure it out tomorrow at the vet’s office.

Bella around 2am Wednesday morning. Proud momma of eleven!

Precious.

{Yesterday}

{Tonight}

Tonight, Stephen and I took each puppy and weighed them and put a colored string around its neck. I want to be able to watch their weight over the next few days after they have their procedures at the vet tomorrow. An hour after we had done it I went back in and looked and almost half of them were missing their color. I’m going to try to figure out which is which.

So far things have been pretty easy going. The pups are pretty quiet and they mostly sleep and eat. I’m sure in a few weeks I’ll be losing my mind from the mess and noise. Thankfully, it is all good timing and I will be out of school for the second half of our time with the pups. Also, I couldn’t have asked for better timing for Bella to have the pups. I’d been praying that she wouldn’t have them on a Tuesday when we were at school and they came about 20 minutes after we got home on a Tuesday evening! I already had planned to miss class today because my mom was going to be out of town and I only had one class anyway. Next Tuesday I only have one morning class that meets, so we won’t have to be gone all day long; instead we’ll just be gone for the morning. Next Thursday is Thanksgiving! So exciting!

I have more updates about life recently and I will get to them at some point, but I had to post about our new sweet babies. :)

Tomorrow is FRIDAY!

Halloween pictures FAIL and more randoms

I had planned on doing a Halloween 2011 post for Christopher (I even wrote it out and all it needed was pictures from Halloween Eve and Halloween night) …BUT… my computer wouldn’t recognize my SD card from my camera. I restarted the computer, tried to download the pics to Stephen’s desktop, had Stevo take the SD card to his work computer, took the card to my parents computer… none of them are registering it when I insert it. I put the SD card back in my camera and my camera throws up an error message that it cannot use the SD card and that it may be damaged.

SAD STEPHANIE.

I am SO upset! All of Christopher’s Halloween pictures were on that SD card and I have no idea what else we can do to try to get them. Stephen suggested re-dressing him up and taking pictures again – and I am seriously thinking about doing it. It won’t be the same and I will always know it, but I want to have good quality pictures to remember his past Halloween outfits in the future. The sad thing is that Christopher’s Nana made a special trip from Missouri to Mena to be with C for Halloween so THOSE pictures will never be able to be re-created.

So anyway, that kind of explains my lack of blogging recently. I like to try to keep things chronological on here.

Today and last Saturday, my mom and I have had a yard sale together. Last weekend we had it at my mother-in-law’s house and it went really well. Today, we had it at my dad’s office and it was REALLY windy and didn’t do nearly as well as last week. I think most people were staying inside on this cold, windy, overcast fall day!

I’ve been keeping myself busy with school and housework tv shows. The house, as always, is a mess. I’m hoping to get it super cleaned up and organized today because I want to put up my Christmas tree tomorrow!

I recently finished a short continuing ed class at our local community college. It was over Adobe Photoshop, which I knew virtually nothing about when I started the class. I am SO excited because I can actually use Photoshop now and I know that I’m just going to keep learning more and more about it. I have a very tiny knowledge of how to use it but I feel like the class gave me enough of a foundation over it that I can continue to teach myself more about it by trial and error or by watching various tutorials online. Before, I would watch the tutorials and be completely lost. Not the case anymore! Here is something I created this week. I’ll share more of this project when I’m finished with it.

I am hoping to design our Christmas Card this year. This isn’t the card I’m going to use, just something I was playing around with.

I think tomorrow I’m going to attempt to take family pictures for our Christmas card so that I can start designing the card around the pictures I like. Hopefully that goes well!

Happy Saturday!