A puppy for Christmas

We’ve been waiting 5 weeks to get our beaglier x mini foxy puppy. I had these day dreams of our family going to the park together in the evening with the puppy, all of us running around, laughing and having fun.  We will do that, in addition to taking her for runs, walks and play dates with other dogs.  It’s hard waiting, but puppies are vulnerable to the canine parvo virus, which is spread by faeces, and can kill young pups.  Going to the park, or anywhere else a puppy might come into contact with other dogs poop could be deadly until they turn 12 weeks and receive their parvo virus vaccination.  Right now she is only 8 weeks old.

I also didn’t realise that having a puppy would deprive me of sleep for a number of weeks.  They can’t go all night without needing to pee and/or poop, which means I also have to wake up to take her out to pee/poop.  It’s like having a newborn.  And like having a newborn, even though they are hard work, looking at her adorable face, and getting great cuddles makes it totally worth it.  I’m just glad this night waking thing should be over by the time university starts back up next year so my brain won’t be in a sleep deprived fog whilst I try to get good marks in chemistry.

On Christmas eve, I picked up our new puppy.  I got home long after the kids had gone to bed, upping my chances of concealing the puppy until morning.  She whined a lot over night, had to go to the bathroom 3 times, and kept us up for many hours.  We couldn’t really blame her though, we did take her from her mom and dad, we were strangers, and we completely changed life as she knew it.

In the morning, we woke the kids from their slumber (perhaps I was more excited about seeing their reactions to their presents then they were about getting them in the first place…), sat them in front of the Christmas tree, and then brought out the special present.  I’d wrapped the flip lid box  so that it was still a flip lid box, just a very Christmasy one.

Hannah and Daniel groggily sit in front of the tree

I should have waited for the kids to wake up a bit first, but we were impatient, so their reactions were not exactly the over the top, screaming with excitement type we were going for, but they were groggily excited nonetheless.

Each day Rosie settles in more and more.  Hannah adores her and wants to cuddle and play with her all day long.  Daniel is a bit scared of her since Rosie thinks a human running means they want to play.  Daniel runs from her, which entices Rosie to run after him, which in turn scares Daniel, makes him run faster and then gets Rosie even more excited for play time.  He’ll get used to her though.

When she wakes up in the morning, Rosie is like a 6 year old who’s consumed a huge bowl of lollies.  Absolutely wild.  She tears around the house trying to chew on anything and everything like a tiny ball of energy.  Needless to say, she will be going for morning runs with me as soon as she has that vaccination.

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Ride your bike

Hannah is going to go insane when she gets her Christmas present this year.  Insane in a good way, I mean. There will be shrieks of joy, jumping up and down, and probably that nanny goat laugh she does when she gets really excited about something. We have grand plans of mounting our brand new GoPro video camera on her present and filming her reaction when she sees it (the present, not the camera).

Unfortunately, she doesn’t actually get to open her present. It’s too big. We’ve stashed it in the garage at Grandma’s house with a sheet on top of it.  She is going to be so surprised.

A while ago, we went to a bike shop to get a back mounted child seat to stick  on the back of Aaron’s bike so we could all go bike riding. I already have a front mounted seat on my bike. But we have 2 kids, so one is always left out. Whilst we were there, Hannah’s shiny things radar took her straight to the back corner of the store where all the little pink bikes with sparkley tassels and baskets on the front were kept.

Example of a preschooler bike. Basket and everything.

She excitedly jumped on the pinkest, sparkliest bike she could find and rode it around the shop, disappointed that she wouldn’t be taking it home.

When we got home, we discovered that the child seat didn’t fit Aaron’s bike. Well, it would, except we got the wrong length bar that goes from seat to bike. After some discussion, we decided that Hannah would probably like her own bike better anyway.  When the kids were at daycare, I returned the seat instead of exchanging it and got a bike for Hannah instead. But we couldn’t just give her a bike for no reason. We don’t want her to turn into a spoiled little brat. So I got the bike and hid it at Grandma’s for her Christmas present. I can’t wait to see her little face when she sees her very own bike.  Now I just have to remember to bring her helmet to Grandma’s on Christmas day. Without her knowing that we are bringing it, of course.

This post was brought to you buy Leisure Lakes Bikes, where you can not only buy bikes, but all sorts of biking accessories including clothing, Camelbaks, GoPro cameras and accessories, and nutritional supplements.

If you enjoyed reading this, please vote for my blog. All you have to do is click the link below. That’s it… Clicking the link brings you to the Top Mommy Blogs home page. You don’t have to do anything else. Any clicks from my site to theirs is a vote.  THANKS!

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Copyright 2012 Sheri Thomson

Flashback Friday: Legend of the leg lamp. I mean fish.

I haven’t done Flashback Friday in a while.  What can I say, I have an infant and a toddler, so going to the bathroom without anyone with me is hard, let alone keeping up my blog.

This weeks post is by Lois, from My Cruise Stories, AKA, my mom.  I was supposed to put it up for Christmas, but I didn’t have the time…. P.S. A while back, I wrote a post featuring the very same fish.

The Perfect Christmas Tree Ornament

I found the perfect Christmas tree ornament for Sheri this year.  OK, it’s not a leg lamp, but close.  In case anyone wonders why a leg lamp would make a great ornament, I’ll have to go back in history a bit to the point where this story begins.

 

It all started one dark foggy morning driving across the trestle on my way to work.  The trestle is a raised road passing over a couple miles of floodlands and sloughs (slow moving waterways).  Everything seemed fine until I spotted a dark car with no lights stopped dead in the road ahead.  Just ahead, in the dark and the fog by the time I saw this car I could not stop in time to avoid hitting it.  Luckily this road has two lanes.  However the car in the other lane prevented me from moving straight over.

 

I hit the brakes and hoped the other car would hurry up and get by.  At the last minute I dived over to the other lane. I just about made it, but the front corner of my pick-up truck barely clipped the mirror hanging out of the side of the car.  Not hard enough to break it off or anything, but it did leave a little dent in my truck.

 

After driving past the dark dead car, I saw some cops stopped in front of it.  Not right in front of it where their lights would have showed through the fog, but close enough to know it was why they were there.  Knowing the law frowns upon those who leave the scene of an accident, I pulled back over to the other lane after I got around them and stopped.

 

Busy apprehending car thieves, the cops pretty much just said go away, we don’t care when I tried to tell them I had hit the mirror on that car.  Perhaps they realized they should have parked behind it where people would see their lights and not hit the car and didn’t want to get in trouble for their negligence.  Or else they were just busy and didn’t want to be bothered.  Either way, I went on.

 

About this time my husband proudly came home from the taxidermist with a giant salmon ready to mount on the wall.  I thought it should go downstairs in his office where nobody else would have to look at it.  He thought it should go in the living room where everyone could see it.  We pretty much agreed he wouldn’t say anything about the dent in the truck if I wouldn’t say anything about the fish on the living room wall, which he hung opposite the front window.

Sheri hated the fish.  In spite of the fact that her dad always insisted people couldn’t see it from the road, when she had a substitute school bus driver and tried to explain where to stop, the driver piped up with “Oh, the house with the fish.”

 

Over the years, we took in a few strays.  Never official foster kids, just people who needed a place to stay for awhile.  Relatives or kids from the 4-H club.  One of the 4-H kids was Maria, whom I mentioned briefly in one of myblogs.

 

Around Christmastime, Maria started comparing the fish to the leg lamp in the move A Christmas Story.  Problem was, none of us had ever seen it.  I don’t think we had actually ever even heard of it.  One day Maria rented the movie and the kids and I watched it with her, anxiously waiting for a leg lamp to appear and laughing hilariously while comparing it to the fish when it did.

Maria moved on, but it became a family tradition to watch A Christmas Story every year.  One year Sheri’s dad even watched it with us.  When the father on the movie put his new leg lamp in the window, her dad looked at the rest of us quite seriously and said, ”Don’t even compare that to my fish.”

 

At which we all burst out laughing, having compared that leg lamp to his fish for years.

 

While out shopping for Christmas gifts this year, I looked at some Christmas tree ornaments.  There, dangling from a peg in between Sponge Bob and the Grinch, hung a row of little boys in glasses wearing pink bunny suits.  Ralphie, the main character of A Christmas Story in the much-hated fluffy pink bunny suit his aunt made him for Christmas. One of those had Sheri’s name written all over it.

If you don’t know what a leg lamp is, or find yourself wondering what this blog is about, just watch A Christmas Story. Everything will come to light.

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