Hard decisions........

Being a parent has many joys. Unfortunately along with all the fun there are decisions that we must make that can be hard not only on the parents, but on the children too. We have had to make one of those hard decisions here recently. As much as our family has enjoyed having a new pet, along with the good times come the bad. Pugston has become quite the problem dog. We had been told that he was "mostly" housebroken. Well, he has "mostly" decided that our basement is his bathroom. No matter how many times or how far the girls or I walk him, he evidently wants the privacy of the basement to do his "duty". He does poop outside some of the time, but we clean up fragrant piles downstairs several times each day too. I have also discovered that he has been peeing on things down there too. Eeewwww! ZoraLin was not very happy that he watered her pillow and blanket the other day. I never knew that Clorox could smell so good!


Seems he also has this chewing issue. We have spent a small fortune on toys and chew bones for him, but even so he has this infatuation with Berber carpet. He can get his teeth caught in the Berber and then shred the carpet. Bad Dog!!

He also pretends to not know us at times. Those times are when we think he needs to stretch his legs and we let him off his leash to run with Wyatt. He thinks he needs to visit the cows that live WAY across the busy street. No matter how loud we call him, off he goes without a care in the world! No matter how much traffic there is, he crosses the road without a sidewards glance! Even the girls are already tired of cleaning up after and walking him. So we have found someone who wants Pugston and we will be taking him there this weekend. I thought there would be more tears to deal with....everyone agrees with me on this one.

Bad blogger...........

I have been MIA lately :( We really haven't had anything "fun" to report on. Spring break came and went. Bubby stayed with us for a few days then he had to return home for his new job orientation. He is going to work at W*lMart! He thinks that all he is going to do is be a cart person, or is it retriever? Somehow I bet he will be doing other things, only time will tell.


During spring break my honey do list became much shorter. I hired a handyman to come do some of the most important things. What could the important things be you may ask?!! For one, my hubby was going to change the light bulbs in the laundry room one day. I know, How many hubby's does it take to change a light bulb? Well, I received a phone call at work from him later that day. He said, "I hope you can do the laundry in the dark?" Seems that it takes more than one hubby to change the light bulb! He managed to pull the whole light fixture down off the ceiling. Well, almost off the ceiling, it was basically hanging there by the wires! We have some funky florescent lights in our laundry room and above the island in the kitchen. I am sure that this was the cheapest lighting that the contractor could find. Don't even get me started on the wanna-be contractor who slapped our house together!


So now we have a beautiful new light above the kitchen island, I can actually see to do laundry again and we have shelves in the garage and laundry room! Our deck is much more safe now too as he replaced one of the support poles that was very dangerous! I was so excited to have shelves in the garage and in the laundry room, I spent the whole next day putting things on the shelves! The weather was almost summer like that day. It really put me in a spring cleaning frame of mind!

My new shelves!!!

BEFORE

AFTER

Out with the old.........

Isn't this much better?!!

The weather cooled off the next few days, so we played "dump" in the basement with the girls' toys. We had almost two big boxes full of toys that were broken or the cheap things from kids meals! I now have many things that I need to price for a garage sale and the girls have "found" many toys that they had forgotten all about!!

School carnival

Tonight was Carbondale's school carnival. Last year Mark was at a gun show in Wichita and I took the girls to the carnival. Hmmmm.....I see a pattern here, this year I took the girls and Mark was at a gun show in Wichita again! I had been on a spring cleaning streak around the house today. I was proud of all the dents I made in piles of things that I have wanted to move for some time. All that work and no play (or better yet, sleep) for Mommy makes Mom kind of grouchy. The girls were the least put off by my sending them the "evil eye" periodically. When they are having fun.....everyone should be having fun too!

So they had a wonderful time! It took them a while to get into the swing of things. The cake walk was kind of boring when you don't win something, but watch out when your number is called!! Jordis spent 5 minutes trying to pick out just the right item for winning. Soft sugar cookies with bright blue frosting and sprinkles won her over! The girls REALLY wanted to get their faces painted this year like they had last year, but the line for face painting was super long and not moving at the highest rate of speed. After 15 minutes of waiting in line and counting how many were in line in front of the girls, I convinced them that our time would be better spent winning things than waiting to get your face painted.

Most fun the girls had.....the ring toss to win cans or bottles of pop. It was a win-win situation. If you didn't get a ring around a can or bottle, then you received a consolation prize....candy! The biggest prize of the evening. Each classroom puts together a basket of items with a theme. Jordis' class did summer fun, ZoraLin's was hot wheels and RaeAnne's was fishing. RaeAnne, ZoraLin and Jordis each had three raffle tickets to put into the drawing for the basket of their choice. What do ya know.....RaeAnne's name was drawn for the Chocolate Basket!! Oh mercy!! The sugar highs are on their way!!!

It will be interesting to see what becomes of the carnival next year. The school is being divided into three schools. Kindergarten through 2nd grade will be in Overbrook, 3rd -5th will be in Scranton and 6th-8th will be at Carbondale. Can't wait to see what happens!!!

What do you get???

When you cross a Chinese Pug with a Boston Terrier???

Well, we are not completely sure what the designer name is.....but this is our new dog. We would like you to meet Pugston!! Or Pugsy Poo, Puggles, Puggy....we haven't really figured out what his nickname will be. His former name was Spike, but somehow it just doesn't fit him! He joined our family today. A co-worker had gotten him from a rescue center and decided that she needed to re-home him. Somehow, I temporarily forgot swearing that we were not going to add anymore animals to our house!! I swear....THIS IS IT!! NO MORE CRITTERS!!!!




BTW, he is about one year old, loves to give the girls kisses, is super sweet, a lap dog and Wyatt has not objected...what more could we want?!!

~~Friends~~

Some very special friends stopped by our house this evening. Emy and Mady are both from China and they are very close in age to our girls. My girls ALWAYS love playing with these two adorable girls and time flew by. As you can see, they are like peas in a pod! And we always enjoy visiting with their Mommy (and Daddy who wasn't along tonight!) Hugs to the girls!!

We hope that these girls can remain friends for the rest of their lives.

~~Happy Valentine's Day~~

Big brother, Nicholas AKA Nick AKA Bubby, spent last weekend with us. As luck would have it, I had an appointment to have the girls' photo taken for Valentine's Day Sunday at noon. We just happened to go right past the photo studio to take Bubby home! Aha!! Knowing that he probably would not be excited to participate, we kind of broke the news to him at the studio :)

Even though he was not dressed for the occasion, I think the photo came out looking pretty good! The girls love their big brother Bunches! It looks apparent in the photo that the feelings are mutual!!

Celebrating Chinese New Year 2009

Last night we celebrated Chinese New Year in Topeka with our local FCC group. The girls had a blast doing crafts such as making bracelets, stamping cards, making paper lanterns, doing the dragon dance and the star of the night was watching some of the Washburn Chinese Students perform things native to China. One girl sang, two others danced a very beautiful dance (this really had my girls glued to it!) and another showed us how a Chinese Yo-Yo works. Spectacular!

The highlight of the night was getting their names drawn to win prizes for a raffle. RaeAnne was SO excited and everything she won has a red/black and ladybug theme. She is sleeping with her Chinese purse which is filled with her booty!