What a sweet innocent puppy!

What a sweet innocent little angel! Or is he? When left alone and in the above dog carrier for maybe 30 minutes, this is what happened:

Story by Alexis

Alexis had to write a story using 10 of her spelling words. Here is what she wrote (her spelling)

Once opon a time lived a girl. She had Bells plloze. Her smile was unusual. We hope it would go away. She rote a note about her life. She had a huge letter to write about her life. Then someone was at the door. She opened the wide door. It was her friend. She wanted to know if she could come over. I got a puppy and its mine. Next year she would be in 3rd grade. It was a true story.
The End. By: Alexis E.

New Puppy

Here are pics of our new puppy. We are having trouble choosing a name so we are looking for any suggestions. No one knows what he is a mix of, possibly black lab (judging from his litter mates) and some sort of terrier judging by his face. The hardware store next to our store had a customer bring in 8 puppies. Two that look like the one that choose us and 6 pure black. This one climbed in my lap and kept coming back no matter how much I put him down to pick up his siblings. Andy brought him home while I went pick up the kids so that we could surprise them. When we got home he said "he already peed and pooped on the floor". However, we fed him and gave him water and 20 minutes later he went to the back door and whined. I let him out and after a couple of minutes he came back to the door. I went out with him and gave him a treat at his "bathroom spot" (or where I'd like it to be). He ate the treat up and as we were walking towards the house I noticed that he had chosen a different "bathroom spot". Good dog! We brought him inside and he slept for a while, got up drank some water, and went to the back door. We took him out and off he went. Potty outside again. Just goes to show you that with a little work he'll be housetrained in no time. (I hope!) So any suggestions as to a name? "Buddy" and "Baby" are two different things we've called him so far to try and get his attention. Nothing sticking yet. PLEASE NO MAX!!! Long horrible story if you don't know!





PS Here is a pic I just took of Alexis to compare to last week's pic.









Today (Aug 13) Last week (Aug 7)

Crazyness! Pure crazyness!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but with going back to school with a third grader and a kindergartener life has been crazy. Not feeling to well this week so today's post will be quick and to the point.


Here is the absolute latest pic of Alexis 99% back to normal. I don't expect her to have any more recovery than she has now as she is pretty much as far as she could possibly get. Her left eye doesn't close as much as her right when she smiles but as I stated in the previous post it never did.

Nicolas is doing well in school. He likes it but is having a problem with talking when he is not suppose to be talking. He has "fallen off the hook" twice and has had several warnings. Of course you really can't blame him too much. Andy told him to become friends with the son of the principal. He did and now this child is corrupting my little angel. (How many parents have said that about their child only to have their child be the one who is starting the trouble?)

Alexis likes third grade. She is learning that she has to be responsible for her work and no one is going to "hold her hand" anymore and walk her through life picking everything up and making sure things are done. She hasn't had any trouble (yet) but there have been some close calls.

So here is my post for this week. Hopefully there will be more this week as I have a lot in my head to say but don't seem to have enough time to type it.

Where's yours, July 15th?

Love you all

Two posts today for the price of.....none?

POST #1:

All my life I have been told "put some salt on that watermelon. it will make it taste sweeter" I never did because I thought "salt to make something sweeter? Does the salt activate your salty taste buds to make your sweet taste buds surprised when it tastes something sweet to be even sweeter." Never did I try it because I thought I was smarter than that. Yesterday I brought home a watermelon from the Pig (Piggly Wiggly....my husband and his brother are co-owners with their stepdad). It was a "VERY RIPE" watermelon that needed to be eaten within the next two days. I cut it up just 30 minutes ago and tasted it. Not as sweet as the one I tasted yesterday at the store but sweet. I saw the bottle of salt on the counter and decided....."hmmmm after 31 years of being 'smarter than that' I'm try it out." I put a little salt on a piece and ate it. Lo and behold...............I was smarter than that. The salt did not make the watermelon taste any sweeter. It made it taste salty sweet. Not better and even a little worse. I decided to give it one more try. Maybe I put on too much salt. Nope just as salty sweet as before. So what did I learn. Trust my instincts! When will I finally learn NEVER to second guess myself? Well except when I NEED to second guess myself.

POST#2:























Here are recent pics (about 20 minutes ago) of Alexis. Notice the corners of her mouth turning up! (Bell's Palsy on the left side would be the right side of the picture) Notice her eyebrows. The last two pics are with her raising her brows. While the 3rd pic overall is her looking normal. First pic....well she was smiling and talking at the same time. Her left eye appears to be larger than the right and it does open slightly more than the right. However, the members of our family all tend to have one eye that opens larger than the other. No big deal. Something we are all use to. I took a picture from 3 years ago (exactly) and took her eyes out (on the computer that is) and compared the openings. Her left eye was larger than the right. Not as much as in the first picture above but still larger. I would say that she is about 90% improved over the first day she came down with it. The right side was about 95% improved over the first day she came down with it on the right side when she woke up that Saturday 100% improved on the right and 100% worse on left. If she were to not improve from today, I would not be saddened. No one who meets her notices anything wrong.
Now notice the left eye as well as the corner of her mouth on this picture. It was taken on June 21 at Disney World. Big difference!

First day of school!

Well today is Nicolas' first day in Kindergarten and Alexis' first day in Third Grade. Nicolas has the same teacher and teacher's assistant that Alexis had in Kindergarten so he know them and is comfortable around them. Alexis has the teacher her best friend Baley had last year so she is excited. The only problem I see is it will be Andy's first time away from Nicolas in about 2 years. He has had Nicolas with him just about every day for at least 2 hours and on his days off. Today is his day off. Let's hope he doesn't get to lonely. But as Nicolas said on the way to school "You know where Boots is right Daddy? He's on my computer desk in my room." Boots is a 4 inch version of Boots the Monkey from Dora the Explorer that Nicolas has had since.....well I don't ever remember Boots not around. He didn't make it to Disney World and Andy joked that Boots and Woody (from Toy Story) called him and said they ran away because Nicolas did not take them on the trip. The look on Nicolas' face when he got home and found Boots (after searching frantically for about 10 minutes) was priceless. Anyway.....Nicolas' teachers are Mrs. Beard and Mrs. Westbury. Alexis' teachers are Mrs. Abernathy and Mrs. Traynham (Mrs. A and Mrs. T). Nicolas goes today and then doesn't go again until Monday and then everyday after that. Alexis goes today and everyday hereafter.

More after school!

See ya!

Our Weekend

When we came home from Disney last Tuesday, we were surprised by Andy's mom and stepdad with the materials to redo the floor in the living room. We installed Pergo flooring in the kitchen about 5 years ago and have been wanting to do the living room ever since. We decided to repaint the walls since we were going to have an empty room. Here are some before and after pics.