Lila and Molly

our Molly girl with her new pup

Surprise!

Tomorrow we are going to bring home a new puppy. An adorable, fuzzy, butter yellow lab puppy girl. We plan on naming her Lila.

We have known about this puppy all month long, and it has been KILLING me but Mister wants it to be a surprise so I haven't told the kiddos. I have wanted to SO BADLY. I want them to have this excitement, this anticipation... I want them to pick up their toys so the puppy doesn't "mouth" them :). But mostly, I am happy to go back to being a two dog family.

We started out our dog life with Greta, a German Shepherd who was just naughty enough to be charming, beautiful, sweet, a great dog. For her 1st birthday, she got Sophie-- a black lab/shepherd mix with the most loving brown eyes and pleasant disposition. We always joked that Sophie was Greta's dog.

Our hearts were broken when it was discovered that Greta had a type of blood cancer near Christmas 2006. For a while, Sophie was our only dog. But it didn't seem quite right, and when we had the opportunity to bring Molly into our family, we were happy to do so. As our oldest said, "We wanted a chocolate but we got a vanilla." A joyful 2-dog family once again!

Then this past New Year's Eve, we stayed with Sophie as she rapidly declined and unexpectedly died. No pain, no blood-- just... died. This entire month the kiddos have been very sad on Molly's behalf because now she spends her days alone while we are at school. And we have all been quite down as we sadly miss the great dog that Sophie was. We are not quite ready for Sophie to be gone, and yet when our friend offered our family one of her dog's puppies, we couldn't resist. And thus, starting tomorrow, we are again a family of six!

Will Molly get along with Lila? Maybe not right away, but soon enough. Will the kiddos be thrilled with the new puppy? Probably, although there will be bittersweet on ALL of our parts as we think about what we had to let go. Still, tomorrow we are going to bring home a new puppy. There will be photos.

Apples from Apple Trees (or Oak Trees Start as Nuts!)

I get a huge laugh out of watching my hubbadoo with my sons. They try to outsmart him with the remote, take him down in wrestling, race to get to the car first, and they NEVER DO. Sometimes, as their mom, I want to step in and somehow protect them, help them "win", get the upper hand-- but I don't. And I won't. Part of what shapes us is the fact that different people treat us differently, and Mister NEVER gives them more than they can handle; he also doesn't cheat them by letting them "win".

One of my current favorite boy-man exchanges was the booty kick fest known as December 2009. Mister would up-kick the Rascal in the behind. To those of you who can't imagine, the up-kick is when you bend your leg at the knee and swing around until you lightly (or perhaps not so lightly) sideswipe someone else in the caboose. It's definitely not intended to harm and is quite silly. Every time he booted the Rascal in the fanny, Mister would say, "Merry Christmas!" Finally, Rascal responded, "Worst. Present. EVER!"

It all starts with a speeling mistaek...

Scoring the UIL 5th Grade spelling tests, I noticed that one of the contestants spelled "merriment" as "mariement". My name being Marie, I couldn't help but laugh at the similarity and then I realized-- what a perfect word for me. I try to live each day as not only "glass half full" but "glass overflowing with something really scrumptious" and MERRIMENT is a perfect word to describe my attempted daily attitude. Granted, there are days when the heaviness of "boo hoo" feels impossibly crushing, but generally I try (and succeed) to find the bright side.

Do I have enough to say to start a blog? Probably not. But I intend to share a little bit of my merriment mariement with you. Enjoy :).