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Candy trains, Christmas Eve and sleeping it off

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Jen the Mom

We have been very distracted this Christmas season by the new dog in the house and the basement construction. Hopefully by Christmas we’ll have a basement to let the kids play in. There have been construction men in and out of our house, construction noise all day long and daily dog walks.

I know that it’s Christmas Eve and we’re just barely getting to making our candy trains but the kids were just thrilled to see the bags of candy come out!

After all the candy consumption was over the kids were feeling a little nauseous and a little sleepy.

Once the collective nap time was over we were rested enough to open our Christmas eve gifts. The kids were SHOCKED to find pajamas in each of their wrapped presents. Who would haev thought that they would get pajamas on Christmas eve. Weird.

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All cleaned up

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Jen the Mom

I promise that at some point I’ll stop posting so many picture of our new dog but that time is not now. Right now we’re still in the ‘new toy’ phase. We want to take her everywhere we go, talk about her to everyone we meet and try to get her into our bed. Chuck has reminded us how bad an idea it is to have a 100 pound animal get use to sleeping on the beds so we’ve restrained ourselves a little bit.

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Is Daisy good with babies?

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Jen the Mom

One of the things that we read about Newfs is that they’re great with abbies. Gentle giants is what they’re called and I wondered about that this week. Only a day after Daisy came to live with us one of my past doula clients brought her baby over so we could do some Christmas baking. I was sure that Daisy would be better than I expected but I was watching her constantly just to be sure.

These pictures are what she did the entire time. She didn’t want to leave the baby but instead laid right next to her and would occasionally lean over and lick her foot.

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She is here to stay!!!

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Jen the Mom

I hope that you are ready for a TON of picture of Daisy because she has come home to stay. After going to walk her twice a day her family saw how much we loved her and they brought her to stay with us the week before Christmas. It was the greatest Christmas gift any of us could have hoped for. She needed to be groomed and bathed so we got that taken care of right away. She has taken to being inside very quickly. It’s as though she had always wanted to be an indoor dog. She sleeps at the front door which is so sweet. We were told that she doesn’t like stairs so we have been working on that. She refuses to even try to go up the stairs. I’m sure that once she feels like she belongs here that she’ll relax and start exploring.

This is her favorite place to be right now. While we were visiting her for that week her family let her sleep in the entryway at night and now that’s just about the only place she’ll go in the house.

I feel like Daisy has always been a part of our family and we’ve just been waiting for her to come home. She has fit right into our house and our family and is the most gentle and easy-going dog. I bet that it won’t be long before David and Laurelyn are wrestling all over Daisy and I can see her just taking it.

Posted in My General Yakitty Yak | Leave a comment

We may be getting a dog!

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Jen the Mom

Chuck has wanted a Newfoundland dog since he was a teenager. I assumed that his desire for a large drooly dog was one of those things you eventually just realize isn’t going to happen, like winning the lottery or flying in a spaceship. Desires not based on reality. Also, we knew that a dog was definitely off our to-do list while we had babies in the house I didn’t have to tell him how little I wanted a newf. They look cute but did I mention that they drool and they’re HUGE?

Before Christmas Chuck came to me with some pictures of some newf puppies. This was the most insistent he had ever been and he looked so happy looking at pictures of puppies. We spent some time looking at the pictures and then went looking for breeders us. We filled out a few applications and then realized that a newf from a breeder is about $2000. That’s a heck of a lot of money so we decided that a puppy would have to wait until we could save up for it which would take atleast a year.

A couple weeks before Christmas a family posted on the homeschool website that they had a 5 year old female newf that they needed to find a home for. They moved from an acreage to a small lot and their newf had always been an outdoor dog and they didn’t want her inside so they wanted to find her somewhere with more space to run around. Chuck and I emailed her back seconds after she posted about her dog. Chuck and I both immediately felt like this was a miracle, silly as that might sound. A Christmas miracle, a grown newf, already house trained and out of the puppy stage! We counted that as a miracle.

We contacted the family and went to their house to meet Daisy. She is a black newf with a white cross on her chest. She’s so gentle and sweet! I fell in love with her instantly. We have been going over to see her daily to take her for walks so that she will be comfortable with us if she comes home with us. We are hoping and praying as a family that the family will see that we would love her and take great care of her.

These pictures are of our very first walk with her.