Our dog Daisy

Daisy is now 8 years old and she is starting to show it a bit. She is a very active, some say hyper, dog and loves running and playing. We knew something was wrong with her on Friday night when she just didn't even greet us at the door when we came home. She was sluggish and shaking most of the evening, we thought maybe she had a seizure while we were out. (She has epilepsy). She always sleeps in Liam's room, but that night she couldn't even make it up the 6 stairs to his room. Ryan carried her up to his room because she wanted to be there so much. We decided to take her to the vet in the morning if she didn't look better.

When morning came, she was worse. She could hardly walk and we feared that she may have ruptured a disc in her back. Ryan called the vet as soon as they opened and took her in. They looked at her and did some x-rays. The bad news was that she hurt her back, the good news was that it was only a pinched nerve not a ruptured disc. They gave us some anti-inflammatory medicine and put her on bed rest for a week.

The first day went okay, although she wanted to get every time she heard someone, she physically couldn't do it. Day two has been a little more difficult to keep her down. We have to put her on a leash when she goes out to pee and we are letting her go on the deck (otherwise she has to do stairs). Don't worry Ryan will clean it up in the spring!! We have her bed, water and food all in a little area of our living room with a box blocking her in the corner. If we aren't by her we can definitely hear her when she makes it to the kitchen. Her back legs kind of just drag on the tile when she comes in the room.

Hopefully the week will go by quickly and she will recover well. I know that she is really bored and hates not being able to run and play, but it is for her own good. I thought keeping Liam down after his surgery when he was one was difficult, I think this is going to be more difficult every day that passes.

What a difference a day makes!

Remember how I hate winter? Well, now we are at war!

On Wednesday morning Ryan had to go back to work, he was not excited about that. His mom is in town, so we loaned her his car since he takes the bus. At 6:15 he woke me and the kids up to drive him to the bus stop, not a big deal. When we got outside we found out it had snowed 6 inches and it made everything a big deal. I drove him slowly and safely to the bus stop, a lot of the streets were already plowed. Then I dropped him off and turned around in a parking lot and started up the hill to the main road. The road we were on was not plowed and my little minivan got experience snow first hand. My wheels just spun and there was a truck behind me wanting to go forward with his life. He had given me some room, so I backed up and tried it again and again. Then his patience ended and he went around me. I kept trying while Ryan watched me from his bus window. Next a truck with a plow thing on the front was behind me, but he had no patience or compassion (I thought maybe he could drop his little plow thing for me). I guess Liam counted the tries up the hill and got to 11 (he counted them silently, otherwise he wouldn't be alive right now;) So, we made it up the hill and drove home safely.

Next problem was the 6 inches of snow on our driveway. The three of got dressed and went to shovel the driveway. Our brand new snow blower is currently broken, so we had a lot of shoveling. We shoveled off and on for 3 hours, the good thing is that it was warm out at least. Then they finally plowed our street and made a mess at the end of our driveway. At that point I gave up! My sister was coming over, but she has a truck so she can drive over it! Ryan was a great guy and went out to shovel it after his mom left last night at 8:30pm. I may have to go touch it up today in the heat of the day, but he got the majority done.

Well, today is going to be a new day. We woke up at 6:15 and took Ryan to the bus without any problems. We have no snow to move today either. I am going to take the boys to the zoo that I had promised for yesterday and we are going to have a fun relaxing day.

For the record I am so sore today, my head won't even stay up on my neck. That must mean that I worked out! Yay me!

Wordless Wednesday- Christmas is over :(

Adoption Update

We finally completed our dossier (application to Philippines) and our agency has sent it off to ICAB (the government agency in the Philippines that decides who gets to adopt). Now we are going to start the waiting game. At this point we first wait for approval. This is when the Philippines accepts our application and puts us in the pile of people that want to adopt. After our approval we wait for our referral, this is when we find out which kids will actually be part of our forever family. The time between the approval and the referral can be as short as 3 months or as long as 3 years or anywhere in between. We will travel to the Philippines 1-3 months after our referral. We stay in the Philippines for one week and bring the children home with us.

So now we wait. We have a lot to do to get prepared for our new children. We have things to physically rearrange in our house and have to prepare mentally also. Thank you everyone for your support.

Wordless Wednesday- What's left of it

Decorating a different kind of Tree

Aunt Trudy and Uncle Todd sent us a cool gift this year. (Thank you for the cool gift!) They sent us a pre-baked gingerbread tree. All we had to do was decorate and eat it. We had our nieces over because they just had a new baby brother and he was in the hospital still and they helped us decorate.We started out stacking the tree using frosting glue in between the layers. Lance of course just wanted to eat without decorating.Then they each got a chance to put some frosting on the tree. We had green and white for the snow. Then they put candies on it (and some in their mouths).

The finished product. It looks just a little different than the picture on the box:)

Everyone posing and getting ready to dig in. The pieces at the top were pretty small, but you got a lot of candy with those pieces. In the end it evened out.

Chowing down on the tree. They each got to eat one cookie from the tree. Yum, yum, worth the effort!!! I bought us a Gingerbread house to make before I knew about the tree, I guess we'll do that next week!

Finally decorated the tree

Today we finally got around to decorating the Christmas tree. My dad took me to buy the tree on Thurs. (it was supposed to be the only warm day of the week, but the 34 degrees were chilled by the wind and it was really cold!) Ryan and the boys set the tree up on Thurs. night and we finally got around to decorating today. We had to push it in a corner this year because I didn't want to rearrange my entire living room for one week just to see all sides of a tree.

Liam loves looking at each ornament while he puts them on the tree. We have a tradition of buying 3 ornaments each year. The boys get to choose one they each want and then we buy a Star Wars family one. The Star Wars ornaments now out number the others and that is a sore spot with me now. We no longer have a Christmas tree, we have a Star Wars tree. I even left about 10 Star Wars ornaments off this year (due to space restraints of course).

Lance playing violin

Grandpa just sent us this and it is great. Lance gave the concert for them last August when they were here visiting. Lance started playing violin Aug. 2006 and has really taken to it.

Wordless Wednesday

I am going to copy my friend Amy's blog and start a wordless Wednesday post. Every week she puts up a picture from the week without caption to show a little about what happened in their world that week. There is just a short title to help you understand the picture. I love the idea because I always mean to blog, but often run out of time. I will introduce my first picture...(I have a hard time not talking, we'll see if I can do wordless Wednesday) Liam wanted to be a photographer this past week and tried out our camera.

I hate winter!!

Last Saturday (Dec.1st) it snowed, a lot. I didn't blog about it because I wanted to take a picture of the boys playing in the snow for the blog. Then it snowed again on Tuesday, a lot. I still have no pictures of the boys playing in it. A week and a half has gone by with a lot of snow on the ground and we still have no pictures because....it is sooooo cold here! I don't know what I hate more the snow or the cold. The high yesterday was 11 above, I don't know what the windchill was, but it was lower than 11 degrees. Lance has been dying to play in the snow, so he went out with his friend for a whole half hour before they were frozen popsicles. I know for you true Minnesotans this is nothing, but I hate it. I would move to CA if Ryan would let me:) The only picture I have is of Ryan snow blowing (by himself). I know it 's not that bad, I could just do without it.

Christmas Party

Today we had a great time, we went to a Filipino Christmas party. We were welcomed by two families when we got there. One family I met on line from my Yahoo Group of people adopting from the Philippines and the other family we know from the boys' school. There was constant action the entire time and we had fun. They started the program with a children's choir singing songs in English. Liam was invited up and ran up there without a second thought, wish we had pictures to share, but we didn't bring our camera.
After that they had an adult choir caroling songs in Tagalog. Next, there was a little play about how Christmas is celebrated in the Philippines, the boys' friends from school were both in the little play. In between all of the action they gave away raffle drawing prizes and door prizes. Ryan bought a raffle ticket and signed us both up for the door prizes. At one point they called Ryan's name for the raffle and Liam picked the winning envelope. They had different money amounts in the envelopes, mostly $5 bills. Liam picked a lucky one with a check for $50, that is money towards the adoption! It is so meant to be. Later when they served this huge lunch we were in line and my name was called I won a door prize of "desert plates". We were feeling lucky, that was for sure. We had a great time meeting so many new people and we are looking forward to attending again next year.

Adoption Update

I just got a call from our adoption agency and they have received all of our paperwork for our dossier and it looks complete. All we are missing is our psych eval report. We have our appointment with our psychologist this Sat. then he will take a week to write the report. We should be ready to mail in our dossier to the Philippines right before Christmas. Then it will sit at ICAB (Philippines Inter Country Adoption Board) for a few weeks. Hopefully we will have an approval from ICAB around Feb.1st. After our approval, we sit in a pile waiting to be matched with our children.

What this all means to me is that I am no longer responsible for filling our paperwork, gathering documents or requesting letters from others. In other words, I'm free for a bit.