This post is going to the dog(s)

OK, here's the skinny: We are closing on our new house in 4 days. That means in just 4 more days we will have the keys to our shiny, new (to us) home in our hands! We are super excited to be moving to such a clean and well-kept house. We'd love to keep it that way as long as possible, but with a toddler and a baby who's about to get mobile we know it won't be too long before the house gets a bit beaten up. Add a dog to the mix and there's sure to be some damage!

This got us thinking about our dog situation. When we first got Annabelle we were DINKS and had nothing but time to devote to our pooch. Weekend trips to the dog park were common. We knew all the other dog parents not by their name, but by their pooch's name!

We got Annabelle at the end of our first year of marriage and just as we began our journey to conceive. During the next two years Annabelle became our surrogate child: our furbaby. You can see more about her first few birthday party's here: http://thefriendshipodyssey.blogspot.com/2011/03/when-is-dog-just-dog.html

When I was pregnant with Dominic, Annabelle, not my husband, gained sympathy weight with me. We were able to get it off shortly after Dominic was born. Face time with Annabelle gradually began to decline. We took a total of two trips to the dog park as a family until Dominic got knocked down by one of the bigger dogs and we decided not to go back until he was bigger. Now that little Jillian is here face time with Annabelle is pretty minimal. Jillian is a high needs child and sadly Annabelle takes a back seat where the kids are concerned.

Once we move to the new house David and I are determined to have Annabelle be an outdoor dog. Not ideal, but we don't want her nails scratching up our new house! We'll have enough to deal with in keeping crayons off the walls and juice out of the upstairs carpet!

This decision lead to another discussion: how will Annabelle take to being an outside dog? Honestly, I think we'll have a revolt on our hands. Annabelle is used to coming and going as she pleases (via her dog door) and sleeping in the master's bed (not my choice). Is it fair to exile her to live in the great outdoors?

As sad as it is to admit, Annabelle deserves better than what we've been able to give her lately. She doesn't get any exercise, except when Dominic chases her around the house with a foam sword, and she's started putting on more weight. She needs more attention than what we can give her.

So.....we have decided to offer her to a loving family that has the time, energy and attention to devote to her that we currently don't have. It's a difficult decision and we are praying that someone will fall in love with her and take her in to their pack.

What is an ideal family for Annabelle?
** preferably have children (she does GREAT with our two little's)
** a family that likes to share (she loves to get treats)
** energetic personalities (she loves to play chase)
** patient attitude (as a beagle, she likes to bark at squirrels, birds, pedestrians, pedestrians walking dogs, bicycles, you get the picture, right??)
** I'm guessing she'd prefer to be an only furbaby (she loves attention)

If you think your family would make a good match for our Annabelle we'd love to hear from you!

The dog ate WHAT???

I'm so glad that I took a photo of the handprint ornament that we made for Dominic because very shortly after the photo was taken, the ornament disappeared. My first reaction was to question Dominic. He's known to leave things in odd places so I wanted to get it out of him while he still remembered where he may have put it. Not one to know to lie his way out of trouble yet, he told me that he in fact did NOT touch the ornament.

After asking hubby about it's whereabouts and getting the same answer that only leaves one more option: the dog! That dirty ol' dog must have thought it was a tasty treat just sitting out in the open like that and decided to make off with it in the midst of the night! Scoundrel!

Now we have to make another one!

I also had an impromptu photo shoot with the babes the other day. I made my mom a card using the photos:

What do you think???

We are having 5 of Dominic's close friends over Friday night for a special viewing of Elf in anticipation of the holidays! I put together a salt dough ornament mix for each family to take home and will be including an x-mas cookie cutter with it, too. We'll have all kinds of Christmas snacks and we're so excited to see everyone. I'll be sure to post pics of all the fun!

On the first day of Christmas...

Before getting to the meat of my post, I just have to share a rare find: Jillian is SMILING!

My poor girl isn't happy unless she's being held (help!) so I rarely get to take a photo of her while she's smiling. Isn't that a cute smile? And please let's not forget the legwarmers. melt...

I had a friend ask me today if I had any ideas for doing a 12 days of Christmas activity with my kids. Funny enough, I have a few ideas that I have bookmarked and have always wanted to try out, but haven't had the opportunity to do so. Until now...

I got the book out a couple of days ago and looked it over again. These follow along with the carol, "The 12 days of Christmas".

Traditionally the 12 days starts on Christmas and ends on the 12th night, January 6th. La Befana's night.

Anyway, I promised her I would get the list posted so here I am. All through the house not a creature is stirring not even the spouse! (I just made that up! Clever, no?)

1st day: Make an ornament for the tree out of salt dough and paint a bird.
2nd day: Read a story about turtles or make a game of slow/fast (like red light/green light).
3rd day: Learn a few French words and use them throughout the day or cook something French.
4th day: Practice phone etiquette. (Never hurts to start early, right?)
5th day: Go out for donuts. (Get it, golden rings???)
6th day: Dye eggs. (It's not just an Easter activity.)
7th day: Make origami swans.
8th day: Make chocolate milk. (Or hot chocolate)
9th day: Do some new dance moves.
10th day: Pretend to have a knighting ceremony.
11th day: Use a bubble pipe to make TONS of bubbles!
12th day: Make a drum out of an empty Kleenex box and a balloon.

There you have it! Looking back at my list I think I WILL do this. Only thing is, we are packing up to move the first week of January. I might as well give it a go, right?

A lazy day for reflection

Today is a chilly 33* here. Little man is down with a low-grade fever and little lady is napping all bundled up in a cozy warm blanket. It's a lazy day all around. A perfect opportunity to reflect on the upcoming holiday season.

I realized that I've been pretty introverted the last couple of weeks. Not really sure why, but I think it has to do with the fact that we had 30+ guests here for Thanksgiving and I was in full on hostess mode.

I really need to get back in the friendship saddle. Christmas is the perfect excuse to get back in the swing of things. Here's some things I have planned to help me re-focus:

**Attend any and all holiday parties that we are invited to.

**Make and deliver gifts for all of our friends and/or neighbors. Any ideas???

**Offer to help friends with wrapping gifts. Perhaps have a mom's night out where we have a wrapping party?

**Like last year I plan to have some of Dominic's closest friends over for a pre-Christmas party. Last year we exchanged favorite Christmas stories. This year I'm thinking we'll get the outdoors heater out, strike up the chimenea and roast marshmallows while we huddle together under blankets watching Elf on the garage door. (We have a projector that has yet to be used.)

That's all I've thought of so far. Any traditions that you guys do with friends that you'd like to share? Leave me a comment!

On another note, we made salt dough ornaments yesterday and painted them this morning. It was a super fun activity! We made ornaments for each of the kids, one for each of his cousins and one for his bestie, Andrew.

Here's the recipe for the salt dough:
1/2 cup salt
1 cup flour
1/2 cup water
Mix all ingredients together until it forms a dough. Roll out on floured surface with a floured rolling pin. Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes. Bake in oven for 2 hours at 250*F.

Camp Catch-up

Lagging behind again, I'm afraid. Here's the recap for the last day of our Fall Camp:

We read a short book titled, "The Halloween Play". It was a great easy read that allowed all the kid's to participate! I am quite impressed with how well the kids did all week with listening to the stories. There were the occasional picture hogs who wanted to stand right in front of the page to see the photos and block the book from the others in the audience, but they were so darned cute and interested we couldn't get mad.

I decided in lieu of a craft we would have a coloring page that I assembled prior to the afternoon camp. I had photos of the kids throughout the week and I simply printed out a blank scarecrow page, cut out the face and placed the kid's photo behind the hole. Easy! Each kid got to color themselves as a scarecrow!

I also came up with a really cool rhyme in order that we may do a little skit. This took quite a bit of time to come up with and I was excited about sharing with the group. However, we had two moms sign up to attend the camp at the last minute and for only ONE DAY??? Because I didn't have their kids information to write in the skit, I decided to scrap the whole idea. Sad. :(

We let the kids run around outside in the awesome weather instead and we moms got a little break from the noise.

All in all, another GREAT camp experience!! I plan on hosting another one in February in our new house. (More on THAT later, so stay tuned!!)

Fall Camp: Days 2-4

I had great intentions of getting Day 2 up in a timely manner and then I remembered that I had BUNCO with the church mom's group!

Then we had a rough day yesterday and Dominic ended up napping through camp so we missed yesterdays activities. So this post will have days 2-4.

Day 2:
We read "Fall Mixed Up" and "Five Little Pumpkins". For our craft we painted pumpkins using the kid's fists and thumbs. So cute! We rotated the papers around the table so that each child has all the pumpkins on it! One of the kid's didn't want to get messy (say WHAT??) so there were only 4 little pumpkins on our paper.

Day 3:
Read "Thanksgiving Cats" and "The Great Turkey Race". Cute book!! In lieu of a craft the kids were to participate in our own relay race and contest.

Day 4 (today):
We read "The Night Before Thanksgiving" and "Green Soup". The first book was really cute!! For our craft we traced the kid's hands and foot to make a turkey placemat. I LOVE this!! We added googly eyes to the turkey and if I say so, it just made the turkey's look all the more adorable.

Tomorrow we will have the last day of camp. Bittersweet, as usual. We will take an official group camp photo to take home. We have two stories picked out to read and the craft is still up in the air, although it was originally supposed to be a scarecrow, which we may still do.

As usual, camp has been a lot of fun. The kids did really well with storytime and crafts. I think 2.5-3 years is the PERFECT age for our camp. We're really trying to help them learn to listen and sit attentively.

I'm already thinking about the next camp session to take place possibly in January. Themes are plentiful, but will most likely be international, sports or transportation. Which do you prefer???

Fall Camp: Day One

I was approached by my meetup playgroup about helping to put together a camp session for them. I met with AM and she and I came up with a week that would work for us both and went from there. We had our first day this afternoon and it was a lot of fun!
The theme is FALL.

First, we read "Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert and then we made our own leaf man, complete with google eyes. Each day we'll make an animal out of them and hide them somewhere in the house.

Next, we read "Hallo-weiner". It's such a cute story. For our second craft we made a leaf sun catcher out of clear contact paper and tissue paper.

Dominic fell asleep as soon as we got home. Only the second time that he's fallen asleep spontaneously while watching TV. Silly boy...