HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, it has been an eventful 2008 for us so far! We made a trip over to Fresno to celebrate the new year with our friends the Hoffmans. The kids had fun staying up until almost 2am.. watching Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve. My kids wanted to know why that "old guy who talks funny" is on the show. Poor Dick Clark... I wonder when they will decide it is time to let him retire?





Our other news begins a bit sooner... The girls have been BEGGING for a puppy for years now. Tim was just not going to go down that road. Well, the old softy finally relented. For Christmas, he gave them a dog bed and some dog food dishes... the instructions were to look for a puppy that would NEVER be too big for this little bed. SO we began to look. There were lots of puppies in the paper, but I have a hard time trying to figure out why a mutt that would have been given away outside a grocery store 20 years ago is now worth $500!!!!! Designer dogs my eye... your Pug and a poodle had a tryst and now you are selling Puggle puppies! Sheesh... so we also checked local shelters. LOTS of dogs, but no puppies. We wanted to get a puppy so the kids could go through the whole growing up period with the puppy.
Well, I checked pet finder.com and put in our address... not too many puppies with in 100 miles. BUT if I put in the Hoffman's zip code in Fresno, HUNDREDS of Puppies were listed. So we thought, while in Fresno for the week, we would look there.
Dawn and I decided to drive to the SPCA on New Years Day. They weren't answering the phone, but we thought that maybe they would be open. THEY WERE! But now I am there with no kids... what to do? I started taking pictures of puppies with my phone and sending them to Hannah! We saw TONS of Chiuaua mix puppies and lots of HOUND mix puppies. I wasn't fond of the look of most of the Chiuaua puppies.. buggy eyes. And I was afraid the hound mix puppies might get to big. I was getting a little discouraged, but the SPCA gal said, "try next door at the stray dog facility.. they may have some"
So we did. There were some cute big puppies, and then I come around the corner and Dawn is holding a cute little puppy.. she was TINY! There was a stray dog with a litter of pups. They had been held for the 7 days in order for an owner to claim them, but the 7 days had been up on the 29th and because of the holiday they hadn't been moved to the adoptable pens yet. There was just the one little female all the others were males. We had decided that we probably would take a female and avoid having a "leg lifer" in the house. So Dawn held on to the little girl puppy (there was a couple waiting for her to put the puppy down because they also only wanted a girl) while I took a picture and sent it to Hannah. Then I made a quick check on all the other pens to see what else there was... but this sweet little dog just out shined all the others. She is about 8weeks old they think. The mother they say is a Terrier Mix (I found out that they mostly guess either, chiuaua, terrier or Hound if they are not sure!) but she looked to me like she had some spaniel in her. She had the face and ears of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, but obviously was only half or less.. One of the puppies had a wiry bushy face like a Jack Russel Terrier. So, we paid for the puppy to be adopted, spayed, and micro chipped. And left her there. They said that she would be spayed either Wednesday or Thursday and could come home the same day. We were planning on coming home on Thursday evening, so we thought that would be great. Well, Wednesday, she wasn't done... but they said she would be spayed first thing Thursday Morning. Thursday afternoon, I called, and they said that there had been no surgeries that morning because of an emergency. SO, she would be spayed in the afternoon and we could pick her up Friday morning... Well, the Hoffman's were gracious enough to let us stay one more night (the kids were elated to stay longer with their friends!) and we picked up Kiwi (the girls finally decided on a name) on Friday at 11:30 am. She is too cute and so far... knock on wood, she has not had one accident in the house. We decided to "kennel train" her so last night she slept in the little dog crate. She only whined for a minute and then settled down to sleep. She woke up at 1:30 am and I let her outside, where she tinkled and went back to the crate to sleep some more. She woke up at 8am and has been enjoying being part of our family! She is really cute, but I am beginning to wonder not if she will get to big for the bed, but if she will ever grow into it! Right now she only weighs 3.6 pounds!