Christmas puppy

Christmas was good. We traveled to northern Virginia to stay with my younger sister, Laura, and spend Christmas at her house. My parents were also there and we had a grand time together cooking, laughing, playing Cranium and winning against the boys, eating too many christmas butter cookies, exchanging gifts, and watching movies. Christmas wasn't too bad for us. I was expecting it to be much worse than it turned out to be. Honestly, Thanksgiving was harder and I'm not sure why. I told one of my co-workers today that I didn't think it was hard because we didn't have any Christmas memories with her. The time leading up to Christmas was hard, but not the actual day.

I have 3 favorite memories from this Christmas. Here they are:


1. A beautiful painting that my mom did for us of Molly's name. Her name is white with a gold street below her feet. There is a blue sky behind it with gold stars that represent her righteousness. The tree of life stands between her first and middle name and beneath it sits The Lamb. There are three little girls representing what she is doing in Heaven and what she might look like. One is of her in a long flowing pink dress, bringing her crown to the King. The second little girl is doing a cartwheel in a yellow dress. And the third is of her kneeling and raising her hands in praise to our Savior. It's beautifully done with several verses included about Heaven and how wonderful it will be there.

2. Mom, La, and I smoked the guys in a fabulous game of Cranium. As we started out it looked like we were going to lose and the guys even taunted us by telling us we were going the wrong way on the board. Well, it turned out that we were the better of the two teams. Laura and Mom did very well at all the artist things like drawing with their eyes shut. It was very fun! The men were very bored near the end.

3. The gift I gave Jake for Christmas this year. A new puppy!! That's right. We're getting a dog. I never thought I would say this, but I am. I found a breeder who Jake's aunt and uncle got their puppy from and she had one little guy left. It's a chocolate brown miniature poodle. He'll be a little over 8 weeks when we get him and Click here for pictures. The reason for the poodle is that I am allergic to dogs and we've never had a dog in our house before. We decided we should start small and since our house isn't big enough to handle a laborador, we decided to go with something smaller.

Over Thanksgiving we got to meet Jake's Aunt's dog, Hershey. He's the same dog and from the same mom as our little guy. So, we were able to see him in action and fell in love.

We are greatly looking forward to this new adventure and new life to bring into our hearts and our home. While we are still grieving our precious daughter, we are excited about this new puppy. Both of us are anxious to love on him and take care of him, especially me.

We haven't picked a name for him yet, but are thinking through the options. Jake likes Danger, Rock, Tank, or Zootoo. We'll let you know when we decide and when he arrives!!