A Little Bit of Everything

The past two years have flown by!  Olivia turned 4, then she turned 5, and in one month she will be 6! She graduated preschool last May and now she is halfway through kindergarten!  She is doing so well in school.  She is in the top of her class and listening to her read is pretty amazing.  She loves gymnastics, and last fall she was involved in cheerleading for pee wee football.  She is in Daisies this year and enjoys it very much.  If anyone is interested, she is selling Girl Scout cookies....:)

Stella is 2.5 years old already.  She is the clown of our family...she loves to entertain us and make us laugh. She  is very much into Dora and Diego.  She likes princesses and Barbies too, but her first love is Dora.  It's so fun to watch them both development and grow into their own unique personality. 

Last spring we moved.  It was almost on a whim.  We weren't necessarily looking to move so quickly, but it all worked out.  How it all started was from my friend.  She told me hesr and her husband were looking to move.  That very night I got online and looked at houses for us.  I found one and showed it to Matt.  He liked the looks of it and told me he was interested in looking at it.  It turned out the realtor was a guy I went to high school with.  I contacted him via Facebook and two days later we looked at the house.  I fell in love with it right away.  Matt also really liked it, but we didn't have our house for sale yet.  We took a leap of faith and put an offer in on the house.  We low balled and we expected the owners to turn it down, which they did.  We put in another offer and again they declined.  With our house still not for sale, Matt decided we really needed to take a step back and figure out what we were going to do.  So we got with our realtor and put our house on the market.  We listed it on April 6th, which was Easter weekend.  On Monday, the 9th, we had our first showing.  On Tuesday the 10th we had 6 more showings and we got two offers!  By Wednesday we had two couples in a bidding war on our house and we were offered full asking price plus the buyers would pay for closing costs!!  It was a whirlwind week...on Thursday we put a more aggressive offer in on the house we wanted and on Friday, the 13th our offer was accepted!  We closed on our old house on the morning of May 30th and closed on our new house that same evening....We love our new neighborhood.  We moved only 2 miles from where we were, but it was worth it.  We have a neighborhood pool that we went to almost every day last summer.  We can walk to it from our house.  Matt works with several people who live in our neighborhood, so it's been nice already knowing several of our neighbors.

The worst part of last year was having to make the extremely difficult decision to put Huckleberry to sleep.  In October 2011 he partially blew out a disc in his back which caused him to drag his back feet.  We took him to the vet and with the help of steroids and medications he got better rather quickly.  He went back to his normal self and we thought he had several more years to live.  Sadly 6 months later, last April, it happened again.  Only it was a lot worse. He completely blew a disc in his back which paralyzed his back legs. We took him to the vet and did laser therapy treatments several times a week.  He was also on steroids again and 1 other medication.  Nothing helped. We tried for 6 weeks to make him better, but it got worse.  He couldn't stand to go to the bathroom, so we had to lay him on towels and he would urinate all over himself.  He got bed sores and open wounds from laying all the time and from the steroids. We had to keep him in our garage because we were in the process of selling our house.  It was the worst thing EVER.  I would literally sit in the garage with him for long periods of time petting him and giving him the attention he deserved.  I'll never forget the day the vet told us there was nothing else that could be done.  Selfishly I wanted to keep him alive and let him live like that for as long as he could. I was holding onto hope that he would get better, that he would stand up and walk.  I would tell him all the time "All you have to do is walk", but he couldn't.  On May 7th Matt called the vet and made the arrangements to take him in the next evening.  It was one of the worst days of my life. I felt so helpless and wanted him to heal so badly. I cried for days and I still miss him more than anything in this world. I would do anything to have him back.

Two days after we put Huck to sleep, a lady I work with told me of a dog her friend took in.  I wasn't ready for another dog so soon, but I felt like we had to at least keep an open mind.  Mainly because she's a golden retriever....one of two breeds Matt and I have always wanted.  Gracie's original owners accidentally hit her with their car.  The vet told them she needed to be on bed rest for 6 weeks, but the owners said they didn't have time for that and wanted to put her to sleep. She was only a year old when this happened (approx one year ago). The vet asked their permission to keep the dog and find a foster home for her.  They gladly signed away her paperwork and the vet got in touch with Lynn, the lady we got her from.  Lynn rescues dogs and looks for homes for them.  A lot of times she nurses them back to health and keeps them....but she already had 4 other dogs and Gracie needed more attention than what she could give her.  So, 4 days after we put Huckleberry to sleep we met Gracie.  She was a little rambunctious when we first met her, but we fell in love with her pretty easily.  Since we were moving a few weeks later we decided it was best to wait until we moved into the new house before we brought her home.  On June 6th (a day before my birthday) we brought Gracie Lou home with us.  She's been a great addition to our family.  She is so good with the girls and is a big baby.  She turned 2 on November 6th and is still a puppy at heart.  She likes to chew.  I'm happy we are able to give her a stable, happy home that she deserves.  She fits into our family very nicely.

OK....that's it for tonight!  Hopefully blogger actually posts this post....I don't want to have to write it out AGAIN!!!