Well, we’ve had a busy week around here this week. Kevin has been working l-o-n-g days, often times leaving at 6:30 or 7 in the emorning and getting home after 7 or 8 at night. We’ve been up a lot at night here and there as we’ve been letting Brutus sleep on the floor in our room, not in his crate. He does awesome, but if one of us hears him up walking around we’ll take him out. So that’s occasionally been around 2 am. For the last couple of weeks Griffin has been waking up at 4 am and coming into our room to “snuggle”. He’s wide awake but after he lays with me for a minute I take him to his room, rock him, and he goes right back to sleep in his bed in a couple of minutes. We aren’t really sure why he’s waking – he’s not scared of anything and he can go right back to sleep. But I feel like I’ve been up multiple nights in a row at 12 am (to potty of course), 2, 4, 6, and finally getting up around 7 am. Sheesh!
I took Lily back in for x-rays on Thursday. I feel so bad for her, ever since last weeks appointment she’s been limping even more than normal, likely because they irritated something during the exam. She was pretty uncomfortable without the anestheic (as they lay her on her back for the x-rays and extend the legs – who would like that?). So they ended up having to use the anesthetic to get the images. She was pretty groggy when I picked her up but definitely happy to see me. She has pretty significant arthritis in both hips, the left is much worse. And her right knee seems to be developing arthritis too and also has irritation and signs of effusion. The vet believes she may have a partial ACL tear in her knee so I’m going to take her to OSU to an ortho to get it looked at. Can’t have our young girl hobbling along! I only wish I’d done this sooner. I had written off any injury to just over exertion – wish I would have taken her in a long time ago. She is now on anti-inflammatory pills twice a day which she takes with no trouble. They told us that would definitely help and she seems better. Hard to tell if that is because she’s gotten over the irritation caused by the exam or from the pills. We are also looking into changing her food in the near future too. We wanted to get Brutus and Lily on the same brand at least and after some research that Kevin did on dog foods we’ve decided to go with Merrick for now. Brutus was in need of more food so we have just switched him to Merrick Puppy formula too. Lily’s we plan to change over when we reach the end of her current supply. Here are Lily’s x-rays, more for our reference than for anything else!
On Friday we had a surprise birthday party for one of our friends on our agenda. After asking various sitters I was able to find one, thankfully, only to find out the morning of that she became ill and wasn’t able to do it! Ugh! We have three that we use and she was the only one with any availability – so I called in a huge favor from Amy and Andy! Thankfully they watched Finn for us. He had a great time playing with his cousins and on the tablet after they went to bed. We took ice cream over as a thank you and I received a few messages throughout the night with showing they were enjoying their sundae’s! Graham was off at the Pine Wood Derby for Cub scouts!
Lately I have been feeling like getting some house projects done as when I look at the calendar after the next couple of weeks we will be gone for two weekends and when we return we’re busy with Finn’s party and then it is already the middle of March! Part of me is quite nervous to start Chestnut’s nursery but I’m doing my best to think good thoughts and move forward. We will soon be moving all kinds of beds around starting with getting Griffin a full-size bed for his room. His crib frame converts into a full size bed – so that is step one. Then the current queen bed in his room will go to our now one and only smaller guest room. And the full that is in that bed we will be giving away along with the king bed that is in Chestnut’s room currently. Lots of musical beds it seems! So this weekend we decided to do our painting project in Chestnut’s room. We already have all the supplies as we decided to go with plain white (bye bye almond), which we have leftover from our basement project. I cleaned the walls, patched the holes, and we were off! I must say it was a late night by the time I got two coats of trim work done throughout the room. Brutus was with me for part of it – literally napping on my leg! Kevin rolled the room on Sunday and Finn helped each of us with some brush work and rolling. He is so excited to be able to help and keeps talking about how he can tell Chestnut that he helped paint his room! Oh, and Kevin insisted I wear a respirator – which is a great idea – though I did got in my way at times I couldn’t smell a thing! First project, complete! I have found some cool ideas on Pinterest for converting the closet into a closet/changing table so Kevin plans to do that sometime before May!
Finn went on an excursion to Franklin Park Conservatory this week and had a blast running around and seeing all of the greenery and flowers! He’s also been working a lot on his letters and sounds – often sounding out a word when you talk to him. He is able to tell you what letter the word starts with. He’s always said Lily like “Yily” but now he is saying “la, la, la, Lily” and “la la la Liquid” for L words :). 
I picked Finn up from school on Thursday and he was so excited to show me the necklace he made! He is a real gift giver – always telling someone that he made something for them, it’s usually whatever craft is nearby that he made. In this case, it was for Daddy :).
Later on Thursday evening Finn and I took Graham to his hockey lessons at the Chiller in Dublin. Finn thought it was pretty fun to be at the rink and watch Graham out on the ice. Of course, enjoying pop corn and a pretzel wasn’t bad either ;).
Finn has had another fun-filled week with art projects at home and school, learning about the states, making cookies, and such. And a first for him this week was bowling! We had to get the carpets cleaned on Friday so I suggested to Debbie that they go on an adventure for the afternoon so the pups would rest and she wouldn’t have to put them in/out and deal with wet carpet. So it was a late lunch at Culver’s followed by Bowling at Star Lanes. As you can see he has a lot of fun. He regularly asks if it will be a “Debbie day” or if Debbie is coming the next day. We are all blessed!
Saturday morning we headed to Costco. Is it bad that Griffin sees the Costco logo on a magazine at our house and knows that it’s a Costco book? Seems we go there frequently. But in this case we were on a mission for church to buy supplies for the after church meeting and luncheon that was taking place on Sunday. Kevin and I have been asked to serve on the Generosity initiative team. There is a small group of us on this team with the mission of informing the church body of the desire of the church leadership to pay off the mortgage on the building so that funds can be freed up to fund mission work both at home and abroad. Kevin and I will be coordinating the food and facility logistics portion of the events that we will be holding. So, off to Costco we went to get some of the foodstuffs! The event turned out really nice and honestly, it was probably the most simple event that Kevin and I have put on together! Whew. 
And it wouldn’t be a post without some puppy photos. This is the norm around here. Snuggling followed by crazy tug of war and wrestling, followed by more sleeping!
On Saturday afternoon we headed to the Bounce Club for Cole, our neighbor’s, 4th birthday party. We’ve now gone to a few parties here and its so fun for the kids (and easy for the adults, let’s be honest!) that we’ve decided to have Finn’s party here this year too. They bounce for an hour, then eat pizza and cake, and then head out. Fun, fast, simple, and easy!
It’s still pretty much all things puppy around here. We are all having fun with Brutus. I took this photo to document Brutus’ growth as he is definitely getting taller and longer!
After Finn took some photos he then wanted to be in some. I wanted to get one of the dogs’ feet together and he wanted to put his paw in too. You can also see his black eye here is healing and turning a bit yellow. He’s unbothered!
Griffin took this one of me and sharkie and Brutus and the one of Brutus in the kitchen below. . Turned out great, eh?
This is the typical scene for nap or bedtime. Reading Finn stories and the dogs cuddling on the floor!
Brutus is a pretty photogenic pup and is also fairly good at listening when you ask him to sit. Especially if you have a treat to share!
Nap or bed time starts like this.
And ends like this!
Brutus is chewing all sorts of toys and bones – and unfortuately a few human things too – like the zippers to both dog beds!! Ugh, he chews them at the only end you can start the zipper essentially ruining the zipping ability. This mammoth bed that we’ve had forever is now in need of a repair person to put in a new zipper so we can put it back together. In the mean time they are laying on the floor instead!!
Griffin is really enjoying being creative lately. He likes to play in his room with his legos and build all kinds of creations. He also really enjoys when you tell him a story or when he creates one to tell you. He has a really fun and creative imagination and we love hearing his stories!
Debbie brought some fun markers this week that could be used on the windows. It was a nice and sunny day outside too so Finn colored some spring time images on the windows. 
Art or creativity hasn’t ever been a gift of mine so we are thankful that Debbie loves to do art projects almost every day. Here they made stuffable mittens that they filled with letters and animals 🙂
Finn enjoys are projects at preschool too! Seems hard to believe it is time for next year’s preschool registration, but the time has arrived. We signed Griffin up for his last year of preschool (!!) in the Monkey class for 2017-2018. He will be going 4 days a week next year!
On Saturday we celebrated Andy’s birthday with a nice dinner out followed by tasty carrot cake and ice cream at their house. Yummers! 
On Sunday at the end of church we were talking with friends and one of them, Chris, asked us if we wanted to go to the OSU basketball game at 1:30. Woah, that sounded like a fun time! So we booked it out of church and went home to feed the dogs. Then we put it in high gear to get to the game where we got to our seats just prior to tip off. And the seats were GREAT! We are thankful for the fun afternoon and the generosity of Chris!
Later that day Finn and I were in his room and Lily laid down behind the chair, a common place for her to be. Finn though Lily would enjoy being covered up by his stuffed animals so he “hid” her so she could sleep. Can you find her? And of course Brutus isn’t ever far away, so he crashed the party. Then Finn wanted to be in the photo too – pretending to sleep of course!
