SHE is Here!

Thanksgiving Prayer for OUR NEW GRAND BABY

"O Saint Joseph, you witnessed the miracle of birth, seeing the infant Jesus born of your most holy spouse, the Virgin Mary. With wonder and awe, you took into your arms the Savior. With gratitude that only a parent can know, you glorified God for the birth of his Son, entrusted to your fatherly care.

Like you, St. Joseph, I too give praise and glory to God for the birth of a beautiful child. This child’s life is such a miraculous testimony of God’s loving presence. My heart is filled with grateful joy. Join me dear St. Joseph, in offering thanks to God for the gift of this child.

What great trust and confidence God placed in you, St. Joseph, by entrusting his only Son into your fatherly care. This inspires me to entrust the spiritual care and protection of this newborn child into your competent and loving hands. Teach, guide, and support her parents Javajava and Pooker to fulfill well their awesome vocation to be a worthy parents to Our Precious New Grand-baby! Amen."

Thank you to all of our friends that have been praying for this precious child. We are in love, to say the least. J and I are thrilled to now be grandparents (still working on our names!) 

Mom and baby are healthy and under the watchful eye of dad who is ready to help if either needs anything.

Happy Birthday Baby!

Happy Mothers Day Pooker! 

Happy 1st wedding anniversary to Pooker and Javajava!

Dog Days

The letter meant so much to us. I know that it is standard to sent it to everyone but we were so thankful to receive this in the mail. It gave validation to our grieving. We are worried about Burke. She seams to be doing ok.

At worst she is being loved on way too much.

Burke is a beautiful, playful young girl and we are so happy to have her around.

Adorable

Beautiful

We are still sad about Bennie but trying to be joyful to still have Burke. We were blessed with good puppies and are very thankful.

HOLY WEEK HURTS - We love you Bennie!

Little things kept going wrong starting the Friday before and just kept getting worse.  Good things happened also, but only after our hearts broke.

The kids decided to make the most of this very difficult day. Possible, Goobers and the Twins went on a walk. It was a very long walk and it was warm outside. (Now these are nothing new to our dogs. They would run and run and run even if when we lived in TOO hot Houston. The dogs should be able to handle this walk and have in the past.) Bennie collapsed on the walk. She drank the water that the kids gave her. They said she would still not get up. Dad took the car and brought her home. 

We thought she was slightly overheated. She moved around a lot at first. Drank some and would lay next to us. She was very affectionate and we all spent some time trying to make her feel better. Burke seamed unaffected by the walk. She was back to her playful self by dinner time. J and the kids cooled Bennie down and kept giving her fluids. As the day turned to evening we realized that her rebound was short lived. We took her to the animal hospital.

We were surprised when they came to get her she would not move at all. She didn't even lift her head when we opened the back hatch.  Usually she would have bolted. The situation was so weird because of the lock down restrictions. They took her into the clinic and we were not able to go in with her.

Then we got that call while waiting and pacing outside with all the other pet owners banished to the parking lot. She was suffering from heat exhaustion. (She should not be considering she is only four years old and a wild active Husky. The doctor suspects that she must have had an underlined heart issue, sometimes common in huskies.) We were told that Bennie's organs were slowly shutting down. Even with lots of care and huge costs the doctor did not feel that she would survive. We didn't want her to suffer through the night so we made a very difficult decision.

The clinic had to work things out so we could enter the building. All the other animal owners watched us as Princess, Jumba, J and I tearfully walked inside to say goodbye to our precious baby. We got to sit with Bennie and thank her for being such a loving member of our family. We thanked her for years of kindness and protection. We loved on her trying to convey the love the entire family had for her. This precious puppy was so good to us, even to the twins. She let them dress her and play with her for hours on end.

Saying Goodbye to our precious Bennie is one of the hardest things we as pet owners would ever have to do.

We posted this on facebook:

Oh my goodness! The day ended up being a very difficult one. Today we had to put down one of our dogs! Wow. Death hurts, even when it is just a pet. Bennie, the lighter colored Husky, collapsed while on a walk and didn’t recover when we got her cooled down. It is a shock as she was only 4 years old and it hurts. God blessed us with a beautiful companion and we are beyond heart broken to have said goodbye. Thank you Bennie for taking such good care of us and loving us!

Re-Stain Dinning Room

After the beautiful table in the other room the kids decided to move into the dinning room. All the furniture is sanded down. I look forward to seeing this project finished. I love the table and the hutch. I liked the natural color but we had to redo the the stain job when trying to selling out house. We sealed it wrong and tit was messed up by the move. The kids decided it was time to like our furniture again. They spent two days working on sanding everything down.

Covid Update

This is hard. I am sharing these things because I want to remember that we shared silly memes making fun of stuff and ones that contained information. It was how we kept up to date with this stuff. This is not an easy time, but it isn't that bad. We are not living through a great war and people are NOT dying all around us. (In fact very few are even getting sick - studies are starting to show it hit the USA sooner that we thought. There is evidence now that people many, people have been infected without recourse. I even suspect that I had the virus after the New Orleans trip. The numbers are not supporting the mandated lock downs.)

Americans don't sit quietly by and let their liberties be taken away. Some states are handing out tickets to those that go out for a drive and walk through a public area. The day to day updates from the President are both calming and also irritating. I am starting to not trust everything that is being said. 

2 weeks of being in this home all the time has produced a new farm table with benches for the kitchen, all dinning room furniture has been sanded down to be stained tomorrow. Caught up on organizing electronic pictures through sep 15 of 2019 and blogged through July of 2019. School kids have logged lots of extra hours on their math program.

 I have watched my friends say Masses all over St Louis, St Charles, the woodlands, and OKC. So cool offering prayers with each of you as you celebrate the Mass. 30 more days and I might actually get working on my book. Please do what inspires you and let your children be creative. (I got a table out of it). 

There are all kinds of things that are bringing us down emotionally. I am so worried as Pooker's due date draws near. I had always assumed that I would be with my daughters as they prepared for birth. I fantasied about helping them prepare. I wanted to be able to clean for her and talk about things that only some one who had been there could understand. Now I am trapped 700 miles away. As I was thinking of all this I was given a surprise. Twins brought me a flower from the yard so I would stay happy!

Continued Table Information (Now Benches)

That table is looking good. The kids did a great job on the table and then on the benches. Bagel and Princess apparently like to sand. They made the edges smooth and beautiful. By the way did you see the toilet paper. Things were starting to get real. We were getting low and you can't buy that stuff in the stores around here. We were very very very thankful when we received a package from Houston that contained toilet paper. Thank you Larry and T family.

With in a day or so they added some benches. I love these. I would have paid a fortune for this table. It is solid, high quality, and beautiful!

After staining and then adding the top coat, let us with a beautiful table and bench set.

Shower Prep is Full of Surprises.

 The dogs are ready. Thank you Adorable and Beautiful for always filling my camera roll with your pup pictures.

I walked into the room to see this. My heart sore. Twin Beautiful is the youngest, she has never had this bonding time with an unborn baby. I love all the teaching and learning that is happening with sisters in this picture.

J and I then headed to the store with or shopping list.  We had plans for big chicken wing dinner but needed supplies for the party the next day. While we were at the store we got a huge surprise. The T family arrived to attend the shower, and actually help like they always do. Larry even helped us prepare dinner.

We are beyond blessed to have the T family as our friends. They go out of their way to constantly love on us. They are part of the family and are always there for the big events. They decided to visit at the very last minute because the kids schools had closed so their trip to Dallas turned into a trip all the way to St. Louis.

So many schools are closing, I can't even think about all those things. We heard from Mary and SLU has closed for a few weeks so we would go get her when she returned. The kids would all be doing online schooling for their college classes. This was all for two weeks. But we idon'thave time tot talk about his because we are preparing for a party and thrilled that Larry, Kat and Troy used the school closings as an opportunity to visit. For now we feast and then prepare for the shower.

I added a ton of pictures because they all show the people I love. I missed Bear. The girls were all here. Their boy friends were there to help, or to eat ( not sure which). We did a huge family rosary at the end of the day to include The T family and the extra friends. You can't get better than that! We prayed for the "storm" that we all could feel was coming but no one could identitfy. We prayed for our health and we prayed for all those that would be effected by the Wuhan Virus. We prayed for those whose schools, especially the colleges that had closed or kicked the students out for the next few weeks. We prayed for those that were not with us, namely Bear and Mary. We prayed for that Grand Baby that got us all together today!