December Birthdays

We celebrated December birthdays at my parent’s house Sunday. Marshall is happy Jack’s girlfriend, Savannah also has a December birthday to take some attention off of him.

I love Sunday family dinners. I’m so grateful for my family!

Sensuous Sandwich

I love sandwiches! I grew up on sandwiches for lunch. They never get old. Marshall doesn’t love sandwiches but was ok with having one when I choose where to go for lunch.

Sensuous sandwich has the most yummy, mouth watering sandwiches! Mmm…yum!

Flashback Friday

It’s entertaining looking at the wall of family pictures at my parent’s house. I got a perm earlier on the day this picture was taken. 

I still love wearing plaid shirts. 

Rock Climbers

Taggart plays Jr Jazz at the rec center once a week. Kade and Sienna like to rock climb during his games. 

Sienna was wearing sandals when we were leaving the house. I told her she needed to have shoes on if she wanted to rock climb. I thought she would have put on athletic shoes but here’s what she wore instead. 😂 Hmm…ok, and somehow she managed to rock climb in them.

Chewie Update

This morning Chewie still wasn’t eating at the animal hospital. I went to see if he would eat for me but he wouldn’t. Everything else was stable so the vet said I could take him home 🙌

He didn’t want to eat at home for me but he ate when Lynnlee fed him. That made her pretty happy.

Slowly he got some energy back over the afternoon today. 

We are all so happy and relieved to have him home!

Chewie

Life has been so crazy the last few months. Once we found out our house would be ready sooner than we thought, the madness started. Getting the house ready, packing up half of the house, cleaning, 5 busy kids and their activities, health issues, getting ready for holidays, showing, open houses, etc. 

Poor Chewie has been going through all the craziness with us. He has spent way more time in the car than ever before. We had so many showings in 3 weeks and so he spent a lot of time in the car while I ran errands or we went places as a family. We are under contract now thankfully! We had a lot of showings the day before Thanksgiving and then three offers on Black Friday! So we are under contract with two back up offers!

Now onto the bad news…and if you are not a dog/pet person then you can skip the rest of this post. 

I never thought I’d be a pet person. Then we got Chewie. Before getting Chewie I didn’t know how to sympathize with pet people. I even thought they were crazy! Now I am one of those crazy dog owners. 

Friday night Chewie was yelping in pain, and not at all like his normal self. We had no idea what was going with him. By Saturday he didn’t seem worse and maybe even seemed slightly better so I decided not to take him to a vet.

Sunday he definitely seemed worse. So Lynnlee and I took him to a pet ER in Cottonwood. It is hard to find veterinarians open on the weekends. We also learned that there are vet and vet assistant shortages just like all of the labor shortages everywhere. 

When we got to the vet they said the wait would be 4-5 hours. We had no choice but to wait considering we had no idea what was wrong with him and it looked like he wasn’t going to get through it without some kind of treatment.

Thankfully the wait ended up being only 2 hours. The vet diagnosed him with gastroenteritis. She gave him some fluids, pain medicine and antibiotics and sent home more antibiotics to give him at home. He seemed slightly better that night but not much.

The next morning he was worse. Didn’t even want to get out of his crate. After the kids went to school I went back to the vet. Little did I know the wait was 4 hours. So Chewie and I sat in the car waiting and waiting. It was miserable. Chewie was miserable. I felt helpless. He looked like he was going to die. So awful! So many tears!

We finally got in and the vet diagnosed him with pancreatitis. It was caused by a large piece of turkey fat that I gave Chewie during Thanksgiving dinner. Apparently fat is super hard on dogs and especially tiny dogs. 

So I felt awful that I caused his sickness! Thankfully the vet said it was treatable but Chewie needed to stay the night.

That night the vet called with bad news. Chewie had fluid in his lungs on his x-ray. They checked the fluid and it was blood. This was caused by Chewie ingesting rat poison. This is also my fault which was totally on accident! We have had a problem with voles. So I put some vole bait out but thought I put it out of his reach. He has an invisible fence and I thought he couldn’t get to it. Apparently he found some?!! 

Thankfully the vet said it was also treatable. So they gave him some vitamin K.

He was suppose to come home today but he is still at the vet. He hasn’t started eating yet. Hopefully he starts eating so he can come home tomorrow!

We all miss him so much! This whole thing has been emotionally draining for James, Lynnlee and me. I know he’s “just a dog” but he’s become a member of our family. He is my shadow while everyone is at school, keeps me company and runs to me when I walk in the door.

We have only had him about a year and a half. Hopefully he turns a corner and can be well enough to come home tomorrow.

It’s hard to believe it’s December 1st tomorrow. I have really struggled getting into the Christmas spirit. There is so much going on that it’s stressful to try and figure out everything for Christmas. Here’s for hoping and praying things get better and I won’t be a Christmas Grinch all month.

Saturday Traditions

In keeping up with traditions, we went to the movies on Saturday afternoon with Betsy, Ali’s family, and Papa and Grandma Ruth. We saw Encanto. It was pretty good. I didn’t love the story line but I liked the music and bright colors throughout the movie.

Black Friday

Friday started off with a beautiful run. I can’t get enough of Timpanogos. My bedroom in the house my parents live in now used to have a beautiful view of Timpanogos. I used to wake up early to see the sunrise shining on Timp and lighting it up. Now the view is blocked by a tree. So now I enjoy the view during my runs when we visit there.

I shopped online this Black Friday. It’s pretty great and way better than standing in long lines. 

Friday night we enjoyed dinner, games, and crafts with Beckie’s family and Grandpa and Grandma Lowry.

The craft was gnomes and snowmen out of socks. The kids loved making them!