the newest member

At way too long last, here's the newest member of the family. For all your auto shipping needs, under no circumstances do business with Nationwide Auto Shipping.
We ordered her through a friend of a friend with a dealer's license. It took 6 weeks of sifting through vehicles and making bids to finally win one, and then it took another 3 weeks to threaten our shipping company into delivering it. The description said it was beige but, in fact, it is as silver as the day is long. We love it. The kids love it. We're finally members of the family car club. It feels good.

dog days of winter

Our 4th not-so-miraculous-anymore snow storm settled over Lubbock this morning, covering everything in 2 inches of white, slushy yuck.  So, we prepared to hunker down for the day.  By 8 a.m. Stuey was requesting his 3rd dvd and I wasn't sure I was going to make it through the day without putting a boot through the TV screen.  But thanks to the inspired example of a good friend, I decided to give the morning a theme to mix things up a bit. We dubbed today "the dog day of winter."
Behold...

We colored dog pictures with markers--a special treat at our house (even the washables manage to stain things.) (And speaking of inspired--by a true stroke of genius I thought to purchase a couple 200 ft. rolls of Christmas wrapping paper when it was on sale for $1 at Walmart. We use it ALL the time. Next year I'm buying 4 rolls.)

We ate our snacks and drank our water from dog bowls. We also read every story book in the house that included a dog character and then practiced panting and barking and wagging our tails.

Here is Stuey's tail. I did take a picture of Whitney's tail but won't be including it here. By the time I got around to taking pictures of the tails Whitney had pulled out her braids and taken all her clothes off. I feel like including a picture of that would be admitting defeat. But her hair WAS braided and she WAS wearing clothes for a couple hours today, and Goonies never say die.

this one's for you, Kristima

I have recently been accused by a certain sister (I won't name names, so I'll just refer to her here as "Kristima") of neglecting my girl child's dress and grooming. I spent the weekend pondering and praying about a hair do that would effectively hold her hair out of her face AND be impervious to her little wandering fingers. Voila! Here it is, folks. Yes, she's still naked (though "still wearing panties" as she pointed out to me this afternoon) but we're one step closer! Thanks, of course, to Lanissa for the inspiration for the do and pbskids.org for the diversion while I worked.