Spooktacular...

We went to a family night celebrating Halloween tonight. It was a little young for Christian, but he was happy to do the cake walk for a cupcake. Which, as it turns out, took lik 20 minutes for him to ever win one. Bella hopped in and won on her first walk. She also got mummified. Happy Halloween!

Hang onto your hat!

And your slide. Whew, the wind was awful today!!!

I think I can, I think I can...

After another discouraging day of dieting (other people were eating all sorts of candy and treats at work all day) I may have found a little piece of Atkin's heaven...

1/2 C. vanilla Carb Smart ice cream
1 TBS peanut butter

Tastes like a Culver's Peanut Butter Malt only 6 carbs!!!

Yeeeeee Haw!

Perchance I should change careers...

As some of you may know, I am planning to head back to school. My thought is to complete pre-med classes at ISU and then apply for medical school. At any rate, the animals in our house must be telling me to change my mind, because we definitely need a vet in the family more than a doctor.

Last night Nick and I had all three of our children spoken for- overnights away from home. ALL THREE OF THEM, SAME NIGHT!!! This is a very rare occurrence, so we went out for dinner at a fabulous Mexican place with delicious daiquiris and then wandered a few stores until our movie started. After the movie, we headed home. On the way home, my phone rings.

It's my mom telling me that on our way home we should be thinking of creative ways to get a bone off Abby's bottom jaw. Now, with all the delicious daiquiris having been previously consumed, I thought she said get a "phone" off her bottom jaw. Now, for those of you who have not read the previous posts about Abby, the thought of her eating a phone isn't that unrealistic. But, after we got that cleared up, I realized that it was a marrow bone. It's shaped like a circle and the dog eats the middle part, then they are left with a super hard circle shaped bone that they can chew on for a loooooong time. Somehow Abby had gotten that ring around her bottom jaw, past her tall canine teeth and it was stuck. Really stuck.

So I get home and call my vet -at home- which, this is now the second time I've called him 10pm-ish in the past 2 months. OK, I have a 12 year old, a 5 year old, and a 2 year old and between the three of them I've paged a doctor ONE time ever! Now I've paged my vet twice about Abby in the past few months, plus seen him three times in the past few weeks with Muffy's illness. Rest assured, I'm making his house payment next month!

Anyways, our vet is great- he met us up at the clinic in town and sedated Abby so we could cut the bone off with bolt cutters. He said we never would have gotten it off because her lips were so swollen. Because Abby hadn't eaten he was also able to give her some medicine to reverse the sedative and wake her back up. We were home within about 20 minutes with one very confused, but happy dog.

And our best news out of this whole fiasco is Abby is down to 86 pounds from 105. Six more to go and she'll be at her goal weight. Wish I could say the same for those of us in the house on Atkins!

Anyways, I am considering changing that med school application to a vet school application, because even with the huge pay difference I think I'll still come out ahead being able to fix my own animal family.

Whoa...

A self portrait of Bella.

HELLOOOOO!!!!

From Zachary!

Gone Fishing

Nick and Christian spent a few hours this afternoon at Big Creek fishing. They caught quite a few. Most of them were pretty small. I'm not sure of the final count as Nick is still in the garage filleting away. At least I know if our economy tanks and we can't buy food, they can catch it. The only issue there is- only Christian will actually eat the fish...

Here are some pictures from Thursday night's football game. Two of the football player (#73), one of Michael's reaction to eating all the sour sprinkles from the bottom of a bag of Sour Skittles (as dared by his sister for $1), and then what the little kids do to entertain themselves at the end of the game- slide like snakes across the bleachers.

Bad blogger

OK, I am a complete slacker on here lately. Let's see if I can sum things up. A sentence about each person, er, family member...

I forgot to post a huge CONGRATS!!! to Nick- he got an AWESOME raise at work while I was on vacation!

Christian has a home football game tomorrow night- will post pictures for sure, I promise!

Bella got tap shoes tonight and learned that perchance you should not try them on the laminate floor as you will tap your toes really quickly before the back of your head taps the floor.

Zach is the cutest darn thing that you ever did see.

Muffy is alive and kicking- even back to boxing at the dog, so her spunk is back!

Eustace is still plotting the demise of all humans in the house by weaving between your feet particularly on the steps.

Abby enjoyed a Kong full of dog food today and even though it's empty now she's carrying it everywhere with her- just in case it magically regenerates the goodies she found inside.

Myrtle and Squirtle are hibernating.

And as for me, I am experiencing starvation similar to Muffy's- I started Atkins this week.

That's it for us!

Still kicking...

The ill cat is almost off the endangered list... she's doing quite well. Getting stronger each day. I think we are out of the danger zone- as long as she doesn't go anorexic on us again.

This is a busy weekend. Tonight was the homecoming game at the school. Tomorrow I have to work, Christian is in a punt and passing contest in the morning, he's going fishing in the afternoon, and then we are going to dinner at a friend's house. Sunday luckily has nothing on the agenda. I think I'll schedule a nap.

I'll try to post some pics from the contest.

Have a great weekend.