All Is Calm???

Silent night, holy night.

My kids are acting 'not real bright'.

Round the zoo things are wild

I can't keep garments on that poor child.

Hey! Sit still if you please.

I'm takin' your picture. Say Cheese!

Radiant beams from their ornery face.

 

It looks like John is strangling Grace.

Our house is full of mirth.

What bribe is a good picture worth?

In spite of these less than satisfactory results, we did get a Christmas picture the other night.

Aren't they a dandy crew??

And you wonder why I refer to this place as a zoo!!!

Losing a Friend

After a lovely Thanksgiving weekend, we arrived home in time to repack and go to the farm for a few days.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday were spent enjoying the unbelievably pretty weather before packing up and returning home Sunday afternoon.

What we encountered at home was not quite so pleasant.

It was quite obvious Kitty was not doing well.

Rather than seeing her suffer even one more day to wait until Monday and take her to the vet, we took her to a vet ER of sorts nearby.

They agreed that any form of treatment was just delaying the inevitable.

So everyone has said their good-byes and Kitty will join the rest of the Shupe pets in a special place on the farm.

John and Emily took the news as well as twelve year olds take news like that.

Grace, of course, cried.

Grant in an effort to comfort his sister patted Grace gently on the back saying, "It's okay, Grace.  We'll see Kitty in Heaven someday."

Now how does a parent argue with four year old theology like that??

We miss you Kitty!

We Are Thankful

You Shouldn't Have!

Someone in this house has had a birthday in November.

Maybe this person?

or this person?

or this person with marker all over his face?

Nope, nope and nope.

David and the kids helped me celebrate another birthday.

They gave me a cake

and cards....

and an incredibly HEAVY box of candy.

Look at all that candy!

What's that?

Look UNDER the candy?!

Well, look at that!

Ghirardelli now packages their candy with an iPad included.

What a wonderful gift.

Thank you, family!!

You shouldn't have.

But I'll accept it just the same!!

Happy Thanksgiving.

We're looking forward to visiting with family and eating way too much as we count our blessings once again.

It's a SMALL SMALL World

Last Friday Grant, David and I visited a very TINY town.

We peeked in the bakery

visited the laundromat

and stepped back in time a hundred or so years

at the train museum in Cincinnati.

He loved this place when I took the kids there last year and has talked about going back ever since.

The details are amazing.  I think I could walk through here daily for an entire year and still find something new each time.

Looking down from above over the entire layout....

Of course, what's a trip to the train museum without a stop to refuel ourselves?

Hot dogs and pizza for everyone!!

And

of course

he suckered his dad into buying him a new train for his Thomas the Tank Engine track set.

Good times.

Yes indeed.

Seeing Spots

We have added some paper lanterns in Emily's room for reading lights.

She loves them. 

It carries on with the theme of dots.

Last year I made this French memo board for her.

Of course, it's dots too.

 It turned out pretty well I thought.

Though you can't see it through all the pictures on it, she actually has another bulletin board in her room too.  We made this big 'dot' when we originally decorated her room. 

This one is a cork board.  The dots theme worked easily for a bulletin board....much easier than the airplane, flower and baseball ones we made for the other kids' rooms.

Kitty update:

She's still alive and hissing kicking.

The vet said she's not doing well based on her lab results.

We discussed at length what to do and came to somewhat of a consensus.

There is no point putting her through the stress of more tests.  She is not a very congenial patient.  The tests would probably indicate either a need for diabetic treatment or thyroid treatment daily.  She's not the kind of cat to take well to much handling.

As long as she seems comfortable and doesn't lose too much more weight, we'll just watch her.

Someday maybe soon, maybe not, we will have to make the decision if her quality of life is still okay.

Until then, she's taken up permanent residency in John's room.  They get along pretty well.  We call him the 'cat guy' because some nights he'll have all three cats on his bed at night.  Yeah, you can say it....oh gross!!

Goodnight, cat guy!

Take good care of Kitty.

Seeing Orange

That's a lot of orange, isn't it?

Orange is not my favorite color except when worn over camo, then I love it.

At least I love what it's supposed to do.

Can you guess what this guy did last weekend?

Yes, that's a real gun.

The men went hunting to provide for our family.

They failed.

Good thing Kroger is nearby.

This was Grant's first hunting trip ever.

He seemed to enjoy it.  He lasted maybe forty-five minutes before giving up and coming to the house.

He told me he liked it, but it was cold and Dad made him be quiet.

The nerve of him, huh??

I am sure this was the first of many hunting expeditions for this group.

They saw a few and shot at one or two but no luck bringing one down.

Maybe next time.