Yesterday was long and exhausting, but wonderful. After a Saturday night in which Jeremy and I both slept only about four hours, it was the first time this congregation has had the second service of the day immediately following a potluck lunch. The second service was set up to be a 'devotional', with less speaking and more singing. Since Mike's asthma is so bad, he couldn't do all the songleading that evening as he usually does, so Jeremy took advantage of this excuse to invite Jesse Warren, Tucson's Campus Minister, to bring over a group of college students and help out with the song leading! This would provide a service opportunity for them, help us out, and provide relationship opportunities all 'round! :)

Two of the people Jesse & Desiree brought with them were a married couple who happen to be old Christian friends of theirs from Kansas, actually. Joanna is a college student; Joe is an Iraq veteran who works construction here in Tucson now. Joe & Joanna met when Joe was in college at K State, where he and Jesse were friends back in the day. Anyway, with so much in common, we continued talking (and, yes, singing) long enough - after everyone else had left - that it got annoying (hehe) and we decided to continue the conversation at our house. It turns out Joe & Joanna live about one mile from our house!!!!!!! ???!! They stayed through the afternoon and the spiritual edification was so great that they decided to stay through the evening instead of attending their small group all the way back across town. We were doing some DEEEEEEP Bible study, and having great conversations while trying to all get to know one another better. How much wonderfulness can you cram into 5 1/2 hours; I think that's how much time we ended up spending together at our house because they didn't leave until after popcorn, around 9:30. What a wonderful time we had. But oh, how tired we were after such an exhausting, though rich, day.

Monday was a pretty typical day. It was Jeremy's day off, so when Cecil called and invited him along on an errand up north, Jeremy happily accepted. The errand was to go pick up the puppies of that Doberman Cecil had originally asked us to keep while she was gestating. [Our pay was to be 'pick of the litter', of course, if you remember....] It was going to be a BIG MONEY deal for Cecil ... until the babies were born, that is. Somehow, during five minutes that the mom Dobie was out of Cecil's sight at the veterinary office one day, she got 'hit' (to use breeders' terminology) by a COMPLETE MUT, just days before her time with the male Dobie was scheduled! So she was pregnant with 'someone else's' babies, so to speak. It's a hilarious story, but it cost Cecil a bundle, sadly. Jeremy had a great time with Cecil - as always; he said there were NINE puppies in that litter and no two puppies looked anything alike! Not in coloring, coat texture, face/head shape, nada. Genes are AMAZING!

Since was grocery shopping day, while Jeremy was gone I caught up on coupons, made the menu & grocery list so we could shop this evening, and had time to purge some more files!! (I'm on a ROLL! I've cleaned out approx. 30 old files. I'm forcing myself NOT to count how many moves we have dragged along those heavy papers.)

After playing outside some this morning, and then using my coupon cutters to chop up some papers into ... well, confetti, basically (evidence on the coffe table in pictures below), N & J then pulled my old lab coat out of the Dress-Up box and played 'doctor' a while.

In this picture N is giving J a shot ... with a yellow crayon!!! LOL

During J's turn I took this picture of him giving N 'a pill'.

It wasn't terribly surprising to me (because of some talks we've had about finding a different/better home for Kiana since our lifestyle can't meet her needs regarding being right there with the family ... and the complications that is causing) when Jeremy came home from his afternoon jaunt with a new 6-week-old puppy.

I think next time we meet a new friend who says, "And I breed dogs on the side," I'm going to just quickly say, "Okay, well, we have all the dogs we need, so PLEASE, I BEG YOU, do NOT offer puppies to my husband because he can't say no!!" LOL

So now we have Chewbacca, to go with our Jabba. So that makes sense. The veterinarian's best guess, from the 'evidence' all over nine(!) puppies, is that their mutt dad was more boxer than anything else. (All nine puppies do have short hair and white chests.) However, there is also some evidence of possibly bull dog, and possibly shar pei!!! At any rate, one key is that it is short hair. Yay. Jeremy's thinking makes sense, that with short hair that doesn't shed much at all, and with this big dog coming into the family AFTER Jabba, that they can 'grow up together' and be able to act appropriately around one another, maybe we can go ahead and let this dog be inside some even when it's bigger. It has continued to be a frustration that because of Kiana's shedding, we still don't want her in the house. therefore she still doesn't get on with Jabba well enough for our comfort (a MAJOR annoyance) If Kiana were with us all the time and could 'breathing our same air' in comfortable, relaxed down-time, we're sure she would be the perfect dog. As it is now, every time she's with us is for short snippets of time, and she is so desperate for attention, exercise, and affection that she drives us nuts and we can't enjoy the time.... It's not the right situation for her, so we are going to try to find a right situation.

So anyway, there you have some information about this newest development.... (sigh) (blink, blink) Here we go again. It's now officially time to buy stock in Bounty paper towels.

Oh, his stats. Same hight & length as Jabba, but whereas Jabba weighs 7 pounds, Chewy weighs a whopping 14 at six weeks old!!!!! Hmm, yes, Note to Self: buy stock in Purina as well. Know what? He probably weighs 15 pounds now, considering the amount of Puppy Chow he ate for supper. Once he figured out that's where the food was his nose stayed in the food bowl for about five minutes straight! I felt like telling him, "Dude! Come up for a breath!" lol

(I promise, N does have on pajama shorts in this picture! eek!)


Right after I took this picture of Chewy, I decided to review the other pictures we'd taken of him today. It was only three seconds of me being still lying on the floor before he was curled up against me in this tiny brindle ball. ...Think he misses his mommy & eight brothers & sisters?