For those of you who may not know us personally, our little Gracie dog died quite unexpectedly on Halloween.  :-(   Within minutes of finding out that her “big sister” had gone to heaven, Lauren asked me when we could get a new puppy.  I was quite taken aback by this question, since my poor little dogger was barely gone, but maybe that’s how a little mind deals with the loss of a pet.  *shrug*

My response to my darling daughter was this, “Let’s give it some time.  I’m not ready for a new dog yet.  Maybe in the spring when the weather is nice and it’s easier to potty train a new puppy.  We’ll talk about it then.”

Famous.  Last.  Words.

Within 48 hours, Will and I were at a local pet store, looking at all of the cute little pups.  My search had begun.

Long story short - I researched many breeds and weighed pros and cons, and finally found the perfect breed for us - The Mini Goldendoodle-

For those of you, not familiar with dogs, a Goldendoodle is a Golden Retriever/Poodle mix.  This I already knew.  What I didn’t know - They. Are. Expensive.  Really expensive.  I was thinking seriously about how we’d have to save up for several months and cut back on some things if we were going to get a new pup in the spring.

Then I happened across an ad.  A woman within 3 hours of us was selling her Mini Goldendoodles for half of what serious breeders wanted for them.  Half.

I called her up right away.  After finding out that this might be the only litter she breeds, we decided we better go ahead and take a look at the puppies.

After borrowing some cash from my grandparents (half of Really Expensive is still Expensive) in order to have a deposit to give the breeder, we drove up to take a look.

Here are my pics:

These little guys are four weeks old.  There were five (of nine) pups left for us to choose from.  After playing with them for a while (well, not really playing, since four week old puppies don’t play a whole lot), we narrowed our choices down to two little boys.  I was partial to the bigger pup, but I was out-numbered and we decided on the smaller of the two.

Cute little guy, huh?

In this next picture, he’s the one sleeping on the bottom.

It was really hard to leave him.  On our way out, the breeder, Sandi, thought this would make a cute pic, so she put our pup in Will’s hood.

Of course, Lauren can’t be left out.  Thank God, she had a hood today.

Now we just have to decide on a name, which may not happen until we get him home.  As long as he’s healthy and ready to leave his mom, we’ll be going back to pick him up the Sunday before Christmas.  A precious little Christmas gift.

Here’s an abbreviated version of all that’s happened since my last post.  (BTW, most of the photos have had very little editing, so please, forgive the poor photo quality.)

Will turned 3!  Seriously.  3!  I can’t believe it.

It was an all Thomas The Train birthday.

We’ve had more rain than sun.  Ugh!  It might as well be January for the lack of sun.  It’s disgusting and I’m already developing a serious case of SAD.

We got some new neighbors, (from whose mom I’ve yet to gain permission to post their pictures.)

We’ve even had a few precious moments of peace.

My son’s been reading too much spam and has decided to look into male enhancement devices.

Lauren decided to try out a new hairstyle.

I spent a fun, relaxing, women’s weekend with some of my favorite relatives.

My backyard has become some kind of wildlife refuge.

This little vermin and I have been playing a kind of keep-away game.  I move the bird feeder, Crazy Squirrel finds a way to get to it.

We attempted a Halloween costume photo shoot.

What?  You’ve never heard of Supergirl?

Yeah, you’re all caught up!

Now all I have to do is spend the next two weeks catching up on all the blogs I used to read!

Last Sunday, I tortured my family by making them dress alike and taking them to the park for a photo shoot.  It’s amazing how difficult it is to get a decent shot when two little kids are involved.  It’s also hard to see the shot when you’re not actually behind the camera.  I wish I’d have set us up further down the hill so there wasn’t so much bright light in the background.

This is the better of the family pics.

I dressed Lauren in the black tee and jeans.  She accessorized it.  I told her she could keep the hat on for her pics, but she had to take it off for the group shots.

Will almost always looks to the side as he smiles, making it nearly impossible to get him looking at me while smiling.

I asked Brian to get a shot of me with the kids, but they’d had enough pictures.  Still, I think both kids look cute in this shot.

I love the lighting in this shot, but I can’t take credit for it.  Brian shot this as I was getting the kids in place.  It’s my favorite.

I just came downstairs after tucking Will in for the night.

First, he read me a book.  A scratch ‘n sniff book, or in Will’s case a sniff ‘n scratch.

Then we said prayers.  We always say the same night time prayer, followed by lots of God Blesses.

Tonight we said our usual God Blesses- the ones who died in my family (Lauren), the kids at St. Jude’s (Lauren), and a whole host of Cub’s players including Carlos Zambrano, Micah Hoffpauir, and Fukadome.

Then we added a special blessing for our neighbor, who had a terrible accident this afternoon and is in the hospital, which led to blessing many of our neighbors before circling back to Sam (the one in the accident).

Then we had this conversation:

Mom: “Sam needs lots of help from God because he got a bad owie and had to go to the hospital.  We need to pray that God will help heal him.”

Will:  “Who’s God?”

Mom:  “God is the one who made Heaven and Earth.  He made you and me, the Earth, and everything in it.”

Will:  “Is God a alien?”

Mom:  (after a not-so-brief pause) “um…..  some people think so, but no, God is more like you and me, just much bigger.”

This is not the conversation I expected to be having tonight and I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond, but in a situation like this, you just do the best you can.  And so I ask you, Who is God?

I don’t really post blogs.  But, I’m a geek, and I thought I would hack Kim’s blog.  I enabled an Easter Egg on this blog if you enter in the “Konami Code” while visiting our blog.

Won’t be tough for you to google the Konami code.

Enjoy!  (Lauren loves it)

-Brian

Ever feel like a complete failure?  I look around my house and feel like I have failed.  I just can’t keep up.  This is what I see when I open my eyes in the morning.

A bedroom that is half-painted and littered with clothes.  There is an unpacked bag that sits in the middle of the room from our vacation 2, that’s TWO weeks ago!  Two kids rooms that need to be picked up, dusted and vacuumed.  A kitchen with an endless supply of dishes to wash.  Piles and piles and piles of laundry.  A garage full of garage sale crap that needs to be organized and either stored or donated, along with two cars that sit in the driveway waiting desperately to be out of the weather.  A backyard full of weeds - weeds in the grass, weeds in the flowerbeds, weeds in the garden.  And to top it off, a blog that rarely gets updated.

overwhelmed.  simply overwhelmed.

The only bright spot in my day is the little boy lounging on the couch who’s resting after a two mile ride on a really tiny bike.

Today, I’m tackling the garage and the kids rooms and some laundry and some dishes……  wish me luck, I’ll need it.

I seriously cannot believe how quickly this summer flew by.

Lauren started first grade today!  It was hard to get her out of bed and ready for school.  It rained, so we couldn’t walk and I couldn’t get good outside pics.  But we made it to school in plenty of time for her to line up with her class.

I did manage to get one picture.  I can’t be expected to not get a first day of school photo, right?

Lauren’s backpack was loaded down with all of her school supplies.  I kept offering to carry it for her, but she insisted on doing it herself.  I’m so proud of my little girl.  She’s so independent and self-assured.  I just love that about her.  I can’t wait to see how her first day went.

Have you been wondering about us?  Where we’ve been, what we’ve been up to?  It has been a crazy, crazy, busy month.

Here is the bullet point version:

• Aug 1, neighborhood garage sale
• Aug 3-7, Vacation Bible School (all three of us were involved) and First Tee golf lessons for Lauren
• Aug 8-12, vacation to Branson, MO with the in-laws
• Aug 13-14, major major house cleaning
• Aug 15, two family/friend cookouts
• Aug 16-19, my very best friend and her girls visited
• Aug 20, first day of school

So, here we are.  The house is semi-quiet with only one kid in the house.  I have dishes piled in the sink, which I have to tackle as soon as I’m done with this.  There’s a mountain of laundry and a house to clean.  Ahhhh, it feels so good to get back to normal!

I’ve got a couple of pics from our trip to the zoo with Carrie and the girls…. enjoy!

At the Hamill Family Play Zoo, the kids did their own face painting…..

This is Lauren’s “zebra face.”  You’ll see a similar face in the above shot.  Why does she think zebras walk around with their mouths open and their eyes half shut?

We’ve finally had a break in our weather! It is a beautiful mid 70s, sunny and breezy. I think we might ride our bikes to the library today.

Okay, enough bragging about our beautiful day. I have a few more pictures from our zoo trip that I wanted to share….

We had walked by this frog on the way to lunch.  Will really wanted to go sit on it then, but I made him wait until after we ate.

We get a picture with this gorilla every time we come to the zoo…

When we were here for Lauren’s birthday, I tried to get a picture of this little guy and his Mama, but they all came out blurry.  This one is a little far, but at least it’s a little more crisp.

This is the part Lauren was looking forward to the most.  Outside the Monkey/Ape house is a path with a bunch of stick-your-head-through-the-hole-for-a-funny-picture boards.

One last animal picture, in case it seems as if we don’t actually see many live animals at our zoo.  There weren’t a ton of them outside because of the extreme heat.  This guy seems like he’s keeping pretty cool, though.

Last Tuesday, we suffered the 100+ degree heat to visit the zoo.  We went with our neighbor and her son.

This summer, our zoo is featuring an exhibit called Dinosaurs Alive.  The animatronic dinosaurs are life sized, they move and roar.  This guy is visible to all zoo visitors.  He swings his head, roars, and spits water.

There are so many of these stick-your-head-through-the-hole-for-a-funny-picture boards all over the zoo.  We love them. 

The main Dinosaurs Alive attraction is sectioned off at the corner of the zoo and you have to buy a ticket to get in to see the other ten or so dinosaurs that live there.

It was worth the extra few bucks, to see this look:

This is a baby Stegasaurus.  They had two or three babies.  There were several cute signs along the path.  I cut and pasted them with the dinosaurs to save a little space.

Lauren spent most of the time walking through the display like this.  And no, it wasn’t that loud.

The T-Rex!

The best part of Dinosaurs Alive were these control boxes, where you could program the dinosaur’s movements.  Way cool.

So, if you live in the area, or are just visiting, this exhibit is a great way to spend a half a day.

I got a post this morning about updating the blog since it’s been almost three weeks since my last post! Thanks E.

I just haven’t taken much time at the computer lately. I do have several pictures to share. I got some fun shots at from the zoo the other day. That’s right, we went to the zoo in the hundred degree heat! Yikes! We still had a good time. I’ll make it a point to sit with the photos tomorrow and upload them.

So everything’s good here at the Cancio house. Summer’s flying by. Our weekends are crazy busy. My house is a wreck. My kids are wild. Yep, everything’s normal.

Promise I’ll be by to visit my bloggy friends really soon!