Dandelion Festival

This past Saturday, Ben and I headed out to the town of Borculo, MI for the Dandelion Festival. Borculo is a SMALL town near Zeeland that has a Dandelion Festival every year the first weekend that Holland has Tulip Time. There is a parade, lots of games and bouncy houses for kids, free food, and fun family time. My brother is a lieutenant in the Blendon Township Fire Department, and they always help out. The firetrucks are in the parade, but kids also get to sit in the trucks and put out "fires" with the hoses. It was fun couple hours and nice to hang out with Luke and Anna, as well as support Joel and his department.

Great News

Life is pretty great right now. Boston is home and adjusting very well. He's so playful and fun, but he also loves to sleep! The really great news is that Ben got a job!!! He had 4 interviews for a position that he really wanted, and yesterday they told him they wanted to extend him an offer. The offer came today and he's meeting with someone from HR tomorrow to formally accept it. We are so excited! His first day will be May 4.

God is good. Thanks for all your prayers and support these past few months - they are much appreciated.

Tomorrow...

this little guy is coming home with us!!!

Surprise, Surprise

Well... I'm in a little bit of shock right now. We just found out that Mango is a HE, not a SHE!!! The breeder just sent me an email feeling so horrible and embarrassed. On the original birth paperwork, our puppy was marked as male. However, when she emailed me after the birth, she accidentally referred to him as a "she" and then in our writing back and forth, it just got stuck in her mind that it was a girl. The breeder handles the puppies every day, but has about 17 of them and it just never registered to her that she had told me incorrectly (since male puppies don't raise their leg to pee until they are older anyway). When she measured him today, she thought "wow, she's measuring big for a girl" and double-checked... that's b/c it's a boy!

She feels absolutely awful and contacted me right away to see if we wanted to change our mind. It really didn't matter to us either way. When we were going to get a puppy from the first litter, it was going to be a boy. We just fell in love with the little face and can't wait to have a puppy in our home.

So... now the dilemma is a name again! Mango is a little too girly. We're thinking Boston. Do you guys like that or have other suggestions?

Ahhh!!! I don't like surprises :P.

Randoms

Nothing too exciting has been going on lately (hence, the lack of posts), but I also don’t know where time is going.

We went to Ann Arbor this past weekend to visit Jesse and Julie (Ben’s brother and his wife). We had a great time hanging out and playing games… basically being lazy. We played lots of Settlers, Ticket to Ride, and learned a fun new game: Bohnanza.

Mango is the final name for our puppy. I really liked Nala too, but couldn’t decide, so I told Ben he could pick. Only a week and a half til we get to pick her up!

I won a healthy habits drawing at work and won my choice of a stationary bike, recumbent bike, or stair stepper. I chose the stationary bike. I was excited – I never win anything.

I have the day off on Friday. I’m so looking forward to it. I haven’t had a day off since New Years. Yay for long weekends.

Puppy Picture!

The breeder just sent me a recent picture of our puppy! She's just shy of four weeks in this picture. Only 4 weeks til we get to bring her home! We still aren't 100% set on a name. Our top 2 are Mango and Nala, but we're open to other ideas. Vote for your favorite name in the poll on the right. If you have other ideas, let us know! Here she is:

Puppy!!!

We're getting an Australian Shepherd puppy!!!! Since Ben got laid off, our puppy plans had been put on hold. We had been really sad about this, as the original puppy we were going to get was supposed to come home at the end of February. Now that we know exactly how much Ben is getting in unemployment, combined with the fact that we still have some wedding gift money left and the fact that the breeder emailed me a few weeks ago that another litter was just born, we decided to move ahead with our puppy plans! We also figured that if Ben has a job by then, great, but if not, at least he'll be home to train her!

Nine puppies were born in the litter, and two of them were "mismarked" according to breed standard. Basically meaning that the color and markings aren't the "ideal" for the breed. We are getting one of these puppies. We are getting her for a little bit cheaper than usual, we don't plan on breeding or showing or puppy anyway, and Ben fell in love with her little face! I'll post pictures soon... her eyes aren't even open yet (it should be any day now). Once the breeder sends me newer pictures, I'll be sure to share them. She should be ready to come home with us around April 19.

Now we need a name... and it's proving to be more difficult than naming a child (or so I imagine, since I already have potential children's names picked out :P) Any ideas?