Football

Three more months till football starts....anyone else counting down???!!! (I didn't realize we were until today!)

Miss K to Daddy: You play for the Steelers, right?

Daddy to Miss K: No, I wish I did, but they are my favorite team!

Mommy to Miss K: If he did, we'd already be retired!

(I'll keep dreaming!)

Thank You...

.....Miss Kait for being such an awesome helper with Jayson tonight! Daddy and I enjoyed watching you play with our little neighbor. We were reminded what a great big sister you will be if, or should I say when (as you remind us), you are blessed with siblings.

Family

We had a picnic in our front yard for FHE last night. Kaitlyn gave a great lesson (thanks Sis. Young!) on keeping the Sabbath day holy. Kaitlyn also requested we all share one joke (knock, knock is her favorite). During the giggling and silliness of the jokes, she looked at Trace and I and said, "It is so great to have a Mom and Dad!"

She melts my heart on a regular basis, but I'm always amazed at the profound statements she doesn't know she is making. In this crazy world we live in....it IS so great to have a Mom and a Dad!

Following the Compass

We've been using the Gospel Art kit in our family scripture reading to make the association and understanding of the story a little more real and personal for Kaitlyn. Last night we were reading about the Liahona. We discussed the purpose of the Liahona and the efficiency (how and why it worked and why it wouldn't work). To help apply the lesson to her, I asked Kaitlyn what types of "Liahona's" do we have in our lives? She mentioned scriptures, following the prophet, listening to our teachers. Trace and I mentioned listening to our Mom's and Dad's. Kaitlyn's response....

"That is so hard for a little girl to do!"

Kaitism...

"When I'm good, I'm good. When I'm bad, I'm bad!"

(Kait's philosophy on life as we were doing her hair for church!)

Seven Down....Eternity to Go

"An eternal marriage is eternal. Eternal implies continuing growth and improvement. It means that man and wife will honestly try to perfect themselves. It means that the marriage relationship is not to be frivolously discarded at the first sign of disagreement or when times get hard. It signifies that love will grow stronger with time and that it extends beyond the grave. It means that each partner will be blessed with the company of the other partner forever and that problems and differences might as well be resolved because they are not going to go away. Eternal signifies repentance, forgiveness, long-suffering, patience, hope, charity, love, and humility. All of these things are involved in anything that is eternal, and surely we must learn and practice them if we intend to claim an eternal marriage." (I found this quote somewhere and the source wasn't quoted.)

Has it really been seven years?! As you said the other night, it doesn't seem like seven years to me, but I'm sure it feels like 100 to you! Maybe some days!!! There have been lots of facets of life in the past seven years - a beautiful little girl, job challenges and changes, tears, laughter, moves, our first house and some tragic moments too. Thanks for being by my side. I love you today more than I did seven years ago! Happy Anniversary! I'm looking forward to forever.

To Mutt or Not to Mutt

I drove by Home Depot on Saturday and saw the cutest puppies. We are thinking about getting another dog in the near future (yes, we are crazy) and are starting to "shop around". I picked up Trace and Kaitlyn at home and headed back that direction. I insisted on stopping to look at the pups. (We had to stop in HD to buy the bee spray anyway!) They were loading up the puppies, but left a little girl our for our enjoyment. These puppies were huge!!! I mean HUGE!!!! Their paws were almost as big as our Puff's head! Trace asked what they were. We were informed they are "blastiff", blood hound and mastiff. That right there was our queue to exit stage right. According to the very nice lady, the dad weighs 180 lbs and the mom weights 100 lbs! She informed us these are hybrid dogs.

My question is, what happened to the good ole' days of just mutts? I can only remember ever having one pure bred dog growing up. The rest were just run of the mill mutts. Don't get me wrong, we had awesome dogs. They just didn't have to be pure to be awesome.

After our date night (more on that later) and as we were lying in bed we started talking about these special "hybrid". We heard of labradoodle - lab and poodle, labradinger - lab and springer spaniel, cockapoo - cocker spaniel and poodle, borderjack - border collie and jack russell terrier, etc. So we decided to make up some of our own, using our doxie of course! Here you go:

doxer - doxen and boxer
dorev- doxen and retriever
doxtiff - doxen and mastiff

and Trace's input (drum roll please)

coxen - cocker and doxen

Obviously, I mean no offense to the dog breeders and lovers of these hybrid dogs. But, I would think they need to admit some of these name are quite hilarious. Especially after a long day, laying in bed, talking nonsense, leading to you and your spouse collapsing in giggle fits!