Autum

It's finally fall. The season voted unanimously as the best season ever (at least in my home anyway). The weather is so wonderful that I want to spend all my free time outdoors. Good news for Delight since she loves being outside just as much as me, bad news for my house that could use a good cleaning.
This morning I walked out on our porch to take the puppy out to potty (more about that later) and was reminded of how blessed I am. For those of you who don't know where I live, I'll fill you in. We have a long driveway. Half a mile long to be exact. There are woods on 3 sides of us and fields in front of us. So our closest neighbor is half a mile away. The seclusion is nice and very peaceful. With the woods around us, we rarely have wind (a big plus in the winter). It was so still and calm this morning. The only sound you could hear were the birds singing and some crickets chirping. Isn't God wonderful?! The beautiful nature that He created blows me away and I'm so grateful that He blessed us with a home where we get to live so close to it. Sometimes I get nervous about all that needs done to our house (especially if we have a couple more kids) and I think we would be better off to move, but mornings like this make me wonder why I ever have those thoughts. I'm realizing that when I complain about all the work that our house needs (if we want to live here forever), that I'm not being grateful for what God has so graciously blessed us with.

So about the puppy....yes, we got another puppy. The Dachshund proved to be a bit of a challenge. I'm sure he'll be a good dog some day, but man was he hyper. We only had him a little more than a week when Sam's cousin came over and fell in love with home, so now he lives with them and their two older girls. We were going to wait till spring to get another pup, but Summer was getting into a lot of trouble (tearing things up) I guess from boredom. So we decided to get a Shih Tzu/ Bichon mix pup. His name is Briggs. He's a real lover and so much more calm than Dachshund. He doesn't like being left alone one bit, but Summer is helping us out with that. Delight likes him. Despite her picking him up by his hair a couple times (don't worry, she got in trouble), he still seems to like her and follows her all around.

He's a little fur ball

Hanging out with Delight

I think Delight likes the cage more than he does

Crazy girl!

Her hair's not quite long enough for pigtails, but I still thought it was cute :)

Birthday girl

Delight's Birthday was almost a month ago and I'm just now posting pictures. It's just been busy lately. I've been canning, we're having a big garage sale at my mom's this weekend, and next weekend we leave for vacation to Myrtle Beach.
Her Birthday went well. We had some family over and had cake, nothing big and fancy. She seems to enjoy being the center of attention and had a good time with her cake.
I think I finally feel like an adult now. I'm 25, have been married 5 years and have a 1 year old. That sounds pretty grown up to me.

This is her cheesy grin. She'll do it on command most of the time. She's such a clown. I think Sam and I will have our hands full with this one!

Cake always tastes better when squeezed.

Diving right in

This is what Sam and I got her for her B-day and she loves it!

Her first baby. She carries it every where, gives it kisses, and will search all over the house for it saying "bebe" when I ask her where her baby is.

Popping a squat in her pool before the party

Isn't she cute? Just kidding, that's me. I didn't realize how much she looks like me until I saw this photo. My sis in law asked me when I got Delight dressed up like that when I showed her the pic.

This was such a freak thing that I made Sam take a picture. Delight fell asleep in my arms at church. She NEVER does that. She likes to be laid down and left alone. It was kind of nice. Our preacher is pretty loud and she slept right through the service.

I got this cute kid sleeping bag that came in a backpack for D at a rummage sale. She thinks it's wonderful. Every time I get it out she carries all her toys over and plays on it.

Having some fun with her Elmo sprinkler.

We celebrated our 5 year anniversary on the 7th. We went to a Brad Paisley/ Dierks Bentley concert in Indy on the 8th. It was awesome the weather was great. We stayed in a hotel down there and my mom and Shelley helped with Delight. 2 nights by ourselves was wonderful!

The 7th we spent the night at the lake. We borrowed Sam's dad's boat and tooled around the lake. We camped that night.

Super baby! Delight was teething and grumpy this day and the only thing that would make her happy was wearing this blanket. I finally pinned it on her.

Sam and I went ah crawdad hunting :) We took a saining (sp??) net and caught a huge batch! We boiled them the next night and froze the tails to make dip later and ate a few too. They were good!

Last month we went to a Indiana's game with Sam's family and had a good time

We went on a canoe trip last weekend with Sam's family. Our nephew Corbin rode with us.

Good-bye

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve blogged! Summer just gets so busy and goes by way too fast. A lot has happened since my last post. I’ll try to get you updated. This might be long. I have a lot of pictures!

We’ve had to say some hard good-byes lately. The first one was hard for me.
My Shih Tzu , Dottie, I’ve had for the last 10 years. She’s my little buddy and I love her to death. I have always been a little leery with her around young children. We knew we may have problems with her and Delight. She had done pretty good, but Delight refused to leave her alone. She would chase her all over the house and if she did get a hold of her, she would pull her hair and be way too rough. I tried and tried to get Delight to understand how to be nice and gentle, but she just wasn’t getting it. After chasing Dottie around most of the morning, Delight finally cornered her in the kitchen and before I could get over there, Dottie bit her. It wasn’t real bad, but Sam and I talked about it a lot and came to the decision that we had to find Dottie a home before it happened again and maybe worse. It’s been one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make. I was very picky about who she went to and God helped us find her a wonderful home. She now lives with a retired couple that adores her. I talk to them just last night and they went on and on about what a great dog she is and how much they love her. She sleeps on the bed with them and is very spoiled. She certainly gets much more attention than she did over here. I still miss her a lot, but I feel better knowing that she is well taken care of and they live near by if I want to go visit. It was a very hard decision, but I knew it was what we had to do for our daughter.

Another good-bye that was much harder was Sonel leaving on Monday. I know I’ve wrote about Sonel and posted pictures of him on here before, but I’ll give a quick rundown for those of you that don’t know. Sonel is a little boy from Haiti that came to stay with my parents April of 2008, to have surgery on his two club feet. He had stayed at the rescue center in Haiti (that the missionaries that we support run) for several months before coming over here. His parents told the missionaries that they didn’t want him back. His surgery was rough on him and my parents. He was 4 when he came over, and babies born in the US with club feet would have surgery when they were very young, so his was much tougher. Through the months, everyone grew very close to Sonel and my parents decided they wanted to adopt him, since his parents didn’t want him. When the missionaries brought the parents in to talk about it, they had many stipulations. My parents would have to send them money every month, bring him over several times a year; he would have to return to Haiti when he was 18 to care for them, and many others. There was no way that it would be possible, so he had to go back. He’s such a sweet little boy that has grown to be a part of our family. It’s hard to think about him going to live with a family that doesn’t want him. We’ve been praying for him a lot, that God would always be in his life, that his family would care for him, or let him be adopted, that he would be healthy, have plenty to eat and be able to go to school, and that we would be able to stay in contact with us somehow. Please pray with us! Sonel has been Americanized :) He speaks English so well and can’t remember a bit of Creole! I’m sure he’ll pick it back up. My parents will be there with him for a week, so hopefully he’ll adjust to life back there before they leave. I know it will break my parent’s heart when they have to leave, so please pray for them too.
So I’ve been a weepy baby these last few weeks. And poor Sam has had to deal with me :)


We had a going away party for Sonel Sunday evening. There were a ton of people and it was so great to see everyone. My mom took pictures of everyone who came with Sonel. The next day we printed double prints of all of them and put them in a little album for Sonel to take to Haiti and then the other copies we’ll give to who he had the picture with. I thought it was a great idea!

Well enough of the serious stuff…now on to some Delight cuteness.

Sam and I were trying to think of some funny things Delight has done lately to jot down in her baby book, so I thought I’d share some of them with you.
When there is something off limits for Delight, I’ll tell her no-no, don’t touch. She’ll then crawl around saying nah-nah, nah-nah. We have a new puppy (I’ll get to that soon), and they both get to be a little rough with each other. The other day he bit her too hard and she started to whine and crawl away and then she stopped and turned back to him and started telling him nah-nah-nah.
We caught her crawling around with a chew stick in her mouth that the puppy had just been chewing. Ewwww!
I caught her licking the puppy.
She’s been standing up in the middle of the floor all the time. She will now put her hands and head on the floor and look through her legs. It’s cute!
She has a big pink ball that she hits with the back of her hand and chases all over the house. She gets very excited.
She’s into blowing raspberries right now. She’ll do it for so long that her shirt is soaked!

We did get a new puppy since finding Dottie a new home. His name is Dash and he’s a long hair Dachshund. He’s about 2 months old now. We probably jumped the gun a little on getting him so soon. It’s been a while since I’ve had a puppy and he’s driving me a little crazy. He’s very high energy and he loves to chew everything, except the piles of toys I have him encircled in. Delight is his favorite chew toy, although she might deserve it for torturing Summer and Dottie so much. He’s doing pretty good on potty training and can hold it in his kennel a really long time. I think a crazy 2 month old puppy and active almost 1 year old baby running around the house at the same time was a little more than I bargained for. I’m sure everything will be fine, or I’ll throw the puppy through the window. (If there are any animal rights activist reading this right now- I am just kidding). Jeez..you’d think I’d have this whole puppy raising thing down pat, being a dog trainer and all. There’s a big difference in working with puppies for an hour once a week and living with one of the crazy beasts. *sigh* I miss my calm, 10 year old lap dog.

Hmmm…let me think if there are any other interesting happenings in our life.
Sam is playing softball on base, so that’s been fun to watch.

Oh yeah! Delight took her first steps on Sunday! It was at my mom’s house before the party. She’s been taking a few more steps everyday here and there, but isn’t making up a lot of ground yet. I’m sure she will soon.
That’s all for now. Enjoy the pictures!




Here's my 3 girls this winter. Before Delight could chase Dottie around a torture her.



Here I am with Dottie, preggo with Delight



Here's our new terror- Dash



This is from the Pier Reunion that we had the end of June. I took a little pool for the kiddos to play in. Delight's having some fun with cousins Amia, Maya, and Madison.



Delight is such a water bug! She couldn't sit still.



Ah..here's a nice picture. The highlight of the reunion- the "Anteek Road Show" that Sam and his cousin Brad put on :)


Here's my little cutie pie enjoying her some watermelon at the reunion.





Delight and Sonel swimming at my mom's

Delight's first time tubing! She would have liked it a lot better had it not been for the life vest. She was getting so upset when it would ride up in her face. She loved the water though and would get excited when we were going faster and going over bumps.

Drying off after with daddy.

Here's Delight going for a ride in Mark and Carol's push around car. She loved it so much that we decided to get her one for her first B-day. Don't tell her ;)

Here's my "little helper" throwing some laundry out of the basket for me. I leave the room for just a moment and this is what I come back to find.

Looks so innocent, doesn't she?

Here's Delight's grand trick-looking through her legs. She does it a lot, but it's been hard to capture on film (or, umm, on memory card I guess). She cracks me up.

Here's our picture with Sonel at the party.

My mom and dad with him.

This is Sonel's doctor who did the surgery and all the follow up appointments for free. He came all the way from Indy to come to the party! He's a great guy and has such a heart for the people of Haiti. He travels there several times a year to do surgery on club feet to train Haitian doctors.

My niece Zoie and friend's little girl Olivia

Lots of friends and family came!

Delight looking pretty

This is my nephew Gabriel with Sonel. They are best buds and so cute together!

He is so good with babies and has always been interested in Delight and Zoie ever since they were very little. I asked him before how many kids he wanted to have and he said 2. I asked him what he would name them and he said he'd name one of them Freddie (that's the nickname that mom gave him) :)

I'm going to miss him so much!

We came over Monday before they left and went swimming.

Sonel with the girls.