Charlie is getting old. 

She doesn’t want to move when I need to change Katie’s diaper. She used to, but not anymore. 

I literally had to push Charlie out of the way in order to have room to lay Katie down. If you look closely, you can see Charlie’s tail poking out at Katie’s waist. 

   
Katie got hold of the tail. 🙂

    

Charlie really relaxing—stretching her leg out on top of Katie. 

 

Fine, I’ll do it myself!

After attempting to find scarves for the kids yesterday and failing completely (because even though it’s still the middle of winter and it’s been amazingly cold, the stores only have summer stuff out), I headed to Joann fabrics today to buy my own fleece. 



Done! Five 50″ scarves and four 60″ scarves from $5 worth of fleece (60% off blanket sets plus another $5 off with my coupon). They aren’t perfect but they’ll work!

Owen’s first sleepover

Owen’s first sleepover was tonight—and it was the first for both of his friends, too.

The kids played for a bit, then we started Fruit Ninja, which they all thoroughly enjoyed.

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It’s somewhat exhausting—and they can only really play one at a time—so then we did Crash Course which they could all play at the same time.

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Manuel doesn’t have pets, so he was ENTHRALLED with ours (you’ll see more pics later). 🙂

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Getting ready for cake!

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Time for a movie! Katie enjoyed the sleepover as much as the boys did!

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Getting the boys ready for bed about 9. They lined up for a picture, each with one of Owen’s stuffed animals—and here Owen was realizing that they each had one of the primary colors!

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Overall, it went pretty good. The boys were boys (roughhousing and such) but they are all fairly similar—very nice, polite, not too terribly rough, and they listened well. We were most worried about putting them to bed and what happened after that since neither of the boys had had a sleepover before. Of course, their parents were on call to come get them, and I had been updating them via text and pics throughout the night. So they all got their PJs on, brushed their teeth, and decided who would sleep where. We told them they could stay up and talk, but they couldn’t be too loud (since Katie was sleeping next door). I read them a story, pointed out all the night lights, told them that if they were scared at all or if anything was wrong to come get us (and we could call their parents), asked if they had any questions (no), and then turned out the lights, crossed my fingers, and went downstairs.

Within minutes, we heard them coming down the steps. 🙂 Apparently the boys were scared of the big stuffed bear, even though they had all been playing with him. But no biggie, Tom just went up with them and threw it in the guest room.

The second trip down (again with all three of them!) was because the kid who decided he wanted to sleep on the top bunk was apparently suddenly afraid of heights and didn’t want to sleep on the top bunk even though we went over that before. But no biggie, we asked if he wanted Owen to sleep on the top and he said no, he wanted to. Ooookay. Back to bed then, and we sent them upstairs.

The third trip down was to tell us that somehow the top-bunk-kid needed his bed made again (turns out he had pulled off all of his bedding to sleep on the floor). Okay, no biggie, Tom went up and got the bedding issue settled.

At this point, I told Tom we should go upstairs to our bedroom so the kids didn’t have to come all the way downstairs each time. So we did. 🙂

Minutes later (the fourth time out of bed), two had to go to the bathroom—even though they all went before getting in bed.

The fifth time, someone was scared of everything in the room. We added another night light (in addition to the three already in there).

Then we heard them talking quietly and we thought maybe that would be the end of it…but then we heard loud thumping and lots of noise so Tom went down and and found them all out of bed! They got told they could talk but they had to stay in bed. We heard more talking but nothing crazy.

About 10, we finally noticed they were really quiet. Tom checked on them and they were all out! We crossed our fingers and hoped it lasted!

Maggie’s Hematoma

On New Year’s Day, we discovered Maggie had an inflamed ear. Imagine a bubble in a potato chip but filled with…stuff. Google said ear mites or pooling blood and we determined it was likely a hematoma. Of course the vet wasn’t open since it was a holiday and Tom assured me his dogs had it in the past and it wasn’t an emergency…but I still felt awful for her (even though she doesn’t seem to be bothered by it).

We got her in this afternoon. She LOVED the adoptable kitties in the waiting room. She wanted to play with them SO badly! She was even barking (and you know she rarely barks!) and trying to get IN the cage.

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The other people in the waiting room loved her, of course. 🙂

So, we got TWO verdicts: a yeast infection in her ear and the the hematoma (possibly related but not 100%).

So we have drops for the infection and steroid pills are the recommended first course of treatment for the hematoma. The doctor has only done one surgery for a hematoma in five years (and that was for a dog who couldn’t handle the steroid pills) so we’re keeping our fingers crossed because the surgery is about $800.

As it was, with the vaccines (catching up from things due in October), tests (catching up, plus the ear stuff), meds (the above plus heartworm), and exam, it was a $400 visit. But, we were overdue for about $200 of that.

Maggie was so stressed out that she was drooling like mad and foaming at the mouth. She’s normally fine at the vet so I think it was just too much stimuli (those kittens! plus all the new smells!):

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This was her on the way home. 🙂

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And now she’s sleeping like a baby.

Charlie and the mouse!

Santa wasn’t going to get the cats anything because Charlie is the only one that eats treats and neither one really play with toys…but they had stockings hanging so I had to put something in them…so I got a bag of mice at the dollar store. Katie had to give the mice to Charlie right away—and Charlie actually played with it!

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Throughout the day, Katie would randomly bring the mice to Charlie but of course Charlie was done. 🙂