Christmas: Part 2 of 2, and More Puppy Pictures

Sunday my family was supposed to come up here for our Christmas celebration but because of the impending storm we decided to postpone our get together until Monday afternoon.  We didn't end up getting a ton of snow here but my parents and sister in NJ got around 12 inches and they had declared it a state of emergency so it was probably good we didn't make them come anyway :)

I spent the whole morning on Monday cleaning and cooking.  I didn't have a lot to cook as I had already made my applesauce and corn in the summer but I did have a lot of cleaning to do.  We usually celebrate Christmas in NJ at my parents house but since we have a litter of puppies and Mishti was due any day with her litter of puppies we couldn't leave our house for more than 3-4 hours at a time.  So everyone was nice enough to squeeze into our little house this year.  People started arriving around 2:00 in the afternoon and we were eating by 3:00.

We had this little kid table and a bigger kid/card table and then the adult table all in our dinning room!  It was a bit cramped but also nice that you could hear every conversation going on :)

being silly...

being cute...

She just started sucking her bottom lip like that.

After dinner we all let our food settle a bit and then retired to the living room to open presents.  I got 3 of the kids pillow pets.

My mom and dad got Joanna her very own little kitchen.  She ran to it squealing and was playing with it before it was all out of the box and put together!

I think she likes it :)

Showing off toys to Uncle Christian.

Everyone wanted to hold the puppies all day.  They weren't able to hold them as much as they would have liked but did get a couple hours in of puppy-love :)

Christy crotcheted this cute hat for Katy.

The time together went by really quickly and before we knew it everyone was on their way home again. C and C had brought along their play yard for us to borrow to move Blondie and her puppies away from Mishti so that evening we set it up down in the laundry room area of the basement and now we get to hold puppies while we watch TV in the evenings.

You think we enjoy having puppies in the house? :)

Tuesday I declared a day off for myself and didn't do anything at all.  Mishti had her puppies in the later part of the day and I was so anxious to look at them and see how many she had but she gets very protective/aggressive right after she whelps so I wasn't able to see.

Wednesday morning I bundled all the kids up and we went to meet some of my friends and their kids at a pond for some ice skating.  Chase and Joanna didn't want to ice skate so we just ran around on the ice and I pulled them and other kids in a sled for an hour and a half. 

That smile is frozen on his face :)

Katy slept the whole time in the Ergo again.

All of the kids were around the same ages as each other so it was fun to watch them play with one another.  The one boy pulling the sled with his bike is the same age as Chase.

I never would have thought to bring bikes to a frozen pond but they had a blast riding them all around the ice and doing "burnouts".

The whole day on Wednesday Mishti would still not come out of her kennel or let me look in.  Here she is snarling at me because I was touching her kennel.

We had turkey bacon ranch melts with leftover Christmas turkey on Wednesday night for dinner and I enticed her out with some bacon.  She ran right back in when I tried to peak really quick but I thought I saw 3 puppies in there.  I was really happy with 3 puppies because she hadn't looked that pregnant to me the whole time and I kept telling Ricky she would only have one or two.

Thursday morning I finally got her to go outside.  I threw a bone out the door and when she ran after it I went inside quick to look at the puppies.  There were FOUR puppies in there!  I couldn't believe it!  2 males and 2 females and very shiny and healthy looking.

So now we have 7 puppies and 3 big dogs and 3 monkeys all in our house!  I think we may be a little out numbered :P  Mishti is doing much better now too.  She still doesn't want me near the kennel but she's not nearly as aggressive as she had been.

I got some good pictures of Joanna the other day:

She's so funny...

Thursday while they were napping I took down the tree and all the decorations and when they came down Chase asked Jo where the Christmas tree went.  She said, "I ated it, it's in ma belly."  I don't know how she thinks of this stuff.

I love how they love each other :)

After naps and feeding Katy we went for a walk since it was warmer than usual.  After we got back from our walk I threw the ball for Jenna a while and Chase threw snowballs at her.  I think he only got her once.  After I was done throwing the ball for Jenna Chase and I decided to build a little snowman together.

a happy little snowgirl.

Joanna graced us with her presence for the picture.

I always love being able to go outside to play.