New Addition

I am now a proud mommy to ........

an English Bulldog.

For Christmas this year Daniel and I wanted to get the boys a puppy for Christmas , well yeah we have 2 dogs already but they are so big and hyper and don't like just sitting and being good inside, so we decided to get a small inside dog instead. My pick was an English Bulldog because they are SO cute. It took me for forever to talk Daniel into thinking they were cute too. But I finally did. Then we went on our trek to find one. Once we noticed how expensive they were we weren't so sure we could afford one. AKC registered pure breed high pedigree's are $3000 for females with breeding rights and $2500 for males and breeding rights. Seeing this we decided to look around every where. And when I say every where I mean EVERYWHERE. Montana Wyoming and Utah (of course Idaho as well.). When we finally were pushed to the very last minute with out any luck we thought maybe a pug , min pin, or a Boston terrier would be good. But we just didn't fall in love with their cute little faces , not like we fell in love with the bulldog face.

Finally on Friday Daniel found a number on a couple puppies for verily cheap, a female brindle papered highly pedigreed English bulldog. They were asking $1500 with no breeding rights but we still couldn't handle that much. But the people were so nice and took the price down considerable low with breeding rights.

So now we have a sweet little girl brindle in color with the best attitude almost potty trained at 7 weeks ,so of course she is very smart ,English Bulldog named TINY DIVA. We had to go with a name that made people think before they saw her, because she is by far tiny. What bulldog is?

Our Christmas Traditions!

Since the day that my children were born I've always wanted our own traditions in our house.
The ones I use to have in my family , ones that Daniels family have had in their home, and new ones we could call our very own.
For our Christmas traditions we have in our home they are as follows,
We decorate the tree together ( usually the Monday following Thanksgiving).
The kids put the ornaments on the tree, even when they were one year old, they were so cute at that age ,because most of the ornaments went on one branch of the tree. But as they've gotten older they have decided to decorate the whole tree rather then one branch.

We paint a new ornament every year, it started by me painting them before the kids could paint them themselves. But now that they are older they paint them. It's neat to see over the years how much better their paintings become.

Bradleys OrnamentDustins ornament
I also buy a new ornament for them so when they are older they have their own for their new home and tree. Although I do hate thinking of them as older and not living with me for the rest of their lives.
Then they make a ginger bread house, I think they have more fun eating the goodies that go on the house rather then decorating it. I'm pretty sure the icing is their favorite. Because we usually go through a whole tub of it while we decorate.
I also like to take the kids out to look at all the beautiful lights , Daniel gets to go along even though this is the least favorite part for him. Candy cane lane is a must to drive past and look. One of these days I'll talk Daniel into putting lights on our home or at least have him help me put them up. As for now we will enjoy every one else's lights.
I try to take the kids to see Santa so they can give him their lists , but as time passes they have begun to think they are too big for that scene. So they usually write him a letter and we send it off to him.
We also take the kids out shopping for Christmas presents for one another. I take one of the boys with me and Daniel takes the other. I think they enjoy this the most because each year we start the shopping earlier and earlier. They get a budget of how much they can spend and use every last penny of it too. They get to wrap these presents as well.
They love watching Christmas movies with us, so we watch one every night starting from the first week in December until Christmas Eve. My favorite is Polar Express, and Christmas Story. But really I love them all.
Bradley's is Christmas Story and Dustin's is Grinch ( the one with Jim Carey).
On Christmas day we unwrap our presents to one another and enjoy them for a little while, then hop in the hot tub to warm up. At about 9 or so we head out to my mother in laws first to unwrap gifts with every one there. Then after we have visited for a moment or so we head to my moms to unwrap gifts and eat a wonderful Christmas dinner with all of them. If we are lucky and the weather is nice we usually make it home in time to relax before bed and enjoy all the things we got.
I think Christmas is my favorite time of year , not just because of the gifts, but because of all the time we get to spend with our families. As years pass it's nice to see our traditions grow.