Charlston Dance

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Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, Scott and I took the kids to his mom's house for dinner, and then to my parents house for dessert. And like every year, we stuffed ourselves silly with turkey, stuffing and yummy pies!


Here's a picture of Scott and I in his mom's(Susan) backyard. Our 11 year old neice, Ashley took this photo for us.

Here's Maddie modeling the turkey shirt she made at preschool. She's so proud of it! She did a wonderful job.

Here is the family photo we took in Susan's backyard. I was wanting to get a good shot for the Christmas card photo this year, but the kids were not cooperative. We did end up getting a better shot later in the day, but I'm keeping that one a secret until the Christmas cards are sent out. :)

Here is my nephew, Sawyer, enjoying his green jello with whipped cream. Mmmm.

Here is my 13 year old nephew, Austin. He is a BIG New York Giants fan. (In case you couldn't tell from his shirt) He spent dinner and dessert with my family and then his dad picked him up for the weekend.

Sawyer was apparently still hungry after his jello. He is so excited to be walking. Now he can get into EVERYTHING! :-)


After dessert we all sat down and played some dominoes. You can't go to my parents house without playing a game of dominoes. It just wouldn't be right!

All in all we had a wonderful day, and I am glad we were able to see everybody.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I wish everyone luck on their holiday shopping. LOL

Puppy Class

Jax started puppy training a few weeks ago, and so far it's going pretty well. He's learned how to sit and lay down, and we've learned how to teach him not to pull while we are walking him (although that one seems to be a slow process for us!), as well as how to teach him not to take things without permission (that one will be an even slower process..LOL).

At his first class, he barked for the first 5 or 10 minutes at all the other dogs, but after a bigger dog showed up to class, he shut right up. :) Our trainer had us face him away from the other dogs so he couldn't see them, and that seemed to help as well. He barked a little less at the second class, and then this past week, he hardly barked at all.

He is starting to get the hang of loose leash walking. He used to pull all the time, but now when he catches himself pulling he will immediately stop and sit down until I tell him it's ok to go. He still pulls a lot, but he seems to realize as soon as the leash is tight that he's pulling and stops. Yay! Hopefully with some more practice he will stop pulling altogether.

A few weeks after we got Jax we realized he could jump the 24 inch tall baby gate we were using to pen him in our bathroom while we were gone. So we bought a 32 inch baby gate and that worked...for about another two weeks. Then he figured out how to jump that one too. So we stacked them on top of each other to make a gate that was almost 5 feet tall....and this weekend he figured out how to climb it. He's apparently very smart and persistent. But he doesn't get out all of the time. It seems he only climbs the fence when he needs to potty, and then he'll pee by the back door. I am glad he at least knows where he's supposed to go. I feel bad when we are not there to let him out. I would like to install a dog door, but we don't have a sliding glass door, so we'd have to get a wall door. Scott is not sure he wants to cut a hole in the wall, so for now we'll just keep working on the potty training and try to let him out often.

All in all, the class is going well. We have about 5 more weeks to go, and so far it's been a lot of fun!