Cute li'l ones

This morning we had a Halloween party/playgroup at our house for MOMS Club. Awhile ago, I asked Max and Ben what they wanted to be for Halloween. They yelled "Trains!" At least it made getting their costumes easy: hmmm, open closet, reach to the back, pull out last year's costume. Done. And you can see that Ben wasn't interested in wearing his costume this morning. Shocker, huh? But at least he had his Thomas t-shirt on. The dogs did well too. I put a gate at the bottom of the stairs and closed all the bedroom doors so they could hang out on the steps or in the little hall at the top. I figured they'd be a little calmer if they could see the action instead of being totally closed into a bedroom or running amok through the middle of it. I should've gotten a picture of the kids...they were all smiles just petting the dogs through the stair railings, and Cedar and Aspen were just eating it up too. A little petting zoo attraction at the Halloween party!

But the party went really well. I was initially a little worried at the prospect of being overrun by preschoolers when the evite was up to about 30 guests within about 24 hours of going out. Our final tally today was 27, but it didn't feel crazy at all and I think the kids had a lot of fun, especially since many (like Max) are on fall break and missing that extra time playing with kids at school. Now mine are crashed out...nice!

Cedar!

Well this morning we adopted Cedar.

We think and hope he'll be a good match for our family. He's about 12 months old, and we adopted him from Freedom Service Dogs, an organization that rescues dogs from shelters and then trains them to be service dogs - very cool! About 50% of the dogs that are rescued end up not meeting the requirements to be a service dog and are put up for adoption, whether it's for health reasons (not having perfect hips, eyes, etc) or for temperament. Cedar is a service dog flunkee :) because he just kind of reached a point in the training and stopped progressing. But he seems very sweet and was the calmest of the bunch we met. Plus he has some basics already, like being house-broken (yeah!) and a lot of health and temperament screenings from the agency.

We'll see how Aspen adjusts...he's definitely a younger dog that wants to play with her and she's kind of a dog snob, but at least he's not a totally crazy baby pup.

He was already named Cedar too. We could rename him, but he responds well to Cedar, and since we have an Aspen already, we'll just go with the tree theme :).

Bring on the dog hair!

Here's Max keeping those dogs in line:

Pumpkins for the Punkins!

Priceless! SNL VP Debate