School, swine flu and a new family member!

Whew! What a week!

Skyler began 1st grade with a great attitude and a lot of excitement. Though the school was a madhouse, we were thrilled to walk Skyler in to school and see him off on his first day. His teacher seems very nice, some of his best friends are in his class, and I think everyone (himself included) is excited to see how well he'll do with the ADD under control. Skyler had to choose 3 things to present to the class this week in order to explain "who he is". He chose a golf ball, to represent his love of golf. And a small car, to represent the Hot Wheels collection which is always spilling over in his room. And the third item? Was it a picture of his mommy? Nope. He wanted a picture of Georgia, to talk about his wonderful dog.

Alex started Tuesday morning just thrilled to be going to school. Then I told him that kids may not play video games before school. It's amazing how quickly he reconsidered his enthusiasm! After awhile, though, he had forgotten his school boycott and became excited again. He was so excited, in fact, that he insisted on wearing his backpack in to Skyler's school- you know, just in case the principle decided to reconsider the age limits. I bet there were a lot of people thinking "I knew kindergarteners were small, but isn't that pushing it?". While Alex was at the park today, he got 3 bee stings. Poor guy! My mom said that he took it like a champ and was soon irritated that Grandma was bothering to check out his wounds. So, pretty much- the bees didn't change him one bit!

Fast forward to Wednesday- they day before Dusty was to return to work from vacation. Dusty had begun feeling under the weather Tuesday night. Figuring it was exhaustion, he went to bed at 5:30. On Wednesday, not only had he NOT improved, but he was worse. Grandma Marcia picked up the kids from school in order to help him rest. By Wednesday evening, it was downright scary. I took him to urgent care where he was very quickly diagnosed with H1N1. The swine flu. So...now work for Dusty. I'd say vacation was extended a week, but this is no vacation! No doubt he'd rather be working at the moment. Through some amazing family generosity, the kids have been gone since. While I miss them like crazy, this seems to be the best way to keep them healthy and give Dusty time to recover. I am on Tamiflu to prevent H1N1, so aside from boredom, I'm going just fine. But I sure can't wait to see Dusty happy again!

Today (Friday) my boredom got the best of me. I HAD to get out. So I grabbed a soda (which I'd sworn off 2 weeks ago- bad me) and started driving. Not the most economical thing to do, but considering my car gets good gas mileage, I thought it was a small price to pay for sanity. Well, on that drive I somehow found myself looking at dogs. This weekend is National Adopt A Pet weekend, and all the shelters are doing outreach programs at local pet stores. One such outreach that I happened upon had a dog named Dillon.

Dillon is 7-9 years old, male, and sweet as can be. Dillon pretty much looks like a thin but taller version of Georgia- with a bleached white hair do. Dillon stood out to me as "the dog". Now, we've seen dogs that we love in the past, but the problem has been Georgia. Georgia has what I like to call a princess syndrome. As in, any person or animal who doesn't treat her like a princess is immediately on the naughty list. For this reason, she has a real problem with dogs trying to assert their dominance, hit on her when she isn't interested, or act annoyingly energetic. Dusty, the kids and I watched not too long ago as she knocked a dog her size up in to the air (fortunately, a wall stopped him) for sniffing her butt. She thought he was moving too fast. So though I loved Dillon, I kind of assumed that Georgia would tell me, once again, that she didn't feel Dillon was her type.

The minute Georgia and Dillon saw each other, it was clear that he was not just "any other dog". She loves him. After seeing how happy they were together, I filled out the paperwork and paid $25 (it makes me sad that they have to practically give away an awesome dog because he is 7 years old) to make Dillon the newest Bigham. Dillon happily jumped into the back seat of my car, next to Georgia, and never looked back.

So here we are- Friday, September 11th (a day which always gives me pause...). The end of our first week of school. The kids love school, Dusty hates pigs, and Dusty and I (and the kids, once they meet him- it's a surprise!) love Dillon. And Georgia!