3 months old!

Almost 2 months ago :)

Talking

This was taken at the end of April and it's amazing how different she sounds now :) It's quite a bit louder and not at all timid anymore :) But still just as sweet!

Diapers

I love when I leave Bradley alone for a little bit and then go check on him and he's doing something adorable - it makes me so happy, probably because in my mind I'm always thinking, "oh no, what's he doing now" :) I guess puppy needed a diaper change (notice he layed out the blanket and everything :) )

Workin' on the yard and a sad goodbye

Here's a few pictures of us enjoying the backyard - well, let me rephrase - Gracie and I enjoying the backyard while the boys do yard work :)

These are the last pictures I have of my sweet sweet puppy Carmel. It's almost 2 months ago while I'm writing this and I am crying, still, right now and almost daily as I think about how much I want to cuddle him and love him. He was the sweetest dog I've ever known. I have always been a cuddler - ever since I was little - and I have never known a dog that wanted to cuddle as much as Carmel. He always wanted to be near you and could never get close enough, even if his 100 pound body was sitting in your lap - he would still try to nuzzle up closer and closer... never close enough. He had so many quirks about him that I miss every day and I'm so so sad that he's gone. We are still mourning in our house, we carry his collar around with us, and we just can't bring ourselves to throw away all his medicine we still have in the cabinet. A few weeks ago we had some neighbors - that we have never met in the 5 years of living here - come up to the back fence when we were in the yard and ask where Carmel was - yes, we had never spoken to these people, but they knew our sweet dog's name and they missed him too. It makes me so sad that I will have no more pictures of him to post and no more new memories to share. I will never stop missing him no matter how much time passes and I look forward to the day when I can hold him again.

Easter Day

We had people over for Easter Lunner (instead of Brunch :) ) We had a wonderful meal which everyone had a hand in, and we had a nice hunt in the backyard. Man, I sure do love my backyard. And by the way, out of the 80 some eggs that we hid we were missing 2 at the very end - and they were 2 that I had hid - I must be an amazing egg hider :) I should get a job with the Easter Bunny :)Have to do the Easter Bunny pose :)Then of course we had to play some games - If you've ever played games with us you would know that "Up and Down the River" is one of our favorites and it involves knocking on the table at the beginning of every round - so even before we started playing anything Bradley sat down at the table, grabbed some cards and knocked on the table :) He sure is observant, even when you don't realize he's watching, he sure takes it all in.

Dying Easter Eggs

The day before Easter we went over to Mom's house and met Mindy and the kids there and dyed Easter Eggs - it was so much fun, I haven't done that in years! Bradley didn't quite get the dying part, he is not one to get his hands messy :) But one of the kits came with these little stickers that you could put on the eggs and he LOVED that - especially since he recognized the stickers and just kept pointing them out and saying what they were "baumy (baseball - I don't know why), soccer, bawk (basketball), foofy (football)" over and over again - he sure loves his sports! :)It was a little hard for Drew to color the eggs because he didn't want to get his casts messy, but he was very impressed with one that I did, so I made another one for him :) Gracie was also very excited about the egg dying process - I'm pretty sure she was taking notes and will be a pro next year! :)

Easter Egg Hunt

So I looked and looked online trying to find a community Easter Egg Hunt to bring Bradley too. He loves putting things in buckets and taking them out so I thought he'd get a blast out of Easter this year. I found one at the Library, told Katie and Connor about it and they met us there.Bradley was excited to see Connor and they were having a good time kicking dirt together waiting for the hunt to start. Now, I remember going to these before with Mindy when Katie was really little and people were really nasty, actually pushing and pulling people just to get to the eggs - I was hoping it would be better this time. There are different age groups for different areas, ours was 0-3 years - it was the smallest area and it, by far, had the most kids - not very smart. We waited by the line, explaining to the kids that they were to go in and get the eggs and put them in their baskets as soon as the lady said "go" - they acted like they understood and were ready to go. The lady yelled "go" - people stampeded forward - Bradley started crying and turned around to me for help :( Poor thing, I don't blame him being scared at all - people are WAY too aggressive! I picked him up and brought him to the middle as quickly as I could so we could get to a place where their weren't so many people yet.I put him down and tried to show him how much fun picking up eggs was, but it didn't work - he was too scared of all the people running around crazy! We ended up getting 2 eggs and then a nice lady took pitty on my son's adorable sad face and gave us 4 of her son's eggs. After the people started to go away he started to calm down, and was even smiling through his tear streamed face.He enjoyed the eggs after that and had a lot of fun opening them up and trying to put them back together.After we got home I hid them for him over and over and that was much more fun! I had planned to go to another one later in the day, and I think he would have been more prepared, but I decided it was more fun at home with just the two of us anyway :)