And I signed up for this?

Its been one of those summers. I really wish I had one thing to do each day... or every other day, and just enjoy the rest. My biggest complaint is that I feel like I run 4 soon to be 5 lives. Now I'm not saying the Evan doesn't do anything but his job is mapped out for him. He wakes up, goes to work, comes home, does a few things to help out, eats dinner, and goes to bed. I get up and feed everyone, bathe and dress everyone, get everyones hair done. My day varies from that point on. I make and go to all of our dr appts, clean, grocery shop, fix meals, pay bills, get the loans and vehicle tags, take care of the garden and animals (new puppies remember?) Organize the birthday parties, do the invites, buy the gifts, make the cakes, do a little side job for extra money, prepare for my church calling, do visiting teaching, take the girls swimming....AND SO ON all...while pregnant. Guess what? I don't get paid for any of this (except my side job of course)! Now I knew what I was getting into having kids and all but, wow, some days I just want to lock myself in a room and turn out the lights.

It has been a little stressful but I'm slowly working through everything bit by bit. July 10 our dog delivered 8 precious puppies. Last Saturday we had to leave town to go to the Wyo Rodeo in Sheridan so that I could sell some of my stuff. We were gone a little over 24 hours and had Evans family take over on the puppies and dogs. A few hours before we arrived home we were told that Dinky (the mother) killed two of her puppies. I think she was mad that we left her and decided to not take care of her puppies. When I got the other 6 puppies they were bloated (from not being relieved) and starving! I had to stay up all night Sunday night making sure Dinky was doing her job and letting her in and out of the house to give her a break. Well now she has decided that she doesn't want to nurse at all. I have to hold her down and let the puppies nurse or else she'll just sit up and they will only be able to get to the bottom half of her or she will just walk around looking for a spot to lay down by herself. Not fun. Then We found a spot on 3 of the puppies that looked like they had something dripped on them. It would not clean off and was crusty so we put some peroxide on it and it bubbled like crazy. I brought them into the vet today and found out they have a mild form of staph but it won't transfer to the other dogs or to humans. So now I've got to give them meds twice a day. Dinky also has mastitis on the upper half from not laying down for the pups to nurse so she gets meds too. Kimi has her Bday party this weekend so I have to bake the cake today decorate tomorrow and have everything ready on Saturday.

Baby Update: So I went to my appt this morning, I am 26 weeks and measuring at 31 weeks. Yeah I'm not further along thats for sure. They told me that I have to go in for another ultrasound because one of the babys kidneys was borderline abnormal. Great. I asked what that meant for us and the baby and they said that in a month they will see how things develop and if it looks worse then they will do an ultrasound on the baby after he/she is born. It could lead to lots of bladder infections and other little inconveniences for this baby throughout their life. So I'm crossing my fingers that whatever the problem is, it will develop out of it and nothing will be wrong.

Kiddo Updates: Takara is such a jabber box. She says some of the funniest things. Lately if we are doing something that doesn't interest her she will look at me and say, are you coming or what? She loves to sing and tell stories and have them read to her. Takara also love love loves animals. Any and every kind. Thankfully we have a lot around for her to love on. She and Kimi have been fighting a lot lately. It starts out with a little dissagreement, one may have a toy the other wants, then screaming, then it turns into pushing, then hitting, then Takara will pinch and Kimi will bite. Its hard to break them up especially when we are in a store or something where I can't get them away from each other. If we are in the car they will just scream at each other and it goes back and forth. Kimi has also been talking ALOT. She will ask a question, what are you doing? is her favorite. Then after you tell her she has to confirm and repeat. For example she poked her head into the shower and asked me what I was doing and I told her I was shaving my legs. Oh, shaving you legs? Kimi love to eat. She is such a peanut so I don't know where she puts it but she will eat breakfast 3 times. She always wakes up first between 6 but not later than 7:30. I will feed her breakfast and when Takara wakes up (between 8:30 and 9:30) she will eat again with her. Then around 10:30 she will usually want another bowl of cereal or something to eat on. Then between noon and 1 we will have lunch and so on.

I haven't been very good at posting pictures but here are a few of our summer so far and of course they are backwards in order so starting from the most recent here they are!

Here is Kimi ready to go to the 4th of July Parade in Cody

Takara on 4th of July. She has been into the whole picture taking thing lately. She always asks to get her picture taken or she will want to take pictures herself with the camera. This is a complete turn around since we couldn't get her to even look at the camera before.

Here is Takara with her horses Roy and Sweet. I'm so glad they are gentle because I've caught Takara in with them a couple of times and its completely freaked me out. Shes still too young to know the rules of horses like not walking behind their rear ends. But this is where she spends most of her time when she's outside.

Here is Kimi walking around, she is a litte explorer and will try to take off on me when I get out to the garden. She will go over to the pigs and likes to go for little walks by herself. She is a little stinker and goes where ever she thinks shes not supposed to.

The girls at the Lovells Day parade. Kimi was a little confused since we had been having a lot of trouble with her staying out of the street. We would yell for them to run to get the candy...in the street.

Surprise surprise, the hounds are here!

I love babies...any kind of babies! When we found our bassets had bred I was so excited for little floppy eared loosed skinned puppies! I estimated July 8th to be about the time our female Dinky would give birth (so I wasn't that far off!). July 8th came and went and the same with the 9th.

I began to think maybe I was way off and she wouldn't have them for another week or so. Just to be safe I tied her up in the front of the house, just in case she started having puppies when we were asleep or not around at all, the other dogs wouldn't get in her way...or hurt the pups.

That night I kept having crazy dreams about puppies and all kinds of other weird stuff. I kept waking up and feeling sick to my stomach. Literally sick, not from the dreams, but I was pretty sure I either had the flu or a galbladder attack. Yesterday morning I woke up and still felt really sick and thought oh I hope this isn't the day Dinky decides to give birth.

I called down the sub list at 7am for my primary class and no one was answering so I called my mother in law and she said she would take care of it and just to get some rest. Evan was on call for work so he couldn't take the girls to church by himself because if he did get called out again, he wouldn't just be able to pick up and leave.

So here we were miserable, on a Sunday morning. I went outside to check on Dink and she was completely tangled around the deck posts. I unhooked her and unwound her rope and tied her back up. She wasn't doing anything different than normal so I didn't think much of it. I went back into the house and laid down. Dinky was not impressed and let me know by howling and howling and howling. I went back out and she was tangled up AGAIN! I thought, I do not feel good enough for this and slinked my way back down under the deck. I look over and there was a puppy!

I unhooked Dinky and picked up the pup and walked inside. Evan looked at me and jumped up off the couch and said are you serious! I sarcastically said no I'm just kidding. We threw on some outside clothes and let the process begin. Dinky did an awesome job and the day felt long and hot. 9 am to 3:30 pm and the last pup was out. I got to hold and snuggle on each puppy and Dinky wasn't a bit worried. During some points I had all the puppies in my lap to get them out of the way while she was giving birth or cleaning a new one off.

She is such a good mom and is so careful when laying down to nurse. I was so scared I was going to wake up this morning and find a puppy smothered. Bassets are known to accidentally smother their pups, so you have to watch them and the pups for a few weeks. Luckily Dinky is extra cautious so she goes to one end and waits for the pups to scoot their way to her.

I started feeling sad last night and told Evan that I feel so attached to these puppies right now that when it was time to actually sell them I didn't know how I was going to be able to handle it. He kind of laughed and said you'll be fine. There will be more litters and it was good that I loved them. It would make them be good family dogs for other people. I guess my pregnancy horomones just take over sometimes and make me all crazy :) Anyways here is Dinky and her pups. 6 males and 2 females.

What we've been up to!

The last month and the start of this month has kind of been a blur. We've been keeping busy and loving the hot weather!

I'll start off with a pregnancy update, I am 24 weeks a.k.a 6 months!!! Even though I've only got 16 weeks left I can honestly say I don't know how much more I can handle. My first two pregnancies went by like a breeze. Other than the normal discomforts of a growing belly, I really felt the same as I did when I wasn't pregnant. This time around my body just doesn't want to cooperate. I was sick for the first 18 weeks, then once that went away my body decided that the heartburn should kick in. That was getting so bad that I was actually throwing up and losing weight. I tried tums, zantac...you name it I tried it. Finally they put me on nexium to kill the daily acid cells in my stomach. I got a horrible cold, one of the worst I've ever had which brought my immune system down. I got an abcess in the gum tissue in my mouth from a piece of food getting caught or poked in (like a chip or popcorn). So as you can guess I had to take penicillin to take care of the infection which killed the bad bacteria...and GOOD bacteria. So I had to take meds for that. NOW because of the pressure of the baby and the way a bladder changes during pregnancy and holding it all night long I have a UTI...seriously I need this to be over. I hate taking medication, and it just gives me all sorts of anxiety while pregnant. I've got a delicate perfect being growing in me and I don't want to damage them in any way. BUT I do understand that I NEED to take medication when there is something wrong so that it does not hurt the baby.

Some other updates, last month we decided to take on 2 miniature studs (Roy and Sweet) and 4 minature mares (Buttons, Angel, Sadie, and Ellie). I've always LOVED miniature horses and since Evans mom has a ton of them it was a lot easier to get into them. The woman we got these horses from has a disease that affects her kidneys so in order to live longer she had to get rid of any extra stresses in her life. Her horses are very high quality and have been shown. Roy himself is a 3 time national champion, while Sweets sire was a 7 time national champion! Sweet is only 2 so he hasn't had an opportunity to be shown yet. Our minis are very loving and gentle and our girls have even been able to ride them. We plan to breed and sell our minis and I'm so excited!

At the end of June we went to Lovells day and we had a lot of fun! The girls loved the parade and catching candy. I think Kimi didn't quite know how to respond because we are always getting after her about running toward or in streets and here we are sitting on a curb yelling at them to hurry and get the candy...in the street. We wanted to go to the rodeo and fireworks but the heat really has been taking it out of us.

We've been spending a ton of time at the frog pool and the girls and I love it. Its free, its cool on a hot day, its passes the time...oh and did I mention, its FREE! Well I just had to repeat it because not much is anymore. I'm finding it hard to get around to do much with two kids while pregnant. I hope it gets a little easier after baby gets here.

Finally the 4th of July! I love when Evan has 3 days off in a row. We had so much fun and relaxation and I loved every minute of it. Saturday we bummed around and cleaned a little and of course went to the frog pool, Sunday we went to church and snuggled around home and cleaned a little more, and on Monday we went to the parade in Cody with Josh and Angie and then that night to Josh's Aunt's house for fireworks.

I will post pictures when I get them uploaded. I need more motivation and even taking the time to write all this is hard. So give me a break :) I hope everyone's summer has been going as good as ours!