more on O Antiphon houses, and random thoughts

Lisa asked about these, and I can't get the comment thingie to work for me. That stupid "word verification" thing won't show, and I can't figure it out. I think it's some sort of add on we lost in the computer cleansing. We've been finding lots of those. Anyway, here's a link to O Antiphon houses...

http://maryellenb.typepad.com/o_night_divine/celebrate-with-o-antiphons.html

Still working on getting to the craft store here. How did Christmas break become so busy? I think I'm less busy when we aren't on break. I need a break from break.

The dog is great. House breaking is going surprisingly well. We've had a few accidents, but he gets better every day. Our main problem right now is "mouthing"...when anyone goes to play with him, he wants to chew on their hands and feet. The little kids, of course, run away when he does this, which makes it even more of a game for him. Not sure what to do about this. We tell him no, and he is really persistent about it we put him in his crate until he calms down, but it's not helping much. I know he's just trying to play like puppies play with each other!

We are going to Silver Dollar City today! I know it will be cold, cold, cold, but they close on Thursday and John is off today, so it's kind of now or never. Wish us luck!

a new baby

Haha! That got your attention, huh? Well, I hate to disappoint, but I didn't mean *that* kind of baby. I meant this kind!

Isn't he just precious? Shhhh...he's a secret. My parents got him for the kids as a Christmas gift, so he is still living at their house until Christmas Day. We've never had a dog together. The kids desperately want one. We put them off for years until we got a privacy fence built. Now that that is done, the pressure is on. And my Jack would so dearly love a dog to play with. My mom met one of this little guy's litter at someone's house and went to the shelter the next day to pick him up.

John and I haggled around all day yesterday trying to come up with a Christmas-y name. He didn't like "Nick" because we already have a family member with that name. He thought "Rudy" (like in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer) and "Manny" (like in Emmanuel) sounded like gangster names. Neither of us wanted anything too cutsey like "Kringle" or "Jingle" or "Blitzen". We both really wanted a name before the kids met him and insisted on naming him something like "Elmo" or "Justin Beeber". So, inspiration struck as I was looking around at our Christmas decorations, namely the Jesse tree.

"In that day the root of Jesse, who standeth for an ensign of the people, him the Gentiles shall beseech, and his sepulchre shall be glorious."


So, say hello to Jesse, our Christmas puppy...

back online

Hello! I'm back! The computer has been salvaged, and the computer guy managed to save our documents and pictures, God love him. I had over a thousand emails in my inbox...yikes! I spent some time the first day scraping off spam and deleting junk and responding to urgent things...that cut the number of emails left by more than half. The rest I'm just slowly working through. I don't even want to talk about my google reader. Anyway...we are Advent-ing away here. I made some new Jesse tree ornaments and we are using lots of Jessica's ideas for daily Jesse tree snacks to go with our Bible readings. I really wanted to make an 'O' Antiphon house this year, again, but several attempts to get to the craft store were sabatoged. We are on our second virus since Advent started. I'm planning to go anyway soon and just buy the supplies and tuck them away with our decorations to assemble next year. I did get all my online shopping done and so now I am anxiously awaiting the "ups truck", as Jack calls it, hoping everything gets here on time. So, just wanted to say hi, and I'll be back with some Advent pictures soon.

HOW many shopping days until Christmas?

The heat is on. I have purchased almost nothing for Christmas because I do most of my shopping online and I still have no computer. It was supposed to be back today. Now Compter Guy is saying tomorrow. I've never cut it so close!

unconnected

computer down stop.no way to pay phone bill without computer stop.slowly losing all contact with outsside world stop. can only point and click through wii stop.will take unknown amounts of time and money to rid computer of nasty malware stop.hoping there is a special circle of hell for malware creator stop. ooops stop. i mean,may the light of christ's merciful heart shine upon their wretched souls stop. unless i lose my babies' pictures stop. then i'm going with that circle of hell thing stop.