- John and I had our first Christmas actually together. This is technically our third Christmas, but I had spent the last two with my family back home.
- We were able to take one of the girls home that we work with. She was suppose to have come with us for Thanksgiving, but due to her terrible grades, she was not allowed to come with us as a consequence for the bad grades. She worked really hard to bring her grades up so that she could spend Christmas with us. It was unexpected that we were going to have her Christmas Eve as well as Christmas day until we went into work. She was incredibly grateful to be with us, and was wonderful.
- Christmas Eve we spent at John's Mum's house with us and his brother and of course his Mum. I made a traditional tortiere ( a French Canadian meat and potato pie that my family has every Christmas) which I brought with us. We had a yummy meal of ham, potatoes, tortiere, corn, rolls and the works. It was delightful! After dinner, we read the account in Luke of Christ's birth and then opened one present a piece.
- Christmas morning we opened presents with John's Mom and brother. John's brother Jim, went and got his son Landyn around 4 and Landyn got to open his presents from us. We had to go into work at 5 which wasn't to terrible. All the girls were in a good mood and things went really well.
- My Christmas Cactus actually bloomed on Christmas! I was really happy to see numerous blooms on it, but only one showed itself on Christmas day. That made me happy.
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| Yup for some reason it's sideways. It isn't on my desktop. Not sure what's going on but you get the point! :) |
Post Christmas Update
- After Christmas was really difficult for John and I. We had to put our little Italian Greyhound, Mickie down. We had taken him in before Christmas due to his side wound not healing. The Vet gave him an antibiotic and a painkiller. When the antibiotic wasn't seeming to work, Mickie's wound wasn't healing at all, and his eyes had turned a weird shade of green, like green cataracts we decided to take him back in. When the Vet checked his gums for blood flow, they were incredibly white meaning he was severely anemic at that stage. His body temperature was about 10 degrees lower than it was suppose to be and he was getting cold to the touch. The Vet said that he had had an auto-immune disorder meaning his body was destroying every red blood cell it was making. The option was to either put him to sleep or to that day give him a blood transfusion, and then put him on steroids that may or may not improve his health. It was a fifty fifty chance of getting better. We chose to have him put to sleep due to the fact that it would have been around $600 for that days treatments and then would have been expensive the months after that if he survived. His quality of life would have been far less than it should have been if we had kept him around. It was an incredibly difficult decision to make and both John and I were a mess before they came to take him away for good. It was hard. But we feel that we did the right thing. We also feel that were a "doggy hospice" for Mickie the two months that we had him before he died. He was spoiled with love and affection, which he wouldn't have received had he not been adopted out to us.
- Three days after putting Mickie down, John and I decided to go out to the shelters to "just look". After going to two shelters and finding one potential, we found this guy:
Yup. He ended up coming home with us.
- His name is Otis and his is a pure bred Pug. And I have to say he is wonderful! He is like a lab stuck in a small dogs body and makes us laugh everyday. We are currently working on sitting and staying and getting better at it everyday. He is amazing with all the girls who adore him ( along with the staff and therapists) so we have a good match! We absolutely adore the guy, snores and all! :)