Wednesday

Today was a really busy day, as Katie had weird hair day at school, where she got to wear her haire weird if she bought a can of food in for the donation drive So here's her WILD hair:





Then for the afternoon, we had a follow up appt for Rei's ears. She had a yeast infection in her ears, so have been treating that. That's what we did last Monday= took Rei to the vet. ;) Since Dan was coming out to take us to the vet, and had to take Sue to pick up her car after that, I asked him to bring Honey out with him to let Rei and Honey play together, as well as to spend some time with her. He agreed to do that and brought her with. :)

Here's a couple of snapshots, but I'll post more tomorrow, as I'm dragging and falling asleep here in the computer chair...















Honey visiting her old buddy, Wilson from behind us:


Katie got them both to sit and stay while she threw the toy:


Honey missed Katie too:


Both my Puppies!


Ok Im off to bed, I'm wiped. Will share more pics and videos tomorrow sometime, but these were my faves! :)

this week:

On Monday, Meaghan and I hung out in the house and took it easy most of the day. We had haircuts for the kids scheduled for the evening, so we went and got those in the evening at 6pm. We also went to Payless shoes and picked up a pair of black dress shoes for Katie and Alex, since they didn't have any for the fall/winter.

I did get quite a few pictures of Meaghan and Rei on Monday too:





Tuesday, Katie had two plays at the school for Thanksgiving, that was put on by her 2nd/3rd grade class. She was a narrator and did very well! :)

Rei- patiently waiting on the floor to go to the cafeteria where the play would be held:



The kids coming in:


The first play "The First Thanksgiving":



Intermission:


The second Play:


Katie's Class:


I also got some more pictures of Rei yesterday both inside and out:

Being all cute since she's tied down:





Here she is outside:






Something got her attn:

Seriously behind, but I do want to share some pics of Rei. :)

I know, I know, I'm over a week behind, but I promise I'm getting there!

We have a 4 day weekend coming up and I'm really looking forward to it. Time to relax, get the christmas stuff out, the Halloween stuff out of the garage and back up in the attic, do something fun with the kids and just enjoy being with my familiy. :)

Eh what the heck I'll try to go ahead and update, just do a quick and dirty version:

Last week was busy enough that it was a blur and I honestly don't remember all that we did! LOL! I do remember we had on Tuesday a meeting at the church for a disablities community group, Something was Wednesday, but for the life of me I'm blanking- other than giving the kids baths that night.

Speaking of baths- Rei wanted to join in on the fun, 'er I should say she wanted to snatch the bathrub toys!



Oh! I remember now, Jordan came over and cut my hair for me! :D Rei absolutely LOVED her. :)



Thursday Mike had something after work- I paid bills and was trying to catch up on stuff, as well as cleaning up in case we had visitors for the weekend., Friday we had Bible study fun night.

Before we took off for the fun night though, I took Rei over to Dad and Sue's to try to introduce Rei to their papillons again, since the first meeting didn't go so hot and all were not happy with the other one being in "their" territory. Rei hadn't seen them in "her" house before and the Paps had never seen Rei in Honey's house before, even though they've been here lots of times, so all was on the defense pretty quickly.

So we walked over to Dad and Sue's and Dad brought Grace out first. Grace was afraid and pretty much wanted to turn and run to the house, but Rei was able to sniff her and she was fine with her. Then Dad brought Sophie out and at first there was some growling and snarling, primarily on Sophie's part, but Dad and I both did corrections saying No! and left the leashes long and within a few minutes both dogs were sniffing each other and fine with being in close proximity of each other. Dad then walked up the house and he and Sue walked back out with both dogs and as Rei started to jump up on Sue, Sophie snarled and went after Rei a bit, but again we did corrections, got Rei to stop jumping up and within a couple of minutes, Rei was pretty oblivious to the Paps being there and was ready to go inside since it was cold out.

After going in, I let Rei walk through the house, smelling everything really good and checking everything out. When we came back to the living room, we all sat down and talked and Rei wanted do bad to go over and rough house with the Paps, and Sophie got a little ticked once for Rei being too pushy, but after that they were fine and Rei pretty quickly settled down. Grace even got to be bold an came over by my side on the couch, so with Rei sitting between my legs, she leaned her head back and they licked each other. :) So all went well and I think with time they'll eventually be fine with each other all the time.

Mike then stopped by and picked me up to head over to John & Karen's, of which the girls all went to Olive Gardens for dinner and the guys stayed at John & Karen's house and had a poker night as the kids played. It was a lot of fun, as we all enjoyed ourselves and it was nice to get out with some other adult women. :) Rei did awesome while out and about as well and was very good at the restaurant. The girls all came back to my house and we played two games of Wii bowling as Rei bounced from person to person for almost 2 hrs of playing with her toys with them.

Over the weekend, on Saturday Mike worked in the garage, trying to finish up the door for the kids playhouse and the chocolate bar shutters. Since he was out in the garage all morning, I put the kids on a Thanksgiving craft to take over to Dad and Sue's and put on the tables for everyone. So here's our flock of Turkey's - including Turkey Meaghan. :D







These are place cards and napkin rings all in one. :) The kids really enjoyed making them. :)

So we worked on those all morning and then all three kids took naps since everyone was up until almost 1am on the fun night. After naps, the kids got up and we all got ready for church. Which was my first church service with Rei (I think...). She did very well, with no problems. :) Saturday night, We let the kids stay up a little later again and then took it easy for the evening.

Sunday morning, we got up and went outside and worked in the yard to get most of the leaves cut and bagged up and so forth. Rei got a lot of time to run and play outside in the yard. :)



Rei found the foam basketball out in the yard and Katie was trying to get it from her. Rei being the stinker she is, wasn't having any part of giving the ball to Katie...







After we finished up the yard completely, we all went inside and the kids laid down for naps before the girls Church Christmas program practices. I decided to take Rei for a walk, since each time we went out for break, she would tug to go down the sidewalk. It was also in the mid 40's and the sun shining, so it was warm and really nice out! :) We walked completely around the neighborhood next to us and then around the big loop in our neighborhood. She did well, though was a litle excited at the kids playing ball, but with a verbal command to leave it, she focused back in on guiding pretty quickly.

After we got back home, we got the girls up and Mike took them to the practice and then in a little bit, we headed over to Joe and Julie's for bible study, stopping and picking up John and karen's to pick them up and carpool. Bible study was good, as we all could relate so well to each other for the most part. After that we called it a night and headed home.

Costco stories...

I forgot all this last night as I was trying to remember from a week ago. ;) But anywho, When Mike and I were at Costco last weekend, we bumped into one of the coordinators for my partners class. :) It was sooo cool to chat with her and actually be able to introduce Mike to Jan, and that he could put a face with a name of the person I've talked about lately. :)

Also, being that it was a Saturday afternoon, Costco was PACKED. Seriously, there were people everywhere. It was good practice for both Rei and I, as I too am really having to learn to trust her. I do when in flat out open spaces and know I can just relax and go into "cruise" mode, but it's really hard to totally give up that control and trust her not to bump me into anyone or anything. So going through the store, while I tried to be good and relax, I'll admit, I was tense and ready to jump on her mistakes. I mentally was telling myself, calm down, let her do her thing and deal with it if it comes. the more I relaxed, the smoother things went and she did test me a few times, as she brought me right up behind Mike, but she didn't run me into him. I think there was maybe 2 inches between us and I put my handup and just placed it on his back so he knew I was that close, but Man she's good! She's done this several times now and my natural tendency is to be ready to get after her, but she's slowly showing me to trust her. :)

Another really funny thing from Costco, is that we were going through the freezer sections. we were on the outside wall of the building, at the end of the long freezer section and Mike was looking at something. I was standing with Rei, just behind the parked cart as he was grabbing what we needed. So there was a door just behind us, probably at 7 o'clock, and in order to keep the cold air from escaping so quickly there was those wide plastic flaps. There was a Costco employee several cooler doors down from Mike, putting stuff into the cooler and as Rei and I are standing there, this tall skinny guy comes flying out the door and through those flaps right behind us. Rei spins around facing him and just lets out one lone, but loud bark. The poor guy, he jumped back so fast and hard he almost went backwards back through the flaps that he'd just came through. You could tell that his heart was in his throat and he had that completely startled look but relieved look on his face. His co-worker was just busting up laughing and trying to be nice, as was most of the people around us. I was pretty intent on making sure she didn't bark again, but as Mike and I walked away, we too were laughing pretty good. :)

Friday & Saturday of Week 2 at home with Rei

We all got up bright and early, as we had a Parent Teacher conference for Katie. Mike got up and took Alex to school and we headed over for our 8am scheduled time. Rei took me quickly and efficiently through the school and back to Katie's room and through the whole conference, she laid quietly by my side.

Katie's conference went very well, as her teacher went over her Lexile scores, class averages, school district averages, and lastly nationwide averages. Katie is doing awesome, and while she's not the fastest person in class, she has consistantly turned in excellent quality work. Katie is very tenacious and insistant on doing her work right and having everything neat and organized. Her teacher was very pleased with her work and progress and we are very proud of her too. :)


After heading back home, Mike went to the bank to take care of some financial stuff there and then headed on in to work from there. The girls and I putzed around the house in picking things up and cleaning house so that we'd be able to go to Walmart that night for our big shopping trip and for all of us to get out of the house. We got to walmart and they were paving, so half of the parking lot was closed off. It also had been raining very heavily, so it was wet and slippery too. We made our way inside and put Alex and Meaghan each in a shopping cart. Rei pretty much followed Mike without the command to do so, apparently sensing that we were to stay together.

We made our way through the store, and as we got to the back of the store, the more chaotic it got; lots of stuff in the aisles for Christmas displays, people looking around instead of where they were going, and it was a Friday night. Rei did well, taking me in and out as well as around all of these things and the crazy people that liked to dart in front of us (thank goodness for that practice at the mall the day before!) We did very well in our shopping trip, having two heaping carts full, 3 kids, and it was roughly $225 in 2 hours! *whew*

Saturday morning, we all got up Mike and the kids ran me up to the church for the disabilities support group meeting. Really, it turned more into an informational session about what the group was, what the goals were, and where it was headed. We also talked about some various issues that some of us were facing within the church and brainstormed some ideas of how to work through those issues. We had a really good discussion and hope to continue to have these small groups on a regular basis!

Mike then picked me up from the church, as we made arrangements for Dad and Sue to watch the kids for us, allowing us to go to dinner and use the gift card we'd forgotten about from Amy and Paul's Wedding back in May. It was quite a blessing when I found it in the outer pocket of the laptop bag in NY. So we went up to the north side of town and each had a nice steak dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse. Rei was down and under our feet and didn't make a move, so no one knew she was even there.

After we left Longhorn, we went to Costco and did another big grocery shopping trip, stocking up on meats and fruits and other things as well that we can get there for a better price than Walmart. We only had one full cart, but a big one at that and about the same price. All too soon, our time together sans kids came to an end, so we headed on home to put the groceries away and relieve Dad and Sue of their childcare duties.

We arrive home and Dad and Sue had brought thier two little papillons over, so we had an impromptu hello, which while one of the paps was fine, the other was a dominant dog and was not pleased at all with Rei being in her face. So there was some growling and snapping that happened and after a few minutes, while they were in the same room, it was very restrained. We tried to let them introduce themselves, but neither of the dogs were cooperating, so we let it go and figured we'd try again later. Dad and Sue, with thier dogs, took off for home and we quickly prepared to go to church.

Rei did very well in church, laying down quietly and peacefully down beside my aisle seat. She even turned her head up and under the chair in front of me and didn't do much of anything other than look up inquisitively as the guys came out onto the stage to begin the music worship. After the service, she led me nimbly through the crowds and to the line to pick up Alex. I was stopped several times by friends admiring what a beautiful dog I had and several congrats on having my new partner. :)

Once we had the kids all picked up, we headed on home for dinner and then got the kids to bed and kicked back and relaxed for the evening. :)

Last day of Home Training.

That Thursday, Lisa came and picked me up at 11:30 to go up to Castleton Mall and work with Suzi. We got there and started off down the main corridor, Suzi in the lead. We were switching back and forth and it was interesting seeing the looks on people's faces of the two of us with the dogs.

Both of us being fast walkers, we made our way quickly down to the sears end of the mall. It was soooooo nice to be able to turn it over to Rei and not worry about clobbering someone or a little kid because of the changes in the lighting as I walked from light areas to dark areas, due to the skylights and patches of natural light to overhead lighting. For most people, this isn't something you even think about.

For those with RP, it's almost downright torture. it makes navigating a real challenge because with the death of the cells, it is what gives the eyes the ability to adjust quickly for light and darkeness changes. So for the person that has RP, it just doesn't happen quickly. Summertime is another time that is hard, going from the bright outside to inside somewhere, it's black for several minutes and even then it takes a few more minutes to adjust completely. It's frustrating to me, as natural reaction is to stop dead in my tracks, as I have no clue where anything is and if I'm in an unfamiliar place, it's even more difficult, because I haven't even had a chance to orient myself. The beauty of having Rei is that I can relax and trust her to keep me moving and I'm not plowing into things during this adjustment period. :)

We walked on down to the other end of the mall, Lisa working with both of us on stepping in front of us from different angles and such, to make sure the dogs didnt' run us into people that walked in front of us but not the dog. Rei ran me into Lisa once and after that, she made sure I was clear, even if it was just a matter of inches.

So we headed on to the Sears store to find an escalator to work. Suzi went first as I sat down a couch set for little kids. I sure was right at home. LOL! Suzi and her pup did the escalators a couple of times and then our we were up for action. Rei kind of danced a bit as we approached the escalator and Lisa explained that she wasn't fearful of them, but was winding up to leap on. It's almost as if Rei finds them as a game, as she leaps on and leaps off. She was anxious to get ready, so I had to get her to stay put and Lisa suggested that I really work on obedience with her as we were making that first ride up.

I did as Lisa had shown me, to wiggle the handrail back and forth, rocking it until we got to where it wouldn't rock, which meant we were at the end of it. We got to about 4 steps from the top and while I couldnt see her, I gave the command "Off", and she had crouched her behind down and with a great spring from the hind legs launched with a flying leap completely over and off of the belt. Lisa laughed at Rei's enthusiasm and since I was doing the rocking, it gave me a split second longer for it to register in my brain to start moving, so we exited much smoother and knew what to expect from Rei too.

We went around and found the down escalator and again she hopped on and well over the grate that the belt came out of. Lisa said again, she hunkered down and especially with coming down, she flung herself off the belt and was already getting herself ready to "fly" before I said the off command. So we have a pretty good handle on the escalator thing. :)

We left the sears and headed back to the food courts to work on food distractions, since we knew that Rei LOVES her food and that I was having a hard time getting her to lay down under the table. Lisa bought some drinks and a small bag of french fries from Mc Donald's. Lisa Set up a table with some fries hanging off the edge of the table and warned us to be prepared to correct if we needed to. Rei of course went right for them and with a strong correction and a sharp "No!" she left it alone and Suzi and I both put our dogs down at our sides. Lisa then "accidently" knocked off a couple of fries right in front of them both and both dogs wanted soooo badly to gobble up the fries. Seriously, Rei stared those fries so hard that you'd thought that through telepathy they'd jump right to her! After a few minutes, she settled down and even with them a mere few inches from her nose, she closed her eyes and settled and was relaxed.

We chatted for several minutes and then Lisa took Suzi and her pup home. I went back through the mall and the Sears to thier back lot to let Rei have a potty break and then came back and had my own break. It wasn't too long that Lisa was back and we headed back towards home. Since Meaghan was at the neighbors house and Katie was going there after school, since I wasn't sure I'd be home on time, I had a little bit of quiet time before I had to run over and pick them up.

So all in all, we had a really good day. :)

For all of you Puppy Raisers/Walkers out there...

I'm really behind posting here, but was cleaning out my inbox and wanted to post this to all of you, especially Erin, who I know is feeling it the hardest right now. Hugs to you!

Seeing Through My Heart
By
Linda Almond

I'm standing here before you, no longer just a dog,
For I've climbed the height of Heaven, and I've reached the height of God.
I understand my purpose, and the gift I have to give,
And I'll gladly take the challenge,
So that you may freely live.

I'll be the eyes that guide you, in night time and in day,
And when you close your eyes in rest, beside you I will lay.
I will never forsake you; I'll never go astray
And I will always love you, until my dying day.
I won't ask for fields of clover to romp and roam and play.
I'll go wherever you lead me, and I'll do whatever you say.
For I've climbed the height of Heaven, and I've reached the height of God.
And now I'm standing here before you, no longer just a dog.

So many hands did guide me, and love me along my way.
And they bowed their heads in tears, and slowly walked away.
For they understood their purpose, and the gift they had to give.
And they loved enough to let me go
So that you could freely live.

For they too have climbed to Heaven, and they've reached the heart of God.
And they understand that I'm here today,
No longer just a dog.