Micali and her dog

Every morning Micali gets up and goes outside to help her daddy get Marley his breakfast and to take him water. Although having a dog is a little extra work we have enjoyed all the time outside as a family taking care of him. He has brought a lot of smiles and laughs. She loves having a responsibility and will quickly help Marley with anything he needs. I love seeing her be so independent about her ability to take care of him. For example a few mornings ago she went out to help him get unwrapped from the tree. She came in and said, “Mom and Dad, I did it! I really did it, I knew I could!”

An afternoon at the park

 

I can hardly handle the cuteness of this girl in her shades and hat.

 

This little Red Head….

-is full of spunk! She has such a fun personality.

-loves her sister and brother. They are so excited when they hear her wake up from a nap. She starts jumping in her bed when she sees them walk through the door.

-is a TALKER! I taught the other two kids sign language first but when I do the sign and say the word she just repeats me. She says: cracker, cookie, hot, uh-oh, banana, mama, daddy, puppy, woof-woof, good-girl. And more I am not remembering right now.

-is still not walking at 14 and a half months old. ---not worried at all. Eli figured it out at 20 months and hasn’t slowed down since.

-only has 4 teeth.

-gives the best, wet, slobbery open mouth kisses.

-loves to pull up my shirt and blow on my belly. –—I guess its only fair since I do it to her.

-loves being the center of attention.

-loves sharing a room with Micali. A lot of mornings Micali won’t come out she just jumps in Abigail’s crib and they play and LAUGH.

-Eats anything in sight! Kinda chubby but we like it that way.

Marley

Micali has been wanting a dog for a very long time. We are getting ready to move to a house with a nice fenced yard so we decided now was a good time. We checked around on craigslist and some online classifieds. We found a super cute picture of a six month old little puppy named Marley(now we know that picture was quite dated. he must have only been two months old in the picture we saw). We emailed the owner who told us Marley was a very loving puppy but she had just got a new job and he was staying in a cage all day. She said she would love to give him to our family. About a week later she decided she wanted to keep him instead. We were sad because we had shown Micali his picture and talked to her about getting him. So we started our search again. On Friday morning she emailed us again and decided that it wasn’t right for her dog to never get out of his cage. So, Kendra had called and talked about coming down to Moab to go hiking. I told her if she wanted to she could pick up this cute little pup for us and surprise Micali. Instead of all of us driving 5 hours to get him.

Well she agreed and went to pick up a HUGE  “puppy” who wasn’t trained at all and was jumping all over her and the car. She had to stop and get a kennel to put him in and a guy in the parking lot had to help her shove the crazy thing into it.

I was a little concerned of what kind of thing we were getting as she was telling me about it on the way down.

Now we have had him two days and he has chilled a lot. Amazing what exercise can do for a pup. He loves Luke and is learning to love the rest of us. Our awesome neighbors let us borrow a shock collar so we could jump start his training a little. It has worked really well for him and I think we will really enjoy having him around(OUTSIDE!).

We still think he is pretty stinking cute and love his coloring.

Easter pictures of Micali

It was a rainy cold morning and we were busy taking care of our new dog so we didn’t get any family shots but I did get a few of Micali. She sure was looking pretty cute!

  Oh we got a picture of daddy too. He wasn’t looking too bad either!

A Little Easter Fun

Waiting for his eggs to turn colors

Having so much fun with the magic of the eggs. 

We made some sugar cookies too. I let them pick out their own cookie cutters. Micali picked two bunnies and Eli went for the football and dinosaur.

Abigail slept soundly while this fun was happening but when she heard there were cookies on the oven she stood next to it and kept saying “cookie”

Arches National Park

This last week it was free to visit all the national parks. We decided to take advantage of it. Aunt Kendra came down to deliver a special gift to Micali so she even got to join in on the fun. It was so great to have her with us for the day. The kids had a horrible night of sleep the night before so Eli especially wasn’t feeling up to hiking. He got carried the entire way so we just picked a couple very short hikes and called it good.

 

 

(Kendra hiked Abigail up to the arch and gave her to me at the top to get a picture with her)