A little bit of order, finally! Some pics with the countertops in:

And Anna helping Daddy install the garbage disposal:

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This post is a couple of weeks late, but thus is life right now. :) On July 4, we finally got to meet our new niece, Kendall! She doesn’t live very far away, but for one reason or another it just hasn’t worked out for us to go see her. But my brother and his family were able to make it to Conway for a couple of days.

Anna was so sweet around the baby! She was very interested in her and always wanted to know where she was. She kissed her and patted her gently. She brought her toys. And she didn’t have any problem at all with David or me holding her. This is a good sign!

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No, that wasn’t a self-commentary on my nearly-6-month-pregnant shape (this time!). Today is Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-A, where if you dress like a cow, you get a free meal! Apparently it’s an annual event, and we just found out about it last year and participated for the first time this year. I think it will be a yearly family tradition.

Anna really got into the spirit of things and ate all SIX—that’s right, SIX—of her chicken nuggets! Gracious!

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In just a little over a year, we’ve had to say goodbye to three dogs. First, we lost our precious Sasha to cancer. Then, we were fostering Russ through his heartworm treatment, and we lost him to distemper.

This past Thursday, we said goodbye to the third, but under a much different set of circumstances. Our foster dog Bailey found a new home up in New Jersey, so we went down to Little Rock to see him off on the P.E.T.S. transport that will deliver him and about a hundred other dogs from the South to their new homes in the Northeast, which they do every week. (They currently have an 8-week show on Animal Planet, airing on Saturday nights.)

It was hard to say goodbye and we will miss him greatly, but fostering all the way through to the send-off is rewarding as well. He arrived today, and his new mom wrote how much they adore him and how much sweeter he is than they ever could have imagined. She thanked us for loving him and taking care of him until he could be theirs. They have been counting down the days until he would arrive! Fostering definitely fills a need in the animal rescue world. We are honored to have been a part of Bailey’s story, and we hope to do it again in the future (after we have our own dog(s), according to David—he says he can’t do this again unless he has a dog to come home to!)

Here are few pics from send-off day:

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Bailey has been adopted! After 6+ months with us as our foster dog through All About Labs, he is going to join a couple in Hoboken, NJ who want to make him part of their family. He’ll head off on the doggie bus on June 24 and arrive two days later. The woman owns her own business and will take Bailey to work with her. They also live close to a dog park, so he should get the chance to play with some other dogs.

We have mixed feelings about this, of course, but I suppose all foster parents do. We’ve loved him, taken care of him, and integrated him into our family, all the while knowing that we would be sending him off when the time is right. Anna loves him, and I know she’ll be asking about him for a while, but I think she’s young enough that she’ll transition fine to another dog when we foster or adopt again.

So we’ve got another week and a half to love on him, play with him, and get ourselves ready for the big day.

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Anna graduated! I’m so proud!

Ok, so it was from “Mother Goose on the Loose” story time at the library. Since she’s 2 now, she’s supposed to move up to “Toddler Time” for the next year. So after story time today, they held a little graduation ceremony complete with certificate and refreshments. (No graduation speaker, thankfully.) I’m sure the kids didn’t have a clue what it was all about, but there were lots of proud parents there!

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It was a gorgeous day today (a fact that was apparent to the rest of central Arkansas as well), so we thought a great way to celebrate Anna’s birthday was for David to play hooky from work and take us to the zoo. It’s so great that he can take off and make up the hours whenever! Anna loved it so much she cried when we left, but I promised her we would come back. She did a few of her animal sounds, and a lot of the animals made “a mess” and needed “a bath” (see earlier post). She also enjoyed climbing on every single park bench when she was out of her stroller.

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On Saturday we decided to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather, despite a cold that was making me feel crummy. It would have been a good day for the zoo, but I needed a shorter, closer-to-home trip, so we visited nearby Cadron Settlement Park. Several friends had mentioned that even their little ones had done the trails there, so we thought we’d give it a try. Anna did great going up and down those hills! We just hiked a little way, then turned around. I’m sure the older she gets, the more of the trail we’ll be able to do. She’s going to be a good little hiker!

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What could be under that big red bag?

A kitchen!

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Anna was so excited Christmas morning to see her present from Nana and Granddad…

A table and chair set just for her! Isn’t it the cutest thing?

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