Anna’s little twin boyfriends came over to play today!

Comments(3)

Sunday before last, we went down to the All About Labs ranch for a workday. Well, David worked, and I took pictures. :)

I’m leading with my favorite shot, just in case you get bored and don’t look at all these.

(more…)

Comments(5)

We took Anna on her first trip to the zoo yesterday! It was a little chillier than I had hoped, but we’re running out of available fall weekends and we wanted to get a trip in. We took our friend Abby along with us since Abby’s parents needed someone to keep her for the morning.

Here are David and the girls…

… looking at the giraffe:

This fun little guy scampered out to say hello and totally posed for the camera:

Anna and Mommy in front of some kind of deer-like critter (you can tell I learned a whole lot, huh?)

Me with both the monkeys:

A fine rhino:

Who doesn’t love chimps?

I tried to get a shot of a zebra’s rear for Becké, but they were too far away. Sorry, Becké.

Comments(3)

In my 16 years of living in Conway, I have somehow never been to the little Faulkner County Fair until today. I took Anna this morning (and met up with our friends Rae Lyn and Elizabeth) to see the dog obedience demonstration and walk through the barns with all the animals. She loved it! She’s good at recognizing farm animals in her little storybooks and making their sounds, so I wanted to give her some real-life experience. We saw the cows, goats, sheep, chickens, and rabbits. (The pigs were blocked off, perhaps because they seemed a bit temperamental.*) The goats were so friendly! They were our favorite and made me want one for the backyard. (Don’t worry; I know better.)

*Update: David just informed me that the pigs were probably blocked off because of the swine flu. I asked if he was serious. Yes, he said, it’s happening in county fairs all over the country. They don’t want the pigs catching it from people.

Update again: Our friend Jennifer got to see and even pet the pigs this evening, so I guess it was just a temporary closing.

There were lots of school kids there to see the dogs:

The goats—so sweet and cute!

(more…)

Comments(6)

This is sweet little Ella Claire Daniel, daughter of our Hendrix friends Chris and Megan. “Ellie” is at Arkansas Children’s Hospital right now because she’s been having seizures and they’re trying to get to the bottom of it. The original likely diagnosis is quite bad, but now they’re thinking that might not be what it is after all… but still more testing is necessary. You can read more on Megan’s and Chris’s blogs if you like. They would appreciate your prayers and support!

She’s such a sweetie, by the way… I got to visit yesterday and hold her and feed her a bottle while her mom ate lunch. It’s a little different with a gazillion wires attached to her, but we managed. She’s a doll!

Comments(1)

Wow, it’s been quite a week.

Last Saturday, a quick Facebook check of people’s status updates turned into a week-long drama when I read that one of my friends (also named Jennifer) was “making an emotional plea for her friends to go rescue 5 dogs that were dumped at Lake Conway. Very sweet, but very skinny and tick-laden.”

Oh boy. Well, we couldn’t just ignore that, now could we?

There is so much I could write about this past week’s experience that I hardly know where to start, and if I wrote it all at once it would be way too long. There are several topics floating around in my head:

• The pitiful state of animal control and rescue in Faulkner county
• What I think needs to be done about it
• Our own frustrating and at times infuriating journey that led us to today
• Our observations about and interactions with the dogs themselves
• The actual rescue

I think I’ll start with the happy ending and work my way backwards, because it’s late, and posting pictures and writing about them is the easiest kind of blog post.

To give proper credit to the happy ending: first of all God, who reminded us that He works things out just when we think they’re crumbling apart, and His instruments: Lynda from Memphis Area Golden Retriever Rescue (Lynda is a local contact), and Donna from All About Labs.

Here are the dogs at the lake:

(more…)

Comments(6)

Ahh, the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. When we went last year, I was one week away from giving birth to our sweet Anna, and I found myself looking ahead to this year as we would enjoy the festivities with our little girl. I envisioned a warm, sunny day; maybe little Anna could wear the green-and-white striped sundress and matching hat I had recently bought her; perhaps she would even be walking, toddling around in little sandals, the sunshine illuminating her golden curls…

… instead she looked like this:

Yep, it was a cold gray day, so we were all bundled up in layers. Weather issues aside, she’s not walking yet, that particular dress is still way too big, and she still doesn’t have much hair. But that’s ok. We had a great time and our little girl was absolutely wonderful. We manipulated her schedule a bit so she would take a nap before we went, and it worked—she was in a great mood the whole time! She seemed to enjoy watching everything and everybody and being with mommy and daddy.

Our friends the Allisons went with us. Here’s Emily with the youngest of their three daughters:

The Lyon College Pipe band:

Our friend and fellow musician Joe with his Irish Wolfhound:

Dancers from the O’Donovan School of Irish Dance:

Comments(0)

Anna got to have a playdate with little W. Upton this morning! I think they had a good time. And I learned I can take care of two little ones at once. Imagine that! In fact, with W. there, Anna pretty much stayed where he was instead of crawling all over the house, so in some ways it was actually easier. Of course, I got a few pictures:

(more…)

Comments(5)

I set up a Facebook account a while ago, but I never really did anything with it. Until yesterday, that is. And holy moly, I went from about 14 friends to 48 in one day! This thing spreads like wildfire. Whether you like Facebook or not, you have to admit it’s pretty amazing how quickly you can reestablish connections with people you haven’t seen in 15 years.

I started by adding some current friends from church and such. Then I got a friend request from someone in high school, so I started looking for high school friends, and there they all were—Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer… I forgot we were all named Jennifer.

Then I wondered about old youth group friends. I found one or two, then looked through their friends and added a few, and then noticed there was a group entitled “Kirk Wooldridge or Mark Gibbons was my youth minister.” Yep, that about sums it up, and there were all my old youth group buddies.

So I can see why people get hooked on this now. It’s kinda cool. There are some design things I would do differently (or maybe I just haven’t learned how to use it yet), but I’d say it’s a pretty good tool. But then, my experience wasn’t as frustrating as David’s.

Comments(2)

I’d like to publicly thank Matt Perciful, a fellow member of our church and husband to a beautiful wife and father to two adorable boys, who is serving in the military overseas right now. Thank you so much for your sacrifice and service, and thanks to your family as well for the sacrifices they have to make on a daily basis. You all are remembered and appreciated!

Comments(3)