Have we ever had a Labor Day holiday with such perfect weather? Not in my recent memory, at least. This morning David and Anna walked the dogs around the neighborhood (in shifts) and ended up at the home of some friends in our community group. They mentioned that they were going to the park to fly a kite with another family in our group, and since we had planned on going to the park later anyway, we just met up with them. While the men put their brains to work figuring out how to assemble the kite, the kiddos played on the playground (and Sarah ate her lunch). Then we went out into the big field once the guys were ready with the kite. It was a wonderful day for it!

Doing something technical I’m sure:

The cheering section:

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It was not a Southern Living Thanksgiving. We sat around our small kitchen table atop our bare, concrete floor in our unfinished kitchen, eating off of scratched, chipped everyday dishes because our nice china is still packed, pouring tea from a cheap plastic pitcher, and admiring the only Thanksgiving decorations to be found—a pine cone turkey and a paper plate turkey made by Anna. :)

But we had bountiful blessings, including plenty of good food to eat, a warm cozy house, clean water, family, health, the grace of God, and three new friends.

A few weeks ago we decided to invite some international students to have Thanksgiving dinner with us. Did you know that 75% of international students never enter an American home? We have some friends who are part of an outreach to international students here in Conway, and one of the things they do is match students with American families so they can experience a Thanksgiving meal. This year we were honored to have Joanna from China and Ghadeer and Bassam from Saudi Arabia at our  table.

David smoked a turkey and it was delicious! We also had dressing, sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and cranberry-apple pie. Ghadeer brought Basbousa, a traditional Middle Eastern dessert. My mom made about half of the other dishes, so I really didn’t have that much to cook.

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

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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:

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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:

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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:

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