Merry Christmas!

I apologize for neglecting my blog for over a month, but I have been busy! An update to my last blog is that Delta is doing just fine. You would never know anything was wrong with her. :]

The house is decorated for the holidays! We have two trees much to Josh's dislike.. (cough cough SCROOGE cough!) Our tree in the living room is red and silver. I made several ornaments for it and it looks beautiful! Our second tree is a Disney themed tree. I have been collecting ornaments for about 2 years now.. I don't have that many because Disney ornaments are so expensive, so I normally buy one per trip. I do have some beautiful Jim Shore ornaments given to me from my Aunt Ann, so that added a lot to my tree! One day it will be filled with different ornaments!

The week of Thanksgiving I subbed two days with the 3 year old class and on the third day I woke up very sick. It started with a stomach virus and ended with a cold haha Gotta love the sickly little babies.. So unfortunately my Thanksgiving was spent ill . "/ The sickness did not stop me from going out on Black Friday. I think I bought one thing, but nothing starts the season off better than getting out with all the crazies!

On a sad note.. December 7th I lost my best friend of 12 years, My doggy Sammy. A few months a go he had surgery to remove a hernia from his abdomen and recovered nicely from it. However, we discovered he had another hernia that was too risky to operate on at his age. :[ Sadly he's gone now, but he's in doggy heaven. The day after he went it snowed here in Dothan and I'm convinced Sammy brought it here. :] There will never be another dog like him and I'm glad I had the 12 years with him. We love you Sam!

(By the way I dont like talking about it, so please don't bring it up. Thanks.)

On a much happier note... I just got back from DISNEY WORLD!!!!!!!!!! I went with my best friend Ashlea and her daughter Madison (and the rest of her family). It was AWESOME! I've been to Disney at Christmas time a long time a go, so I had forgotten just how beautiful it really is down there! The weather was wonderful and the lines were so short! Sometimes it felt like we were the only ones in the park! It was great! Much better than the long hot lines in the summer. I do believe I will only go at Christmas time from now on... We had a lot of fun and I can't wait to go back. Of course next time I would like for Josh to join me.. haha he's a little harder to convince.. he doesn't want to go again until we have kids that are 44 inches tall so they can ride all the rides. I don't think I can live without Mickey for that long. haha Here is a picture of us at the Spectacle of Lights in Hollywood Studios..

Upon returning from Disney World I woke up the next morning at 6am with a stomach bug.. It was terrible.. I spent the whole day between the bed and the bathroom. It was pretty bad.. I did find out that Josh needs to work on his "for sickness and in health vow" haha I went to the guest bedroom so I wouldn't pass my germs to Josh and as I lie there feeling like I am dying he walks in the room (4 hours later) and asks if I want to go eat Moes or pizza. Not the most considerate thing to do I must say... lol He did manage to go get me some gatorade to keep me from dehydrating. I'm going to have to teach him how to take care of others. All day long he asked me what food I wanted no matter how much I said I didn't want food. Everytime he said something my stomach lurched... it was terrible. He stayed far away and luckily didn't catch it. I'm not sure what it was, but I know it was probably the worst stomach virus I've had. I'm pretty sure I had a fever too because I was freezing, but sweating. I think I finally broke the fever towards the end of the day. I was able to sleep through the night and woke up the next day feeling really weak, but I did manage to eat at the end of the day. Today I feel much better! I hope I stay well through Christmas and the New Year!

I can't believe it's only 5 days till Christmas! Time is flying by!!!!!! I have all my Christmas shopping done! I have to wrap a few more things and I will be ready for the holidays. We will be heading down to Mobile at some point this week. The discussion is still in the air because I want to leave on Wednesday after Josh gets off of work and Josh wants to leave Thursday after work... so we will see what happens. I basically already have all my Christmas presents.. haha I got Ugg boots from my parents and the iPhone 4 from Josh. I already received these presents because I needed them for Disney! :]

Well I didn't blogged about this before because I was told to keep it a secret, but I am pretty sure a letter has been sent out by now. I am going to be doing another interim position at Houston Academy. This time I will be in the 3P class as the aide. I start on January 3rd and it will last until April 30th. I am very excited and so happy to have a job to go to everyday during this next year. It's been very boring the past couple months of just sitting here at the house. Although I am sure the dogs have enjoyed my company, I need to get out a little bit! So please pray that since I will be there till the end of the year that a position will open up for me there.


Well I don't think there is anything else to blog about... I will try to do better with updating! I'm sure I won't post before Christmas, so to all my readers: MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE PRITCHARDS!!! :]

Delta Update

Delta is doing much better than she was on Sunday.. She was a bit woozy on Monday when she came home and her urine was still pretty bloody. She went back on Tuesday for 2 liters of fluids and her urine changed to a slight red tint. Which was great news! She still had sediment in her urine, but no casts. Casts signal kidney failure so that was more good news. She went back to the vet this morning and had another urinalysis and blood work done and everything was much better. So she doesn't have to go back tomorrow! Yay! I hated having to take her somewhere that she didn't want to go. The 3 vets that worked with her were wonderful! We are so glad they had the knowledge to diagnose her problem as it is very rare. Sadly she is not allowed to be off a leash around unleashed dogs to prevent her from running around. She can't swim around the river anymore. She can only play fetch for small amounts of time and we have to be especially careful in the summer time. Josh is having a hard time accepting all this because she has always been the fastest most active dog. She could beat any dog swimming or running. However, we would much rather have her around than not. We are very thankful she is ok now! It wouldn't be the same without our Delta!

Delta

Just a quick update on Delta:

Josh called the vet and he has diagnosed Delta with rhabdomyolysis. Basically her muscle fibers were breaking down and going into her blood stream. This can cause kidney failure. The vet says her kidneys appear to be functioning as they should because we caught it early. She was extremely active this weekend running around at top speeds chasing balls, frisbees, and the four wheeler. We have always noticed that she will act a little weird after she has been playing hard, but we thought it was muscle cramps. So she will not be allowed to be as active as she was before. No more rough housing with Timber or chasing balls around a lot. It doesn't take much to set the disease off. She is still at the vet receiving pain medication and an IV to get her hydrated again. Thanks for the prayers!

It's been a while..

I haven't blogged in a while. My apologies! I have been busy and if I wasn't busy I just wasn't in the mood to blog. I think you have to want to blog in order for it to be interesting. I have decided to blog now because I am trying to keep my mind off of Delta being at the vet. We noticed yesterday that she was peeing nothing but blood, so I took her straight to the vet this morning. It's very scary because she has lost a lot of blood. The vet was pretty concerned, so I had to leave her for x-rays.

I guess I can go back to Halloween weekend... on Friday we went to the base for a haunted hay ride. Pretty much the scariest thing I've done in my life. They had all the scary characters from movies down a trail in the woods. I was screaming and crying for my life. If you have seen the movie, The Ring, you can understand how scary it is. They had the girl from The Ring in the woods beside her well crawling on the ground. That is where I started crying from pure terror. It was quite an experience. Josh enjoyed laughing at me. In Dothan, they trick or treated on Saturday and we had about 30 kids come to our house. Our first Halloween was successful. We also went to the National Peanut Festival on Sunday and it was a lot of fun. It's huge and they have a lot of good food to choose from, so we ate... a lot. :]

The next weekend my friend, Shannon, came up! We went and saw Steel Magnolia at the peanut festival. It was super cold that night so we froze for about an hour and a half and then decided to find cover and eat boiled peanuts. Steel Magnolia was really good, but it was just too cold to stay out in the open any longer! It was nice to have Shannon up here so I had a buddy to shop with! We shopped till we dropped and relaxed the rest of the weekend.

This weekend we went to the hunting camp. It was great to get a way and go there for a few days. I love being able to ride my four wheeler around. This was Jackson's first trip and he gave me heart failure every 5 minutes because he would run off and end up towards the road. I know he enjoyed himself though. He tried his hardest to keep up with the big dogs. He doesn't let his size stop him! We saw 5 deer on Friday, but Josh didn't get a shot because she was just out of range. I was whispering run to all the deer! There was a baby amongst them, so I am glad Josh didn't get a shot because that is just cruel. You don't know which one is the mommy. We heard something moving around us on Saturday, but they never showed. Maybe next trip! We need some venison for our freezer! We are all out!

I am ready to put my Christmas decorations up! I was going to start today, but I realized I don't have a tree stand. So I will have to wait until I can make it to the store! Boo! I was ready to get the house in holiday spirit as Christmas is my favorite time of year!

I can't think of anything else to blog about because my mind just isn't here. I will update about Delta once I hear about her... prayers please.

Quick!

A quick update:

After 2 and a half months, Josh has finally cracked. The dishwasher can now be used! You may wonder how I accomplished this feat... 2 and a half months of him doing the dishes after dinner is what did him in. Our deal is I cook and he cleans the dishes after! This week he kept waiting later and later to start washing and finally he says "Why don't we just use the dishwasher?" Well sir, that sounds great to me! haha

I attempted to make chicken and dumplings for supper. I think they turned out ok for my first time. Lesson number 1: add more salt to the water. Lesson number 2: Less is always more. You can add more water easier than taking it away. Lesson number 3: Make sure you have all needed supplies before beginning. I had to roll the dough out by hand... Yeah, not so fun. Besides lacking the flavor of salt and pepper, I think they were good because I just added as much as I wanted on my own plate. I try to be lenient with seasonings because Josh is extremely picky about something being over flavored. Plus, I like more salt than I should and he does not. At least now I know what to do for the next time.

I got my vinyl in for my cricut. I named her Carrie. Carrie the Cricut. Carrie and I have been cricuting everything. I've even ordered more vinyl and hopefully I won't need any more for a while. I need a job to afford my habit.

I'm 23 now..

This past weekend we spent it in Mobile for my birthday. I had a miserable week of staying around the house and it was good to get out and go to Mobile. I am dying of boredom waiting around for subbing jobs.. I need a job! Anyways.. Friday, when Josh got home from work we loaded up the car and hit the road to Mobile. We didn't get there till late, so once I got home I opened up my gifts and went to bed. I got the best gift that I really really wanted, a CRICUT!!!! A cricut is a personal electric cutter. You use different cartridges that have different fonts and shapes to cut out on cardstock or vinyl paper. The vinyl paper is sticky and cuts out stickers that you can put on basically anything you want. Once I cricut a few things I will post pictures, so you can see what it does. I will use it to make personalized gifts and for my future classroom. I haven't been able to use it yet because I had to order paper and it still hasn't come in... It's driving me nuts to have a cricut sitting in my house and I still haven't been able to use it! I hope the paper comes soon...
I also received some Disney Christmas items, so I am ready for Christmas to be here!!! I love decorating for Christmas! Saturday was spent shopping, lunch with the family, and dinner with my best friends, Ashlea and Madison. It was a great day! Sunday was spent with the in-laws! Josh's Dad cooked us a delicious lunch of three different kinds of fish! It was great! We had fried ling, speckled trout, and grilled bass! Oh and you can't forget the fried pickles! It was delish! It was a great ending to my birthday weekend. I can't believe I am already 23.. 22 went by fast! I know on October 15, 2009, when I turned 22, I had NO idea that I would be sitting in Dothan Alabama. I was worried about school, the upcoming semester of student teaching, and wedding plans. It's crazy how much can change in a year.

We haven't completed any home improvement projects lately... We really just need to paint the bathrooms. I guess we will get around to that eventually.

I don't think there is anything else to blog about.. so until next time y'all!

Where did fall go?

Last time I blogged about cooler weather... well that cooler weather has disappeared and summer weather is back. Boo! It was 90* today!! The humidity was low, but still I want those cooler temperatures back!

Last weekend, my parents and Sam came to visit! My poor Sammy had surgery to remove a hernia and his manhood and he was super skinny.. he needs me because apparently my Mom is starving him! ;] (kidding) The guys spent the day watching football and the girls spent it shopping! It was great. Then we watched Alabama football roll alllll over those gators! It was wonderful! On Sunday, we tried a new church called Harvest Church and we really enjoyed it!! The atmosphere is really relaxed, the music is contemporary, and the pastor has a great sense of humor. We went there again today and I believe the next Sunday we are there we will fill out a card to join.

Friday was my last day working with the kindergarten class at HA. They had a pizza party for me and the teachers gave me a card with a gift certificate to Nip and Ernies. I really enjoyed my time in that classroom. I put myself on their subbing list so hopefully I will get a lot of calls. Mrs. Coleman said she would spread the word so I hope I will get a few jobs a week. One of the 3P teachers has already asked me to sub for her in November and I know all the preschool teachers and aides will call me, so that's good!

On Saturday, we had Josh's coworkers over.. Justin came for the the whole game and Callean, his wife, and their two girls came for a little while. Allie stayed and hung out with us and then Sarah came for a little while. Unfortunately it wasn't a happy ending and that's all I have to say about the game. Speaking of Josh's coworkers, Justin and Callean found out they are expecting another child! In honor of that I made cupcakes and sent them to work with Josh. They were strawberry flavored with blue and pink sprinkles! I was told everyone enjoyed them.

I have pulled something in my back and have been in a lot of pain since Friday. I don't know how I did it, but I woke up Friday and couldn't move my neck and now it's all the way down to my right shoulder blade. I sneezed this evening and it made the pain so bad I had to send Josh to the store for a muscle relaxer. I hope it gets better now...

As for home improvement, Josh added four shelves on the back wall of our closet so now I had room for all my shoes. It looks good and also adds hanging space! I think that's all we have done for now..

According to Dothan, the most exciting news is that two new Publix's have opened in our area. Apparently that's a huge deal and people even camped out for the grand opening. That seems a bit weird to me... I mean it's just a grocery store... not the premiere of a Twilight movie. Josh and I decided to see what the fuss was on Friday and learned that it's just a bunch of overpriced items. I do have to say they have a huge selection and great organic options, but it's just too expensive for us right now.

Well that's really all I have to blog about now.. this weekend we are coming to Mobile for my birthday! Can't believe I am going to be 23.. Ugh time is just flying by!