Our Little Rockstar

Cody loves anything music. If he hears a song his little tushy will start moving. If there is a mic he will pick it up to sing. If there is an instrument he will start playing it.

There are 3 toy guitars in our house and at any given time he is toting one of them around.

I walked into the hallway one day to find this…

So I followed him. Little did I know that our little rockstar was going to put on a show for me!

He started with some basic strumming….

Threw in a few lyrics…

Then he really started rockin’ out! Check out these moves!!! 

And my FAVORITE move!!!!!

Valentine’s Day

Cody had a Valentine’s Day party at school on Wednesday and because he is still a die-hard Yo Gabba Gabba fan after 2.5 years so it was only appropriate to make Yo Gabba Gabba Valentine’s for him.

He had a fun party at school and was excited to show me his “Valentine Box” of goodies! He proudly carried it from his classroom to the car and sat in on his lap the whole ride home (with a smile on his face). I had to snap a pic with my phone camera  because he was just so cute with it!

This is the coveted box that he made at school. The top is covered in red heart stickers.

When we opened the box to unveil its contents,

 

he lost interest and moved on. Apparently, he just wanted the covered box. :)

DJ’s Valentine’s party was on Friday so he prepared his Valentine’s all by himself.

He came home with a goody bag, too, and couldn’t wait to look in the bag to see what fun cards and treats he received.

He even had a sweet card for his dad and I.

 

What I love most is that he said “I know I don’t go by DJ at school, but I asked the teacher if I could sign it “DJ” since that is what you guys call me.” (He goes by Doyle at school – a decision he made when he started kindergarten.)

DJ woke up on Valentine’s Day with a sore throat and fever, but his Valentine goodies made him feel a little better.

Cody was too busy reading the cover of his Blue’s Clue’s Valentine DVD cover to look at the camera for a picture. ;)

DJ Meets Bill “Superfoot” Wallace

Last weekend, DJ had the opportunity to train with Bill “Superfoot”  Wallace.  Superfoot was in the area holding a large scale training at a local gymnasium Saturday evening, but DJ’s Taekwondo school had him come in just to train with these guys in the morning. How cool is that?

Doyle, DJ and I did not know who he was but DJ said that he “had” to go to the training day so we signed him up.

Then we “googled” him to find out who he was. Apparently, he’s kind of a big deal in the martial arts world. ;)

We didn’t get any pictures of the training, but the next day was an Open House where the kids could take pictures with Bill Wallace and get his autograph. DJ was REALLY excited about that. Doesn’t he look excited???

Okay, he doesn’t LOOK excited, but he really was. :) He was just recovering from a double ear infection so he wasn’t quite his excited self for the Open House.

I think his daddy was a little excited about it, too, so he even got his old belt signed.

Here the boys are hanging out with Superfoot.

 

DJ’s autographed picture that will framed and hung in his bedroom.

 

Tahoe Fun!

The week of Christmas we decided to take the boys to Tahoe for some snow tubing. DJ had gone before, but this was Cody’s first time and we weren’t sure how he would like it. We were worried that he wouldn’t, but we were wrong!!

Before he had his snow bib and jacket on he was trying to get out of the van to run in the snow. The last time he had been to the snow was when he was 1 so he didn’t enjoy it much back then. This time, he was ready to go!

DJ could hardly move with all the layers on. :)

Their Uncle came along with us and the boys couldn’t wait to throw snowballs at him!

This was Cody’s first time tubing and because he was too small to go on the big runs he had to go by himself on the small run. We thought he would be too scared, but again, we were wrong.

He had SO much fun. He is mad in this picture because I got too tired to pull his almost 40 lb body back up the slope!

   

DJ is an old pro at tubing and the boy has no fear. He was anxious to go on the big run with the bumps!

He also had his first attempt at making snow angels.

They turned out to look more like snow blobs. :)

And of course, no trip is complete with a picture of DJ jumping off of something. In this case, it was a VW van buried in snow. It was there for the kids to play with apparently because all the kids were more into climbing this thing then tubing!

We Said Goodbye to Scooter

I could have sworn that I blogged about this already, but I think this was actually what caused me to stop blogging.

I downloaded the pictures from my cell phone the other day and found these. They made me cry all over again.

Last September, our super-loved 7 year old Boxer, Scooter, began tripping and walking into things. That was a Wednesday.

By Friday, he couldn’t stand upright without support. The local vet recommended we take him to UC Davis for further testing.

The next Tuesday we had an appt for him to go to the neurologist at the UC Davis Vet hospital. I couldn’t go to the appointment with Doyle because I really did not want to know what was happening. This was our first “oldest son”. This is the dog that would throw dog toys into DJ’s playpen to help try to stop DJ from crying when he was an infant. This is the dog that would run to whomever was crying to comfort them by laying his head on your lap. The same dog that growled at us at 9 pm if we didn’t stop talking and let him go to sleep. The dog that weighed 92 pounds yet thought he was a lap dog.

I vividly remember the call from Doyle. The neurologist believed that Scooter had a brain tumor. His quick deterioration was not a good sign. We knew what the next step had to be, but we prolonged it.

He came home and cuddled with his favorite goose. (We had to put his snow boots on him to help him walk around the house. It had “grippies” on the bottom and helped prevent him from sliding on the floor.)

We babied him. We always have. Even the kids babied him.

Cody could see all the attention that we were giving Scooter and I am sure he knew something was wrong. Every chance he had he would go up to Scooter and hug him.

  

It was heartbreaking to see the misery in Scooter’s eyes. He never made a peep to show he was in pain, but you could see it in his eyes that he just wasn’t the same.

We had scheduled an appointment for him for Friday to put him to sleep because it was to the point that he couldn’t stand, sit or lay down without falling over and needing assistance.

Thursday night, we all said our goodbyes to Scooter. (This is making me cry all over again!) I grabbed my camera phone and started snapping away as all my boys bonded one last time.

The most heartbreaking of it all was DJ. We found him laying in his bed with the covers over his head silently crying. When we asked him why he was crying all he could say was “I’m going to miss him”. Throughout the week, DJ had not said a word to us about Scooter. He wouldn’t even talk about it. It broke our hearts to see him so upset about it.

We asked him if he wanted to lay with Scooter and cuddle with him one last time. The two have been sharing Scooter’s bed since DJ could crawl. Even within the last year we would find DJ (and now Cody) laying in Scooter’s bed with him.

Our poor guy fell asleep crying next to Scooter.

 

Even Xena came over to say goodbye. These two slept together every night. We usually found her in his bed instead of her own.

We haven’t gotten used to either of them being gone. (Especially since we still find their hair laying around the house and Scooter’s hair in the car! :) ) The house is quiet without Xena constantly meowing at us. There is no dog’s head on my lap to comfort me as I grieve for them. Yes, they are pets, but more than anything they were part of our family.

We miss Scooter and Xena A LOT and even made sure they celebrated Christmas with us

So Hard to Say Goodbye

The last few months have been hard. We were still overwhelmed with the loss of Scooter.

The week before Christmas, Xena started to have seizures. She had never had them before so it was alarming. They had began on a Monday and were fairly mild. They progressively got worse.

By Thursday, I had called the vet to set an appointment up for her on Friday because she was having them more frequently. It was scary to watch and we worried that the boys would see her have an episode. She must have had their best interest in mind because she always had them in a room that the boys weren’t in.

As we put her into the car that Friday to go the vet, she had another seizure. This time she screamed. She hadn’t done that before.

By the time we took her to the vet she was blind, in a daze, and not responding to our voices. We had no choice….

We miss her a lot, too, and wish that her and Scooter were still here.

The doctors aren’t sure what happened to her, but I honestly think she had  broken heart. She and Scooter were best friends for 7 years and after he was gone, she was always looking for him. If we walked in a door, she looked behind us for him. If we opened the sliding door to the backyard, she looked at his “potty spot” to see if he was there. I think she missed him more than any of us did.

Here are some pictures of the day before Xena left our family.

She looked fine and healthy in spite of the seizures.

I love this one. Cody used to torment her daily and she would put up with it pretty well. I think he knew something was wrong with her because that day, he was being pretty loving.

New Member of the Family

Last September, we were sad to say goodbye to our oldest “son” Scooter. Not a day goes by that we don’t think of him.

Up until last month, my desktop on my laptop was Scooter’s picture and every time Cody would see it he would yell at Scooter to come out of the screen. Even he misses Scooter.

Doyle kept saying that the best way to heal from Scooter was to get a new puppy. I didn’t want a new puppy. I wanted Scooter!!!

The boys started looking for miniature schnauzers. We were worried about Cody because he is not too fond of small dogs. We went to visit a family with 4 week old mini schnauzer puppies and although I had already picked out an all black one, Cody kept going back to a salt and pepper one and petting it. The other puppies he would just tap their head with one finger while this one puppy he would whole-handedly pet. We decided to get her instead of the black puppy.

We visited her weekly at her breeder’s to feed her and get her used to our sent. The boys looked forward to the visits (though I think Doyle looked forward to them even more than the kids!).

This is the first day we met her. She was so tiny!

DJ loved (and still loves) to cuddle with her. If you lay her on her back and cradle her she wraps her two front paws around your hand. 

The proud “dad” (he wanted to be her daddy, which made us the grandparents – NOT COOL!) of his 5 week old puppy.

 

Even Cody held her (at 6 weeks) and that amazed us that he really liked her.

On Dec 3rd, she was finally old enough to come home with us! She was wrapped with a bow and everything.

The proud daddy was so excited to come home from school to find her waiting for him.

 

We are excited to have Lexus part of our family. The boys love her and I find them cuddling with her constantly. She is a great puppy that we know Scooter would have loved!

She enjoyed her first Christmas with us and received quite a few gifts. Most of them have already been torn apart and have been thrown away. :)

This was taken last week. Isn’t she a sweetheart?