the holidays, the ringo & the new year.

i find myself able to blog again for the year, so hello. hello to nesting at home because illness has once again settled in. it's times like the past 5 days that really start to melt my sanity down into nothing. but first, i should reflect on how grateful i was to experience such a great holiday season with all three of my boys this year + one (but more on that in a bit). this holiday was significantly different than how we spent them just one year ago. my heart was overfilled with joy! moving forward as a family has proven to be very successful, even so much that we decided to expand our little family. enter ringo.

back up the bus to thanksgiving this past november. we spent a long weekend up in sioux falls visiting mike's family. and upon our time there, we became aware of a rescue team that was going into an indian reservation to extract dogs that had (and still continue to) become overpopulated and unsafe. as the story unfolded and the photos started to appear of these dogs/puppies being rescued... we became more curious. we soon started thinking that we could provide a loving home to one of these rescue pups. and how excited to boys would be to have a 4-legged friend to call their own. so, the day we were heading back home, we made an hour detour up to minnesota, to the farm where the 9 rescue pups were being held until they were adopted/fostered. i was so pleasantly surprised upon our first impression of these dogs. with only 4 days out of the reservation, and in the loving care of the Tracy Area Animal Rescue (TAAR), one would have never thought they were fighting for their lives. they had clearly gone from "rescue mode" to gentle domestic beasts in a very short time. and to me, this was a good sign that this would be a good fit for us. we let the boys wander and meet the puppies... and our focus started to migrate to the slightly "larger" puppy, 3 months old, half german shepard/half black lab... calmy chewing on a rawhide bone on the blanket. he wasn't jumping up on us or the boys, just minding his own business (now we refer to this as his secret plot for good behavior to be "the chosen one"). he was loving and sweet and we had no other choice... he would be ours. we were able to take him home that day. so we all piled into the truck and headed home. so that was the story of our ringo. the animal rescue gave him the name and it fit too perfect due to the white ring of fur around his snout. ringo it was. and ringo it would be. and honestly, if you have never experienced adopting a rescue pup/dog, i strongly urge you to. i never imagined that this would be how we would include our first domestic beast into our family, but i couldn't imagine it any other way. you must adopt!

so moving forward through the season. our new pup has proven to be very smart and it required very little time (in my mind) to get him house-trained and integrated into our home and lifestyle. christmas was spent here in holstein and it was a very relaxing and wondrous time. we hosted my family christmas eve and spent christmas day at my parents'. the next day, we drove up to sioux falls to celebrate with the schweitzbergers. other than losing my wallet in the parking lot (so i believe) of target, it was an amazing short trip and we loved seeing everyone again. yes... my entire wallet! for those of you that thought i wasn't going to dwell on that little detail a little bit more, you were wrong. losing your wallet is like a small part of your body being lopped off. ugh! made me sick, still makes me sick. what do you do?! i took care of the necessary steps to cancel/replace everything and now i'm just moving on. blah! please check out my next post on the first 5 days of 2015. it's a lot less cookie cutter and rainbows and sunshines. of course =)


PS - visit TAAR's website or FB page!
http://www.tracyareaanimalrescue.com/home.html
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tracy-Area-Animal-Rescue