Vote, Tom Cruise says so!

Update

As you all know our beloved dog Marbie was laid to rest on Saturday. It's taken a while for me to able to talk/write about it without crying (still not successful). Marbie had been having a lot of trouble walking. We know he had been in a lot pain. This was the hardest decision Brad and I ever mad. We agonized over it. In the end we know it was the right decision to make. It was all very peaceful and Marbie fell asleep in my arms (here's where the waterworks start again).

Our house is very quiet without him, except for our now crawling, cruising, yelling nine-month-old. But there is no barking when we get home or when the pizza guy comes. No clicking on the hardwood of his nails and no shaking of his ears.

Marbie touched our lives in a way that we know no other dog will. The next dog will be a family dog, Elias' play-mate. Marbie was our first baby. Brad and I raised him from 7 weeks old in a small apartment in Madison. He moved with us four times, two states. We called him Fuzzball, Stinky, Buba, Mr. Pants, Louis Leekey, and Monkey.

Marbie will be missed every minute of every day. I miss his bed, food, and crazily enough his smell. I just finished a book The Art of Racing in the Rain where the dog believes when he dies he'll be reincarnated as a human but first his soul gets to play. I hope that Marbie's now running through fields, swimming and eating everything in sight. Hopefully he'll come to me in my dreams to let me know he's okay and I hope I'll get to see him again one day.

Marbie Mufasa

We'll always love and miss you Fuzzball.

My arm, my arm

So the reason we haven't posted in a while, besides enjoying ourselves in Vermont, is because our laptop died. Yes, dead. I feel like my right arm has been cut off. We don't know why it died, Windows Vista (yeah that is probably your answer right there) just refused to start up. Dell said that they could reload Vista but that means we LOSE EVERYTHING. All my pictures, all our emails, programs, everything.

Thankfully nowadays there is Geek Squad. Those little, tie-wearing, dark glasses geeks should be able to come to our rescue. If we bring our laptop in they should be able to put our hard drive on to an external hard drive therefore saving all our information. Once Vista is reloaded we can then put our hard drive info. back on our laptop.

So people you're going to have to wait for the beautiful pictures of Vermont, my gorgeous nieces and handsome son. Of course unless I get off my butt, walk upstairs to our laptop and actually download the pictures at the speed of molasses and then post them on the blog. If you wait long enough that might actually happen.

Talking Little Man

I've had this song in my head since having Elias.

Another day, another cold

So since we've have kids it seems like I've gotten more colds. I mean I know how I catch them from Elias, all the kisses. Seriously how can I stop giving him kisses but I thought I wouldn't catch anything from him. They say kids in their first year of life get 8-12 colds. Well parents must get at least 1/4 of them.

Elias came back from Texas with a cold that turned into an ear infection. If we weren't flying to Vermont this weekend the doc wouldn't have worried but we didn't want any ear issues on the plane so she gave him some antibiotics. For the past week Brad and I have been fighting what we assume are also sinus infections. They're not bad enough to take off work but nagging and persistent sinus issues. This comes after a cold a couple of months ago that put me out of commission for 3 work days.

Before Elias Brad and I had not gotten sick for two years! We both take vitamins and eat well but alas we're still getting sick. I have to say though, all those kisses are worth it! Have other parents experienced the same thing?