On How To Find An Iphone

1.  Wear leggings without pockets.

2.  Juggle multiple items in hands while helping early-dismissal children get coats and backpacks on.

3.  Tell early-dismissal children goodbye and take rest of class to library.

4.  Realize at end of library time that phone is missing.

5.  Retrace steps and repeatedly ping apple watch fruitlessly.

6.  Realize that phone might have fallen into a student's backpack and gone home with the child, even though no memory of such a thing exists in one's mind.

7.  Email husband and ask him to check my location to see if phone might have left the building.

8.  Try to wait patiently for husband to email back, carry on with teaching PreK kiddos.

9.  Encounter several people in the building and hear lots of good advice and well wishes for lost phone.

10.  Finally hear back from husband and learn that phone is, indeed, about 6 miles away.

11.  Feel ridiculous.

12.  Determine which child lives at that address and call his mom, my friend.

13.  Wait while she kindly goes to check and verifies that yes, my phone is tucked away safely in son's backpack.

14.  Continue with the day, needing my phone multiple times and having to figure things out without it.

15.  Feel ridiculous.

16.  Print directions to her house from MapQuest like its 1999 because I HAVE NO PHONE OR GPS OR ABILITY TO FUNCTION APPARENTLY.

17.  Leave school in the windy, freezing cold, and promptly lose the printed directions to the wind.

18. By some stroke of luck, stomp on the papers and save them.

19.  Drive as if blind, relying on printed directions and not a disembodied voice, and wonder how we ever survived without GPS.

20.  Arrive at student's house and walk up to door, admiring all the Christmas yard decor. 

21.  Feel my watch go crazy with missed texts and calls.

22.  Greet my friend and her children and thank her profusely for helping me end this wild goose chase.

23.  Feel ridiculous.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  Well, Happy New Church Year!  Today is Advent One, and also the start of the new church year.  Today we begin preparing our hearts for the coming of Christ at Christmas.  Advent is a time of reflection, quiet, and gentle solemnity as we ponder the coming of the Christ child.

Which of course sounds ridiculously hard in a season of busyness and crazy and shopping and parties and decorating. It seems the world is in constant push back to the Christian idea of a reflective Advent, and it is therefore a bit of a challenge for us to approach it that way.

The last year hasn't been the easiest.  It's easy for me to be in a hurry to turn the page on the year, anxious for better times.  Throughout the last year, I have tried to find the good in challenging times - to see how God provides, how God answers prayers, and how God always has our good in mind.  As we begin Advent and the new year, I am praying that I am able to truly focus on God's gift to us in His son Jesus.  

Today in Bible class, we talked about what John the Baptist said in the gospel of John:  He must increase and I must decrease.  This has long been a favorite passage of mine.  As this Advent season begins, this is my prayer.  That all my worldly problems, even though they will remain present, fall away as I put Christ first. Less me, more Christ.  Less worry, more worship and witness.  Less inward gazing and more pointing to the newborn King.

On the Process of Naming A Dog

As I just blogged, we got a dog.  The name he came with was fine, but didn't grab any of us, so in the week between our (surprising) decision to adopt him and his adoption day, we had to come up with a new name for him.  Our family group chat with the seven of us LIT UP with name options being tossed out day and night.  Everyone was passionate about the names they loved and the names they hated.  As I often find our family group chat, it was hilarious.  

Since our Shadow was a black dog and had a name connected with his color, I thought we should do the same for this dog.  I tossed out Pepper, Coffee, Stormy and the like.  They were all quickly vetoed.  Among some of the names that were suggested are these:

Maverick
Rooster
Moose
Bear
Asher
Chewbacca (Chewy)
Kronk
Snuffleupagus (Snuffy)
Augie
Zeke
Dwight
Ron Swanson
Duke

This is an incredibly small representation of the names suggested in our group text.  Some I can't share here, some were just ridiculous, and some were good but never took off with enough people.  If I had agreed to Kronk (from the Disney movie character), that's what his name would be.  At some point, one of the texts said it was a done deal because "we have a child majority and dad".  Apparently they thought mom was a lame duck in the veto department, but they quickly learned that since mom would be doing the majority of the work, mom would not be sounding like an idiot calling a crazy name out the back door. About mid week, one of the kids created a google poll to put an end to it all, but it proved inconclusive. Later in the week, we tossed out two names in the category of "Names we wanted to use for our children but didn't - and added Augie (Augustine), and Zeke (Ezekiel).  

And then. . .my husband happened to poll the second graders at our school, and one of the names they tossed out was Duke.  When he shared the names in the group chat, he also shared that Duke was his dad's childhood dog's name.  And the rest is history.  We all thought Duke was a regal name, and we all very much loved the Papa connection.  

And so we named him Duke. And while he doesn't exactly have regal behavior yet, we think he'll get there.  And we'll always love that our crazy dog name discussion ended with loving thoughts about Papa. 

DUKE!

I haven't blogged in ages, which is due in part to big kids who don't want me to share the hilarious things they (still) say and do.  The other part, of late, is because we temporarily lost our minds and listened to our children.  We gave them what they asked for, and now we are unable to do anything else, including, but not limited to: showering, sitting on the couch, using the bathroom, unloading the dishwasher, going upstairs, having people over in a peaceful manner, and generally living a calm lifestyle.

You guessed it!  We got a dog!  Even worse - a puppy!  Ever since we lost our very best bad boy, Shadow, the kids have been begging for a new dog.  Our youngest daughter, who is shockingly 13 years old, was the most tenacious.  She checked petfinder day and night for new listings that met good ol' mom's rigorous criteria (no shedding, no puppy, housebroken, well-behaved, cute and fluffy, and not too expensive).  She showed me countless listings over the course of a few months, and either we inquired and never heard back, or I rejected her choices (re: my Very Important List).  

Until she showed me a listing for a black, fluffly schnoodle.  First red flag:  PUPPY.  He was a 7 month old puppy, but housebroken.  The biggest reason we didn't want a puppy was because we don't have the time to train one.  But since this one was housebroken, I thought maybe he might be ok.  I emailed the shelter for more information and the next morning (Saturday), I had a reply that we could have a meet and greet that day! It suddenly felt more real. . . and on the way over to the shelter, I prepped my daughter.  "He is going to be adorable. We cannot make this decision based on his cuteness.  If he's crazy or badly behaved, he won't be for us. You must be mature about this."  

Our first meeting with Duke was like this:  A tall, 35 pound blur of black fur zoomed into the meet and greet room, peeing all the way.  Red flags two and three: WILD AND NOT HOUSEBROKEN?? We headed outside with the worker (who was great) so that he could pee out there (all told, he peed 3-4 times during our meet and greet).  And while we talked to her, he ran around the small area like a maniac, jumping up on us and the table and zooming in and out of our legs.  The whole visit lasted a half hour and he never got still even once.

To everyone's complete shock (including several of the children), we got the dog a week later.  And it's been. . .hard.  And fun, and rewarding, but also challenging.  He is the cutest boy, and sometimes sweet and cuddly.  But has has been very prone to nipping and barking and chewing anything and everything (he might be part goat).  He is a puppy, so almost all of these things can be chalked up to his age, which we know.  I am taking him to training classes, and we are all working with him.  He's a smart boy, so I am thinking we'll probably all make it through the puppy stage alive.  Hopefully.

So.  Here it is for posterity, in the annals of our family history. We got a dog.  A puppy.  And after a month and a half, we are still standing, albeit in a slightly more guarded manner.   He's cute, he's sometimes sweet and we can see glimmers of the calm boy he'll be in a year or so (a YEAR.  sigh.).  

A few notes about this picture.  See the spot on the piping just behind Duke's head?  Yep - that's where he chewed the couch and pulled some of it apart.  Also, the pillow he is resting his cute head on (as well as almost every other throw pillow we possess) has chewed corners.