Ringing in the New Year with a....bark?!?!

Well, before anyone gets too worked up(mom:), no, we did not get a dog. We live in the city, in close quarters, and have no desire to squish a 120 lb husky into the mix! But, we did have a canine visitor for the night! Our New Year's Eve started out a little rough...Kallie was having a hard time going to sleep (it's amazing how much a disrupted schedule affects babies!) and I needed to be picking up the babysitter. Luckily, Lyndon was able to settle her down and get her to sleep while I picked up Kathleen. So off we went to Fred and Lindy's to spend New Year's with the fam...Lyndon's auntie Lorri is in town from Toronto, and Oma and Opa were there as well. We had delicious appetizers and snacks, were having a great time visiting and laughing...when the phone rang! I instantly knew who it was...Kallie's schedule has been completely thrown off by all the holiday travelling and late nights, and she's had a couple of rought nights, waking up 3-4 hours into her sleep. Plus, she just started making strange this week, so I had a feeling it would be disastrous if she woke up before we got home (she hadn't seen Kathleen for a few weeks). When I answered the phone, I could hear Kallie screaming in the background, and so headed home right away. I was home in less than ten minutes, and Kallie instantly calmed down when I held her, even laughed and smiled (little goofball). I got her back to sleep and was able to join the fun again for the rest of the night. We played Cranium Wow (one of my Christmas gifts from Lyndon's parents!) and laughed and laughed and laughed~Lyndon's Oma and Opa are hilarious...it was such a fun night! We rang in the new year with a delicious dessert a la Lindy, and headed home. Well, that's where our adventure began. About two minutes from our house, we saw a big husky on the road, barely being missed by traffic, right by the expressway. We pulled over right away, knowing the dog wasn't too far off from being hit. We weren't really sure what we were going to do, but we knew we had to get him off the road. So for about 15-20 minutes, we tried to get him in the back of our truck, FINALLY succeeding. We decided to look for the owners, driving way into the country, knocking on doors (at 1:30 in the morning...only houses with lights on:) What we learned was that people had been seeing this dog for about 3 days, no one had come looking for it, and no one could catch it. The animal shelter does not pick up animals at night, so we were left with one option...bring him home with us. We got home about 2 hours after we had left Fred and Lindy's. It was quite interesting...we had to lock our cats in our room, or they would go nuts. He's a huge dog (who threw up in the back of our truck...lovely) and we didn't know how we were going to keep him in our little townhouse. We first tried the basement, but we would have had to stay up all night with him b/c he really didn't like it down there, and just wouldn't settle, so we ended up tying him up in our backyard. I felt bad about it, but Lyndon kept reassuring me that huskies are made to withstand cold temperatures, and thankfully it wasn't too cold. We slept in the living room so we could keep an eye on him and give him some attention throughout the night, bought some dog food at the corner store, and did the best we could with the little we had. We had to keep the cats in the basement b/c they started howling when they saw him, but for the most part, the night went ok. Lyndon didn't get much sleep, b/c he just kept watching the dog. But thankfully, this morning the animal shelter came and picked him up, we're praying he'll be adopted by a loving family right away. He was such a sweet, gentle dog, and really beautiful! We both said that if we lived in the country we definitely would have kept him! Anyways, that was our adventerous New Year's Eve...quite a fun way to start 2008! And now we're just relaxing and enjoying the day together, before Lyndon has to go back to work tomorrow! May you all have a wonderfully blessed year!

Kallie and Kathleen

January 1, 2008~~first picture of the new year!