Deck the Halls and Be Thankful

I am attempting to get this entry in November so that I can still reasonably include these adorable videos of A wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. It was a nice throwback to last year's video, too. :) We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my sister and her family. I am so thankful they are nearby. We all missed Jasper this year, particularly whenever anyone dropped a piece of food and then had to pick it up. Despite the week/month/semester's sadness and busyness, we are very thankful for all of the blessings in our life.

I've also linked last year's Christmas kick off post so you can see how things have/haven't changed. I'm excited about updates to our tree.

Miss A is so excited about the holidays. She was asking to decorate for Christmas before Halloween.

We made fun cinnamon french toast roll ups for breakfast one morning. Those were a big hit.

We have been making sure to give Madeline love lots of extra love every day.

Tomorrow starts our fun 25 days of Christmas. The next three weeks are going to be really busy at work for both me and Chad but I really loved all of the fun activities from last year and that they gave me something to look forward to in the evenings. Thus, I've decided to try again this year mostly with more low-key activities that we did previously and were fun/not a lot of work.

We also got a new advent calendar.

I'm excited also for the reappearance of the kindness elves (and hope I don't regret them this year!). In that spirit, I also came across a "kindness calendar" that will serve as a nice challenge, mainly for me but also to try to work into our daily activities. I definitely need it these days! :) 

Our first baby was a puppy

I started writing this blog post last night as I was waiting for Jasper's chicken and rice meal to cook and I was uploading photos as I fed him bits of chicken, mango, and banana. Sadly, Jasper died in the middle of the night. I thought I would still share this post, more for our own memories than anything. I know he was loved by a lot of people in Kentucky, too.

I mentioned a few days ago on Facebook that I wasn't sure how much longer Jasper would be with us. It might be years or it's possible he won't even be here for Christmas. As frustrated as I have been with him over the past year, this has been really hard for me. Jasper was recently diagnosed with Cushing's disease and he has quickly withered from a spritely 16.5 pound tank of a puppy to a 12 pound geriatric skeleton. The dog who would do absolutely anything for the tiniest morsel of food has been skipping meals with greater frequency for over a week. He was placed on Vetoryl which greatly improved his symptoms but the dosage was too high and his body did not respond well to it. We currently are trying to get him restabilized to begin treatment again at one-sixth of the dose. I feel hopeful that if we can just get him stable, the medication will work and he may live for another five years. But tonight (as I'm boiling chicken and rice and slicing mangoes to try to entice him to eat) seemed like a good time to reflect back on some of my favorite memories. 

My dad got Jasper for us as a Christmas present my first year in grad school at UK. He wanted to get us a chair but we really wanted a puppy. After a lot of research about the best dog for our needs, Chad and I visited a Boston terrier breeder in Danville to make our selection. We thought we wanted a girl, named Emma. While playing with her, the little runt "Jazz" crawled onto my chest and immediately fell asleep. He had my heart from that moment and we knew he was the dog for us. Over the last 12 years, we've struggled with food allergies, surgery for a luxating patella, a round of fleas in Charleston, and the recent bout of whipworm induced pica/tasmanian devilism. But he's also been our little protector, my best cuddle buddy, and the most sensitive soul in our house. He would never, ever leave my side when I was sad--even when there was food involved. He's smart as a tack, learned tricks with no effort, is surprisingly gentle with children, and has been our funny clown-dog, prancing people pleaser. 

My favorite funny memories of Jasper are the time he stole a banana out of my purse and peeled it and pranced around the living room eating it and every instance he would sing to happy birthday. Chad loved how he would suckle his canvas "kitties" and shake them. Knowing what I know now about how hard this feels, I'm sure I would go back and do things differently over the last few years. But I did what I could with how life was and the internal resources I had available. And hopefully we will have more time with him to make up for the last few years. 

We are sad to say, goodbye. Here are some of our favorite photos of Jasper, mostly from his healthy, scrappier days.