Phoenix with Grandma Dorothy

Last Friday, we drove to Phoenix to visit Grandma Dorothy. She was visiting some friends in Mesa for a few days, so we decided to go down and spend the day with her. We picked her up and then drove to a Train Park/Museum.

Riding the train

Crazy sculpture at the train park. There were some huge
miniature train sets set up in this building too.

Tour of an old Presidential train

Gavin taking advantage of the IKEA fun!

After the train park we headed to IKEA. Sara's been missing IKEA since we left Minnesota, so we went and looked around there for a couple hours and had supper there. Micah slept in the shopping cart most of that time.

Goodbye Lizzy

 Tonight we said goodbye to our beloved dog, Lizzy. It all started with that weekend of multiply seizures and ups and downs ever since. We paid for blood-work to be done, but the results returned as normal. We could have done more extensive testing, but it costs more and we more than likely would not be willing to pay for the treatment once we found out exactly what's wrong with her. The vet said there's a high probability of cancer as well. The last few days, it's been obvious that she wasn't herself anymore. She would pace and whine constantly. Sara and I got very little sleep last night as she was pestering both of us all night long. I got up with her a couple times, but there didn't seem to be anything to help her calm down. She had a seizure early in the morning and a couple more this afternoon. She would sometimes bark at us as if she didn't recognize us, and would smell us and the surroundings as if it were a first experience in that environment. It was sad to let her go, but Sara and I decided it would be best to put her down.

Here's the family taking Lizzy for a final walk around the neighborhood before saying goodbye.

I took this picture a couple minutes before she was put to sleep. She still seemed like there was a lot of life in her,  but she was suffering greatly as her mind and body were failing.

It was an emotional night in our house tonight. Poor Micah cried himself to sleep tonight trying to wrap his little mind around the concept of death. The other kids had a hard time too, especially Aubri. It's amazing to me how our dogs become a huge part of our families. Lizzy was our first baby. She was there the day we brought a newborn Gavin home from the hospital. She took all the abuse from the kids as they were growing up and she never fought back. Sara remembers how many friendships were made in Minneapolis because of Lizzy walks and meeting up with other "dog-walkers". What an amazing family dog! She will certainly be missed.

Fall Party and Trick or Treating

 This year, we decided to throw a fall party for families we know with kids. We basically just carved mass amounts of pumpkins, ate food, and let the kids run wild for a few hours. We had several of our neighbors over, and quite a few families from our church as well. I didn't count, but I suppose there were about 40-50 people at our place. Thankfully the weather was nice so we were able to be outside most of the time. That was Sunday night.

For Halloween, we let the kids hit a few houses in our neighborhood to do the trick or treat thing. As usual, they each got more candy than any kid should be allowed to consume. It was funny spraying Micah's hair black for his Superman costume because his little blonde hair coming through made it look like gray hair. He kinda had that "Richard Gere" look going on :-)

Here are the kids right before heading out to get some candy

Here is Sara right before the preschool Halloween Party. Apparently, many of the preschoolers didn't recognize her at first and were a little frightened. 

This is a shot of about half of the carved pumpkins at our fall party