Bailee

I am so very thankful that I am sitting here looking at my baby girl Baille. She is my (our dog) that we have had for 9 years. This dog and I have have been through so much together and she really is my baby.
Sunday night she started to get really sick and I started to get really worried. So we called the emergency vet that is located about 45 minutes away. I wasn't really sure what was happening with her and I really wasn't sure if we had enough time to get her to the ER vet 45 minutes away. We made it and we even had plenty of time to spare. Although I am very thankful that we got there early enough to be able to help her.
She started acting really strange. She was extending her head and neck out as far as they would go, she was foaming in her mouth and her belly was so hard. She would lay down, then get up and do this over and over. It seemed as though she was in pain and very uncomfortable. The vet said it appeared like BLOAT and told us to bring her in right away. At this point I thought she had no chance. Years ago Mark and I watched a vet show where this happened to a dog and there was no cureand the dog died. So I was fretting the whole time. Thankfully things have advanced enough that there is a surgery and most animals come out fine with no more problems.
So Mark and I decided to go ahead with the surgery. She did so well and continues to do well at home. This was a major surgery and it appears she has at least 25 staples in her abdomen. She is of course very tired and sore, but she is doing wonderful.
I am praising God for his faithfulness as we got 1 unexpected check in the mail and another check for doing a physical therapy lab. I do this lab with the kids every year, but this year the check was more than it has been and way more than i expected it to be. So God provided some extra money he knew we would need. At the vet before the surgery Mark paid the minimum amount that it would cost, but we still planned on having to pay more. Well when the vet called to tell us how she was, she told us that we over paid and the vet owed us some money back!!!!!!
I am so very grateful to God. HE always provides for our needs and sometimes even before we know we need it.

2012

I am so excited for 2012. 2011 was an incredibly horrible year and I refuse to revisit it in this post. I know that 2012 is going to be much, much better! It has to be!

I think what I would like to do this year is try and blog more as if this were my journal. My journal where I will post random things. Things like parenting strategies that I use, how our day was, homeschooling and other things too!

I will start off with one of my parenting strategies I used last week. I have had an issue with 2 of my children leaving their dirty clothes on their floor every.single.night. Finally I had to get creative. My solution to this problem (because no other solution was working), I told my 2 children, if your dirty clothes are still on the floor when I say goodnight, you will wear those clothes tomorrow. I don't think they thought I would do that, because they still decided to throw their clothes on the floor. It took 2 days of wearing the same clothes for one child and the other child it took 3 days. I am so thankful that we didn't have to go anywhere or have any random visitors.

Some may be reading and thinking that is gross or wrong or harsh or whatever else. Well when you have a household of 8 people, things can pile up quickly. Imagine if these 2 children continued to do this every day for 7 days, that would be 14 pair of pants, 14 shirts, 28 socks, with a grand total of 56 articles of clothing, WOW!!!

Can I tell you this worked wonders for them. They now practically run downstairs and put their clothes in the dirty clothes every.single.night. I have not had one problem since.