Seen Around These Parts

This week I took some random photos.  Shocking to my family, I know.  But these were sort-of random.  I decided to document what you would have seen around our house this week.

1.  A little bowl of deliciousness and frustration.  Curses you M&M company!!!

2.  This may not be exciting to some, but after missing for about a month I found the battery charger for our small camera.  If I'd had this even a couple weeks ago I might have gotten actual video of telling the kids we are getting a dog.  But I won't get started on that sad tale...

3.  Speaking of dogs...we are in study mode:

4.  I will probably have to give the dog a little extra treat when she arrives though. 

Her room will be the dreaded laundry room; my nemesis of this house.  I've begged, cried, pouted, whined, cursed it, and just plain hated this room.  But now...now that we have a dog coming into the house it is getting renovated.  I mentioned this to Mike this afternoon as we sat drawing up plans and he said, "Yep...it only took getting a dog to get the laundry room you wanted."  He thinks he got screwed though; the kids got their dog, I got a laundry room and he got bupkus.

5.  I finally finished this book.  All 1,037 pages of it.

This book started to take over my life.  I dreamt in Civil War times.  One day I said, "Fiddle-dee-dee!" and "'Lawd A-mighty...we sho is gonna have hotdish!" 

No...I didn't.  But I was frustrated with Jake one day and said to Mike, "He's being such a scoundrel!"  Mike just looked at me and I decided I needed a break from reading for awhile.

6.  Friday afternoon we attended a funeral.  Maddie doesn't really own any clothes appropriate for church in winter. 

I've asked several times for her to go shopping to no avail.  So, Friday at 10am I was at Kohl's and grabbed a bunch of clothes.  I dropped them in front of Maddie when we got them out of school and told her, "You ARE keeping some of these.  You have five minutes to pick one outfit for today."  Luckily she found something she liked and the shoes I got worked out too.

 7.  We have to pick a dog name.  We are anal.  We took all the names we'd come up with, plus those suggested (thanks...) and put them in an excel list.  We made two passes and whichever names received at least two votes got to the next round of name choosing.  Last night we took final suggestions and whittled the list down from 50 names to 17.  We hope to shorten it to the final five tonight and have a name picked by Monday.

The kids told the school secretary about our dog name list and the secretary suggested we put all the names in a bowl and draw out one and we would just "all have to like it."  I about had a heart-attack.  That is entirely too random for me.  We are a list-making family.  At least Mike and I are and we are trying our darndest to turn the kids into that too.