Carbon

A couple months ago Shannon asked if I wanted to go for a road trip.  This is not a typical last minute offer, so I was suspicious.

Our boys had been begging for a dog.  I had told Shan that's all I wanted for my birthday, knowing he would be more likely to buy one for me than for them.  We had been haunting the local animal shelter, but Shannon had threatened divorce if we arrived home with some random mongrel.  While I realized it was an empty threat, he knows me and how I can cave when the kids really want something and he wanted me to know he was serious ;o)

So while we looked at every mutt at the pound, Shannon was researching breeders, finding a yellow lab he liked and that was fully trained.  While I loved the idea of a dog, he knew my follow-through with training would be terrible and we'd have a renegade on our hands.  We headed to Idaho late that Saturday, arriving home the next night with Carbon. 

He has been an awesome addition to the family.  And the training......worth his weight in gold!  He's so smart and shows such a natural aptitude towards birds that I'm even thinking it may be fun to begin bird hunting.  Shannon probably wasn't banking on a bird hunting wife! But certainly he'd be a willing hunting partner.    

We wound our way through a magnificent mountain pass into a remote area of Idaho.

No cell reception for a day was a blessing of its own. 

Carbon is thinking, "WHAT happened to my simple little life? These kids! There's so many!"

But they all soon became fast friends ~
When Max needs a snuggle, we can find him in the laundry room
with his blankie and Carbon.  
It's ridiculous.

Whenever we're hiking, Carbon is racing from boy to boy, 

occasionally rousing a grouse from the underbrush.  

Dom has big plans of finding a female and starting a 'dog farm'....

not something Shannon is super excited about. 

Blessings

A year or so ago I was at event where I ran into an old friend.  She has two children a little older than Kath and Michaela.  We visited a while, catching up on family and one another's lives.  Let me preface, I do NOT believe that having a large (ish) family is for everyone.  Heck, many a day I'm not even sure it's for me!  But it is what Shannon and I felt called to through prayer and it is where we're at now.  I try to avoid sounding as though a large family is the only correct parenthood path, but we sure have received a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle input that a small family would have been a responsible choice.    

  

Toward the end of our conversation, this lady mentioned they would be heading to Arizona for a month or so to golf and play in the sun.  "How fun," I responded, "the desert is so pretty in the winter!" 

And then her response, "If you had not had so many kids, you could be doing this sort of thing."

A hundred sassy responses were on the tip of my tongue, but didn't escape (thank you Holy Spirit).  

"I love my children.  And I love having a full house, as crazy as it can be," were my only words.  

The entire conversation will randomly come to mind, often during more delightful moments of parenting.  

As Shannon and I trudged up our driveway sledding hill one day this winter, he whispered, "Look what you created." And I thought of my friend....could her heart be aching that she was unable to have more children or that they had chosen not to?  I'll never know the answer, but I do whisper a little prayer when I think of her.  

And I DO know that we are blessed and I'd never send any of these guys or gals back!