Life. Money. Hope.

We love our jogging stroller that we got from a group of co-workers. It's such a smooth ride it puts Hunter to sleep!

You can kind of see Hunter's two bottom teeth in this picture. They are sharp!

Yep, she's got some attitude already.

We've been working on getting rid of our debt so Dave Ramsey can be proud of us. We took the next steps of cutting up the cards. Yay!

President's day weekend

For quite a while now every President's day weekend the Anderson clan (Mom's side of the family) has done an annual beach trip. This year was a little different though, not only did it fall on Valentine's day but this was the first time Hunter got to go along with us. I usually head down on Friday after work but delayed so Crystal and I could get some early Valentine's time in. We ended up arriving Saturday afternoon and arriving just in time for some pizza. Promptly after feeding our faces the guys took off for the local Sportsman Grill Pub to watch the dunk contest, where Rudy Fernandez unfairly got knocked out of the first round.

Saturday night most of us played Texas Hold em for a little friendly wager. Crystal held her own with my uncles and gave them a run for there money, surprising most of them.

On Sunday after I made my famous hash browns for the family, Erin, Hunter, Crystal, and I went out to the beach. We totally lucked out it was such a beautiful day.

Take note of Crystal's fashion statement with the rolled up pants and Hunter with the "I'm already to cool" sunglasses.

And of course a Pacific City pose with Aunt Erin, later to be referred to as Joan Jett. The tide also happened to be out so we exposed Hunter to her first tide pool and all the wonders that go along with it.

Hunter already getting a little hands on expierince and of course writing her name in the sand for the first time, with a little help from Mommy

It was a little windy so we decided to head back to the warm house and see if our two little cousins were up from their naps yet. I know she doesn't want to hear this but Erin is a natural with kids and we have the pictures to prove it. Here's Erin getting some quality time with the little ones.

We tried to get all the little ones down on the ground so we could see the size difference, but Alexa was having none of it. Nate was happy to lay there with his microphone in hand. Hunter kinda has no choice at this point : )

After we prepped the little ones, it was back to the beach. Matt took his awesome dog Jackson and she just loved the beach. Although Matt decided to be that guy, whos dog runs up to everyone elses dog who is on leash. Who can blame him though, looks like fun.

My favorite activity of playing frisbee on the beach, please notice the vertical leapage and the cool sun glasses.

Hunter decided it was nap time shortly after getting to the beach. Crystal was kind enough to keep her strapped on, but we still got some silly time in.

Erin was out showing Nate the ropes on the beach, playing a little catch and walking back from some wave chasing with Andy and Alexa still at it in the background

After our beach time we want back to the house, had some dinner and settled in for a grueling game of Risk. I've only played one other time than this and the first time Jason whooped me good so I wanted a little payback.

This game ended with Jason and I calling a draw at 1:15am. Next time we'll start earlier! Crystal was kind enough to take Hunter duty that night and ended up going out to the beach early Monday morning and getting some adorable pictures.

It was a nice weekend hanging with the family. I hope everyone else had a good President's day weekend too.

Happy Valentine's Day!

We hope everyone has a wonderful day today and really, have a wonderful day everyday! ;)

Animal time

It's never a dull moment around here with Hunter, but it's certainly never a dull moment with all the animals either. I get a kick out of how Cecilita, the teeny Siamese, rules the other animals (she can make Cora cower to a lump in seconds) and takes a nap wherever, even on Cooper's head.

For those of you who have met Chopper and think she is so cute with her little hand pawing trick and sweet meows, try having her stare at you like this ALL day long when you are trying to work.

Seriously, she sits right there and does that for hours. It gets very annoying, very quick.

Daddy time

Play time

Hunter is sitting up on her own now. Yay!

Saving life... one dog at a time

I wrote a post many months ago about being upset and frustrated with the Newberg Animal Shelter and I said I was going to do three things and two of which I have been able to do and I wanted to share.

I'll try and stick to the short story here and not go into all the details, but after many emails and phone conversations with Newberg Animal Control and OHS, and after many nights of frustration and wanting to give up, I FINALLY was able to get Newberg to let me take a dog to OHS. YAYAY!!!

Unfortunately a few dogs were put down before I was able to convince them to let me try taking dogs to OHS instead of euthanizing. One dog in particular still upsets me more than it probably should, her name was Annie and she was a really really sweet dog. Newberg shelter gave up on her and while they said they'd let me take a dog to OHS before putting it down (part of the longer story), they didn't and she was put down for no reason other than they didn't think outside resources would help them.



:(

On to the good news... After finding out about Annie, I made an even stronger case to Newberg to please just give me the dog instead of putting it to sleep. They had nothing to lose!

I was on the phone with the Newberg Animal control person about the website photos (another thing I'm helping out with) and she was contemplating putting Lady down and I was like, "Let me take her, please?!" and she finally said yes.

This is me taking Lady to OHS in my car... :)

Lady was spayed and adopted out at OHS in just three days!! That is SUPER fast for a black lab coming to a shelter with not much history.

Now that Newberg Animal shelter sees that OHS are a great resource, I really believe I've opened the door to saving so many more dogs. It just goes to show that one person can make a difference and you should never give up! I know most people may not share my level of love for shelter dogs, but me sharing this isn't about that, it's more about feeling passionate about something and jumping in and making changes. I hear too many people bitching about things and not taking action. Just go try and change it instead of sitting around and talking about it! :)

I continue to volunteer at Newberg about once a week (skipping a few weekends here and there) (and also still at OHS once a month) and while it's really hard work, it's so rewarding. Here is a picture of the dog runs at Newberg shelter from last weekend.

If you have a moment to check out the pictures on the petfinder site, I've taken many of the pictures!

I wanted to say Thank you specifically to Brandon for supporting me in all my efforts to help the animals out there that have nobody to stand up for them. Thank you!! ;-)

Seis Meses (6 months!)

Hunter is now eating solid foods a few times a day. She's loving it!

Okay, maybe she doesn't look that excited in the picture, but we'll get some more good ones up here of her eating soon. So far she's had avacado (which she wasn't a huge fan of), Sweet Potatoes (LOVED them!) and Carrots (could give or take them). This week she's getting cauliflower.

I decided I wanted to make all her food so I've made those few batches of food and while it's definitely very time consuming, it sure feels great to know she's just getting the vegetables and no other additives.

I steam the veggies, then run through the food processor (we have a bigger one, just starting out with using the little one), then mash through a fine strainer to get the baby food smoothness.

Here is my little setup of making the sweet potatoes...

We survived the whole month of January without buying anything new (if you recall our resolution for that) except for that fine strainer pictured above and a 1 gig memory card. Other than that, if we wanted something we looked for it used or just went without. I'm shooting to go another month too! Although this month I want to buy a rug for Hunter's room and I'm not too sure I want to buy that used...

Anyways, back to cute pictures. Tonight was bath night and she's really loving spending time in the water! Isn't she adorable! If I knew there weren't any pervs out there on the internets I'd share with you the cuteness of her baby butt, it's so cute you want to pinch it and not in a gross way!

My friend Angie and her man Matt came out to visit last weekend (we forgot to get pics!) and they got Hunter the snazziest bath towel she can use for many years to come. She's loving being wrapped in it in Daddy's arms!

Hunter has now graduated to using her stroller as a big girl and not in the carseat that set in the stroller. Yay!

And we can't forget to include pictures of the crazy animals in this house. Here is Cooper in one of his regular evening time positions (most of the time he's got his head smashed into the dog bed snoring loudly) , but this time he pinned down Cora (not really) and then Cecil decided that his head would make a good pillow.