the winter blitz

is my favorite choice of words from the local news stations of what we are experiencing here in north texas. last weekend we all braced ourselves for icy weather. while it did get really cold and yucky, it did not get really icy until it suprised us wednesday morning. we enjoyed 6 full days with micah home from school. he was scheduled to have a five day weekend celebrating the end of a nine weeks with two staff development days and dr. martin luther king day. we were all pleasantly suprised to wake up to ice covered streets and sidewalks on wednesday morning. bret stayed home with us monday as his day off and will work friday this week. it was so nice. we have taught the kids how to play uno attack. they a quite good at it , suprisingly. it is very educational helping them learn colors, numbers and other things!!! we don't even have to "be easy" on them. the kick our tails without our help!!
i finally talked myself into allowing our family to get a dog--again. my only stipulation was that it had to live outside. i was not interested in "training" a dog any time soon. the begging by all broke me down and i gave in. honestly, i think i was just afraid to get attached to something that i might not have the ability to take care of adequately. we got him last tuesday afternoon. we adopted him from the local animal shelter. he was a chocolate lab. he was so sweet. we picked him up from the vet's office after he had been neutered and had some shots. he was so excited umping and licking all over us. he seemed like he was so happy to be home. because he had had surgery, we could not give him food until the next morning. when we offered him food the next morning, he did not eat it. he drank alot of wter but would not eat. i tried scrambled eggs, chicken and rice, hot dogs, and the obvious dog food. he would not eat anything. that night he got really sick all over the kitchen. the next day, thursday, was torture for all of us. he went down hill so fast. i called the vet and they gave us some antibiotics to force feed him. we also suirted pedialyte in his outh every couple of hours. he died around midnight that night. i cried so hard, but the most pitiful one of us was micah. he took it really hard. he cried for quite a while. he asked if he could keep this dog tag. we let him. i don't when i will ever be up to having a dog again. i just don't think we were meant to have pets. though they have not noticed yet, our fish died last week too. anna asked but i did not have the guts to tell them about it too. i guess they think he's just floating around i am going to have to replace him somehow without them noticing.
the last ten days have been filled with so much information, some possibly great and some very sobering. i know one thing for sure. our God is sovereign. He is supreme authority over my family and He alone knows or understands it all. no matter what he does with us over the next months we will trust in Him and worship Him.
we love you all,
summer