and GingerSnap makes 7!

Let me tell you a story. Aaron's Dad, Step Mom, and Grandma decided to send money this year for Christmas. They wanted us to decide what to do with it and let them know through pictures what our decision was. So...we had a family meeting. We decided we would all give out two ideas and then take a vote. I voted to go buy a bunch of presents and drop them off at Toys for Tot. Or, I suggested we go somewhere for the weekend and play. Aaron voted for a Home Depot card or Stereo Speakers. Preston wanted a monkey. Christopher wanted to split the money and have each of us shop for another member of the family, not ourselves. Then Jenessa brought up a puppy. That is all it took! Aaron and I quickly realized we should have put in place guidelines to this voting. Too late. We thought we could evoke Executive Power and each parent take two votes, but the kids put up a fight. The rules were not set before the voting process began. We could all vote for two things. Of course the puppy got the most votes and split the money and shop for everyone else took second. We did a secret ballot to see which of the two final ideas would win out. As you can see from the pictures, the kids won. Aaron and I voted for split the cash, but clearly were out numbered.

We tried having a dog about 10 years ago, and frankly, it was not a good experience. We didn't do our homework and we had three kids that were 9 and younger. We had no time to devote to the dog and we also picked the most hyper and hardest dog to train. We lasted about 3 months before we sent him to live on a farm. (It really was a farm...in the Midwest.) We decided that this time has to be different. This dog will actually be a part of our family. We want to make it work. We have spent the past week learning about different breeds and there has to be more to it than just picking out a cute dog. For one thing, the dog has to be easy to train or I want no part of it. Who is training this dog? Well....obviously me. As a result, my vote has to count at least 10 times. Once we decided upon a breed, we had to find a dog that would fit our budget. We went to a pound, but they only had about 6 dogs and none that would fit our lifestyle. The kids decided to chip in some of their own money and we started to look for puppies. We found one! It is an Miniature Australian Shepherd. She is about the cutest thing we have ever seen. Plus, she will be easy to train. That makes her even cuter!

We met a nice couple with three kids who live in Federal Way and went to their house to meet the puppy. The mom of the pups is named Snickers and the dad is Oreo. They had 10 girl pups in this litter and named them all after cookies. The name they chose for the puppy we fell in love with was Gingersnap because of the brown eyebrows! She has a sister with similar eyebrows and her name was Gingerbread. Gingersnap won our hearts though. We don't have to keep the name, but it's growing on us. It will help us remember that we got her for Christmas. She is only 4 weeks old right now, so she will stay with her mom and dad for a while longer. She will join our family in about 3 to 4 weeks. It will give us time to do some homework and puppy proof our house. Aaron and I have to admit that we might just like this idea of having a puppy after all.