Happy Birthday Donna & Michele!!!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SEESTER!!!!!!!!!!


My Sister-in-Law Donna is celebrating a birthday today...hope it's a great one and wish we were there with you. Donna, aka "Seester" is one of our family's favorite people on the planet, we love her so much and are so thankful she's a part of our lives!

Here is a snap of Donna and her hubby Dennis from a family wedding in June:
And here's one of Aunt Donna with Kaley & Caroline from a visit to our house a few years ago:

This is a special birthday for Donna too since she gets to share it with her new daughter-in-law Michele. We welcome Michele into the family with open arms and adore her...the girls especially love her (and her hubby Brandon, their cousin) to pieces! Hope you have a wonderful day too Michele...we miss you! Here is Michele and Brandon from the same family wedding: how cute of a couple are they?!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHELE!!!!!!!!

Birthday Shout Out & Book Review:Christmas Jars

I would like to send a Happy Birthday Shout Out today to my all time BFF Renata (frequent reader of this blog). She is the best and I hope her day was as special as she is to so many of us! Love Ya girl! Here is a fave snap of the two of us from a couple of years ago...



I read a wonderful book over the weekend that I wanted to recommend to my blogger pals. It's called Christmas Jars by Jason F. Wright. I saw him on Glenn Beck on CNN when I was channel surfing a couple of weeks ago, he was talking about his new book The Wednesday Letters (I have it on order from the local library). This book is a compelling story about family (how they come in all different forms) and the lessons learned through giving (by both the giver and receiver). If you are a generous and caring person who enjoys to help others, you will feel inspired to take action personally as those in this book did. It describes a heartfelt tradition begun at Christmas, but the lessons learned apply all year long. I know that I started our 1st Christmas jar when I finished the book and hope you do too. Please let me know what you think if you have read or do read this book, I'm interested in your feedback. Also, would anyone out there like to start or participate in a "blogger book club" We could pick a book and assign a due date to have it read and take turns hosting blog chats about it...sound good to anyone?

* Check out the comments on this post, the author himself left one*

Introducing...

the newest members of the family that Kaley & Caroline adopted on Saturday:

Meet Milky Mouse
He is Caroline's new pride and joy. He's an albino (see his red eyes). Apparently some of the other naughty mice weren't so nice to him and he got a tiny scratch by his eye and was put up for adoption and Caroline just fell in love with him instantly. Check out his colorful new cage below. We bought extra tubes but didn't get enough...we will be getting 1 more straight piece so he will be able to run through the tubes completely around his cage...way cool!

Meet Blackie
Blackie is a dwarf hamster and is only 3 weeks old. Kaley adopted him and thinks he's a male (but it's too soon to tell yet). The wonderful salesperson at the pet store was listening to my kids talk on and on about how much they love hammies, so she brought out a cage with babies in it and got special permission to adopt them out. Kaley was ecstatic! We also saw 5 day old hammy babies, incredible! Since the babies were so little, we fell in love and actually adopted TWO, so meet Blackie's sister below:

Meet Tinkerbell
Kaley swears that Tinkerbell is a girl, aren't the siblings adorable?! The live in the same cage for now and are so sweet with each other. They are weaned and doing great with us so far.


I know you all probably think I'm insane to get more pets after the recent losses that we've had, but I just couldn't deny my girls the joy that having a pet brings...animals make them both so happy and they are very good Mommies. They have decided that I am the "Hammy Grammy", LOL! The store was having such an incredible sale that we got some different hammy toys that are too cute for words, so I'm sure we will have many crazy hamster/mouse posts to come. You've got to stay tuned, I promise a good chuckle! :)