We bought a Kennel

The last two weeks didn't start very well. Sunday morning Becky and I were in the kitchen making breakfast. She decided to get right behind me as I went into the pantry for an item. Somehow, I then managed to trip over her and fell backwards onto the counter behind me and then to the floor. After a trip to the emergency room we found I had broken a rib and bruised a lung. Today I am much better but it has been a painful process to heal. Melody took over looking after the dogs. They missed me, but she has looked after them very well. Here are a few pictures I managed to take while convalescing:

Becky still manages to get in the majority of pictures and loves to sit on my lap. I think Parker wishes he could sit on my lap too, but he is such a big handsome man now.

You know the saying "while the cats away the mice will play"? Well that happened here. While I was at home resting my broken bone, Richard and Melody went to Tractor Supply for an item and came home with six chickens! They are cute and we have named them after the characters from the book Little Women - Marme, Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy and Laurie (I know this is a boy's name in the book - but we ran out of girl names:)). When we bought our house a year ago the chicken coop was buried in brush. Melody and Elijah worked hard this week to clean it out for when the chickens are big enough.

But the most exciting thing to share is that we bought a Kennel for the dogs! Richard and I drove all the way to Atglen in PA to pick it out and pay the deposit. It will take 10 to 12 weeks for it to be built and transported to our property. It is big enough for seven dogs and will also have a large room where we will have a dog wash tub and grooming table and other equipment to look after them. I will share in my biweekly blogs our progress over the summer to get ready for its arrival. We had quite the family discussion picking out the color. We finally went with the red in the picture below with white trim.

Today we submitted the final sketch of the floor plan. We are very excited about how this kennel will help us look after our dogs. We still plan on having the dogs in our house, but this will be their own space for naps and bedtime. We will also be building the dogs a brand new, much bigger, play yard with lots more shade. The larger space named "7" in the sketch below will be for our puppies just before they are ready to leave for their adopted homes. It will allow the Mom to train her puppies to use a doggy door to do their business outside. So lots more updates coming over the summer of us getting ready for the arrival. We are also working on adopting two new members for our pack, but more on that in another blog.