Our Midwest Vacation {Texas to Iowa: Part One}

Before our vacation began, we had to stock up on our cuddle time with Ranger since we couldn't take him with us. 

This sweet pup is growing so fast! This picture was right around 4 weeks old. 

Sometimes he sleeps with his arms/legs straight up in the air:) it's too funny!  

He has chest hair now too;) 

Briiiiight and early Wednesday morning, we hit the road for our 12 hour drive to central Iowa.  

This is a drive we've done many times and there is a lot of beauty to enjoy on the way.  

Oh Iowa, I like you. I get warm and fuzzies when I get to my home state, where so many of my friends and family are.  

Any who says Iowa isn't pretty just hasn't seen enough of it. There's a lot of untouched beauty. I suppose it's all about perspective, but I love the open skies and beautiful landscapes. 

I'm so thankful we got to see and catch up with Joe. He's made such great progress in his recovery so far, praise the Lord. If you missed it, I first talked about his accident in July here, I also made a "Joe" label on the right side bar you can see on the full web version (not on the mobile version) for the updates I've posted about him. He still has healing to do, strength to gain, and is still sore from all of his internal injuries. 

He had a checkup at the Mayo clinic last week and will go back next month. Over the next few weeks, his soreness should go down more.  I ask for your continued prayers for him as his body is still susceptible if he should get any lung complications could more easily lead to pneumonia, and there are still a few things the doctors at Mayo want to watch closely and check again during his next visit. He's so strong and this journey has not been easy, but he has many in the community (and in many other areas too!) praying for him. It was just great to see him and finally give him a hug. 

I didn't even notice until now that these two matched:)

Joe was our purpose of stopping in Des Moines, but I was able to see a few friends quick as we headed out of town. These cuties are always good to see! 

The last time I saw these Maggie and Hudson is when I played Mommy Assistant when they visited us in Minneapolis. Hudson is such a cutie! He also loved Nick:)

We also got to visit Rachel, her kiddos and her new house! It's in such a beautiful setting. 

So much beauty. The house was designed by an artist and has so many things Rachel wanted in her dream house. She thought she may have to build to get what she wanted, then they found this. So perfect for her and her family! 

Her kiddos are loving the outdoors that surround them. Haven picked these flowers and carried them everywhere with her.

Part of her house has this gorgeous ivy covering it. I bet it'll look so neat as the fall colors come in too.

Sweet Haven and her flowers.

Then, we were on the road to Omaha for a friend's wedding and for our nephew Hank's baptism! Those will be in the next post. I hope you all had a great weekend and start to the week! 

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Introducing {OUR} Puppy!

I'm pleased (that's an understatement;)) to announce that Nick and I will be keeping the puppy!

Meet Ranger...

I had been thinking of puppy names for a while, even before I knew it would be Nick and I's puppy. I made a list and had a few top choices, but one day, I curiously asked Nick if he had thought of any names and he said Ranger. I loved it right away. It's a good boy name, but it's also fitting for his personality. In his litter, he was the lone ranger, we live in Texas Ranger (baseball) territory, and he's quite the explorer, crawling all over Indy and the whelping box. It's perfect for him! 

In the end, it didn't take much convincing for Nick to agree to keeping the puppy. He's just so cute and has had us wrapped around his paws since day one (before then really!). 

He's been growing so much this past week which has been great to see. He was born weighing about 4 ounces and is now at 11 ounces! He's a week and a half old and I swear he visibly looks bigger every day.

This photo was after work earlier this week

Here's a reminder of what he looked like just a week and a half ago (Tuesday, August 6th) a few hours after he was born:

He's a Hairless Chinese Crested in case you wondered. His head, feet, and tail will have hair, but the rest of his body is pretty hairless. Because of his lack of body hair, keeping his body temperature comfortable is important.

His face is so precious. I kiss his forehead quite often. Sometimes he scrunches his face and it's too cute. He should be opening his eyes any day now! His hair is silky soft too.  

Here's another closeup of his face and body. He has some palomino (spotted coloring) on his nose and under his belly. 

We had to get a newborn (human ;)) bottle since he seemed to outgrow the first one pretty quickly. He does much better with this one too.

We've been supplementing the milk he gets from Indy (it doesn't seem that she produces enough), so it's kept us (mainly Nick!) busy with many feedings each day, usually every 4 hours throughout the day - thankfully we haven't really needed to do overnight feedings at this point. Talk about practice for parenthood someday! He has an adventurous spirit yet loves to be warm and cuddle.

We swaddle him to feed him:) It's pretty funny! It keeps him content to eat the amount he needs. He'd be very squirmy if we didn't bundle him. He likes the warmth of being swaddled though. After he gets fed and is all cozy and warm, he falls asleep pretty fast. It's the best when he falls asleep on us. 

Indy seems to be enjoying more "away" time outside or around the house lately - I think she has cabin fever for staying in her box so much. While she was out for a few minutes, I snuck in to see what Ranger was up to, and he was sleeping so sweetly. 

Most of the time when he's awake, this is what my pictures look like. Even with flash. He likes to be on the move.

Here, it seems like he was looking toward my voice as I was talking to him. At least I can tell myself that;)

Sweet puppy fell asleep just like that. He's posing for my photos already! 

Sweet Ranger-boy.

Beautiful drive home earlier this week

Update on my Step Dad Joe

Since I started this post yesterday, KCCI and WHOtv did interviews with Joe about his recovery, what he remembers about the accident itself and about going back to work. 

It's interesting to see different things in each interview. We're SO thankful for all of the prayers pouring in and for his great progress so far. In accidents like the one Joe was in, you're just a few inches, or centimeters away from a much worse situation. I also had the accident go through my mind many times and if he was crushed/pinned for much longer, it could have been much worse much faster without being able to take a breath. 

It literally pauses life and makes you look around to be sure you're loving your loved ones hard, and enjoying life - we never know when our time on earth will end. This was one of those moments for many in our family, and maybe even in the Des Moines community, to be sure we're living the life we want to live. We continue to pray for him as he still has some physical recovering to do, for mental strength through his recovery and adjusting to his slower pace lifestyle without work. We love you, Joe! And all the rest of you too, while I'm at it:)

WHOtv's Interview:

This is a photo (though you should be able to click on it to go to the video) from WHOtv of Joe's Interview Video (click the link if clicking the photo doesn't work).

KCCI's Interview:

 This is a photo (though you should be able to click it to go to the video) from KCCI of Joe's Interview Video (click the link if the picture doesn't pull the video up).

Today's Pinspiration:

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Puppy!

Anniversary #4
Nick and I are heading to enjoy our anniversary weekend shortly (Nick is surprising me with where we're headed, I'm excited!), but I wanted to do a quick photo dump puppy photos! Nick and I are celebrating 4 years of marriage which is pretty crazy! It's been quite the journey in these 4 years - moving everywhere, learning about fibromyalgia, and having many new work situations with each of our moves. I'm so blessed and thankful to have Nick by my side. As I've written many times here, he helps me so much on a daily basis, encourages me, and carries my burdens as his. Marriage is one of my very favorite things:) Love you, sweetest babe!

Joe
I got to talk with my step dad Joe on Monday and it was great to hear his voice sounding better and talk with him a bit longer than the quick conversations we've had while he was in the hospital. He still has a lot of healing and recovering to do, but he's out of the hospital (YAY!) and has family to help him transition. He's been walking with a walker to regain strength, and has been having a harder time managing pain since he gets nauseous with the go-to pain meds. Nights have been tough for that reason. We've been praying his nights and pain will get better, for continued healing, for strength, and for mental endurance on the long road to recovery. He will be laying low for at least a month to recover. Thank you all for your prayers for him and checking in to see how he's doing. It's great to celebrate the improvements he's been making! 

Puppy News!
He was born early Tuesday morning (about 6am). After hours went by with no more pups, mom and pup were taken to the vet to see if there were more pups on the way - nope! Just this little cutie, a litter of one. 

Her breed typically has smaller litters anyway, but very early on - like the week after she was in heat, she had a pretty messy miscarriage, poor thing:(. There may have been more than one in that episode, so I think the rest of the litter just didn't make it. She's had many litters with previous owners, so I think her body wasn't capable of a larger litter at this point. I think this pup is lucky he made it through that and her body kept him and grew him. I also think it's funny to look back at the videos I posted of her tummy movement (mostly through Instagram @eatexploreenjoy) and now know it's just this one pup that was moving around so much!

Here he is:

 Right after he was born! Yes, it was messy - sorry.

He's a fast mover so getting a still shot of him pretty much only happens when he's sleeping! 

One of my very favorite pictures of the mom and pup - taken by Nick!  

My turn to feed 

 Mama Indy is always closeby, inspecting him and cleaning him. She's a great mama.  

The bottle feeding master at work

He's two days old here 

We're weighing him to be sure he's getting enough milk/gaining weight.  He's at 5.5 ounces now - so tiny! Yet a normal size for the breed. 

Tongue out- Mama Indy 

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