As if our house wasn't crazy enough with 5 young children . . . we thought we'd add puppies! Ok, so we've been thinking about it for a while. Dogs are so good for children, but I knew if we were going to get a dog I had to be sure I wanted one because I knew when it came right down to it - well I'm just home the most, so I'd be doing the most with it. Well we got more than one and the story about how we got them is a doozy! We found a breeder and called about his current litter and found it was a large one - 14 puppies. They'd be ready on Christmas Eve - perfect! I called back on the 21st to see if we could possibly pick the puppy up early since it was our Anniversary and well it was just a better day for us since we had a lot of company coming in and would have a lot going on in the next few days before Christmas. . . well, the guys says bad news, the puppies are all sick. He's already lost one and it doesn't look good. For most people the conversation would have ended there and they would have continued their search for another puppy or waited for the next litter. Well not me. I still don't know exactly how the conversation continued because I'm not much for conversation by phone anyway, but somehow we kept talking and pretty soon he was saying,' well I guess you could come and pick up a couple and see how you make out with them' (a couple, what?) 'they'd be free of course since they're sick' (hmm, we were going to pay $500 for one, maybe this would be okay. Eric's a vet after all) So I tell him my husband is a veterinarian so I'd talk to him and see if he thought it might be worth it. I talk to Eric and he says sure, lets go take a look (really like anyone could go look at puppies but not get one?). I call back and say we'll come and take a look. So we go take a look and they're all so beautiful, but soooo sick! We decide to take the 2 biggest males a black one and a chocolate and then there's this little guy that looks at us with these big sad eyes and we couldn't help but bring him home too. We end up bringing home 3 sick puppies - best anniversary gift ever! Eric's such a romantic ;)
Oh, but aren't they sweet! This is how we brought them home - in little boxes. They were so sad. We didn't hear them bark for over a week and they were throwing up and had diarrhea. Eric doctored them up and we tube fed them and did everything we could. Two of them recovered, but sadly the littlest one just couldn't hold on and on Christmas day he died. The bigger two recovered soon after and are now thriving members of our family. We had a tuff time agreeing on a name but decided on Bo Jackson (remember he played for Auburn in college-Melissa is a huge fan and we recently watched an ESPN special about him and I'll have to say I was impressed, he seems like a good guy) So because that was the only name we all agreed on . . . we decided to name one dog Bo and one Jackson (Jack for short). *Hint: Bo is black and Jack is brown.
Here's Bo and Jack under the tree playing like healthy little puppies - we're so glad they're all better! They're hard to capture pictures of because they're so fast! Hopefully I'll get some more pictures on here before they're full grown! They're growing fast!
He's not real fond of having his picture taken but we managed to get pictures with some important people that were there. It was practically a blizzard outside which shows how much all these people care about James. Besides the ones in pictures here he had many more extended familymembers and friends that came to support him on this special day. His sisters Melanie and Melissa gave excellent talks about the ordinance of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. They also played the piano for the opening and closing songs. James' grandfather's gave the opening and closing prayers for the meeting and Eric baptised James and confirmed him a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and gave him the gift of the Holy Ghost. 
