Scrapping Thoughts

… and best wishes for a fabulous 2006!

Here’s the picture of “The Kids” I included in the Christmas card:

Compared with the 2004 picture:
Macalester is gone.
Rachel’s not a baby anymore, but truly a little girl.
Laddie Macalester is doing a fine job of helping us deal with the loss of two beloved dogs, while keeping us enchanted with his own dear self.
Sarah and Sydney just keep on being themselves.

And in a strange way, that sums up the year pretty well. Lots of other crap, but the family continues on, even through the rough stuff.

Here’s hoping for less rough stuff for everyone next year.

Here are a couple update photos of Laddie Macalester. He’s no longer on his best behavior, and is starting to act like a typically mischievious Scottie puppy.

I had purchased a little doggy bed to go in my work area. But it was too little. I think my sister’s cat will be “blessed” with a new bed this Christmas.

This doggy bed is just the right size for a snooze when I’m busy working on the computer.

He’s taken a liking to Little Macalester’s “Baby”, a combination chew toy/lovie/heat source. I don’t know if it’s because there was some residual Little Macalester smell to it (despite laundering) or what. But he loves to sleep with it near by. Sometimes he’ll carry it from room to room.

We use to say Little Macalester had 12 bladders because we’d find all these little puddles of pee. Well, it must run in the family, because Laddie Mac is doing the same thing. Either that, or he’s trying to mark the house now that the Christmas tree is up. I don’t know why he’d be marking — he’s neutered.

But then again, Big Macalester always lifted her leg to pee. This line of Scotties is a wee bit eccentric…

We had a big event yesterday — Laddie Mac lost his first baby tooth. Poor thing — Sarah and John kept grabbing him and checking his mouth to see if the tooth had fallen out yet. We think he ate the tooth — a common puppy occurrance — because John hasn’t stepped on it yet. That’s how we’ve found puppy teeth in the past.

We are so very happy to have Laddie Mac in our lives. He’s been a great addition to the family. We remain ever thankful to M’Liss and Charles for the gift of Laddie.

Better late than never, eh? Hard to believe that Halloween was almost 6 weeks ago.

I talked the girls into being ghosts this year. I always wanted to be a ghost, so this is how I was fulfilling my childhood fantasies…

The costumes were the classic pillowcases sewn together with cut-out eye holes. I added a customized touch by **attempting** to write the Chinese character for “hungry” on the costume. Sarah and Rachel are constantly complaining they’re hungry (Sarah is an eating machine, Rachel’s an echo chamber). Hence the characters.

I was having alot of trouble reading my Chinese dictionary at the time — the print was too small, and I need new glasses. So I’m hoping I actually wrote out “hungry”.

Rachel really got into being a ghost. She would run around the house, trying to make ghost sounds.

I did have one freak-out when I was finishing the costumes. I had Rachel put on her costume and … she looked like a Klansman. Yikes! I had made a very pointy head — I misjudged the curve in the head.

After I screamed and pulled the costume off Rachel (much to her bewilderment), I had Sarah try on hers. And I had the same issue. Needless to say, the problem was quickly fixed!

Both kids wore their costumes to school that day. When I went to Rachel’s daycare for the Halloween parade, they had just finished a snack of pumpkin-shaped cookies with orange icing. Instead of taking the costume off to eat, like I had been telling her, she ate the cookie through … an eye hole.

Her teachers thought I’d be mad, but I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. You can see from this last picture the “fruit” of her cookie eating labor.

Sydney was full of hijinks on Halloween. She jumped up on the dining room table when she thought no one was looking.

Busted!!

Then, of course, I made her pose with the kids in their costumes. Have you ever seen a dog with a guiltier look?

At least Little Macalester hadn’t learned to jump on the table… yet.