Animal friends...

We have had some serious animal love going on around here. Our friends, who live behind us, went to Disneyland for the week, and we were lucky enough to get their doggy for the week. We have loved on Scouty for like months now, and we were so excited to have him all for ourselves. :) I was a bit nervous because I'm not too much of an animal lover, and I've never had a desire to have an animal. But....we LOVED LOVED LOVED Scout, and he was a part of our family. He fit right in and I even became one of those animal moms who drives with their dog on their lap. I let him sleep in my bed!!! Biggest shock ever! :) He is such a good dog though, and everyone we had over was just in love with him. He is a tea cup poodle, so he doesn't shed, and he doesn't really bark much, they had a little doggie door that was portable to put in our slider, and so I didn't even really have to do much, just love on him! :) I had to send Tara updates on him periodically throughout the week, and so I tried to get some good shots of him:

His official spot for hanging out throughout the day was on our red pillow on the couch. It was his little throne:

He loved to go on rides in the van, and was most of the time found on my lap like this:

I ran in real fast to take Taylor to the bathroom while we were out one day running errands, and when I got back to the van, I found these pictures that Tucker had taken on my camera. Looks like they had a fun time! :)

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These two little babies, I tell you what, were totally jealous of each other all week. Well, Jackson not so much, he just wanted to grab at Scout all week. But Scout, every time I was feeding Jackson or holding him or playing with him, would just nuzzle himself right up next to me as close as he could and whine until I petted him. You can tell he is used to being the baby of the house. :) So spoiled!

We also inherited this guy, Gomer:

Again, from the McLaughlins. The had Gomer before they got Scout, and of course, once Scout came, Gomer was forgotten about. Turtles are my favorite, so I always told her how much I would love to have a turtle. She had told me a few weeks earlier that they wanted to get rid of Gomer now that none of the boys ever wanted to play with him or anything. They were going to try and sell him on craigslist, but the amount they wanted, I knew Ben wouldn't be down with. So, I didn't think we'd do it. Well, after a few weeks, she called me and told me that they were at the point where they didn't want to have to take care of him anymore. I'm not even sure if they listed him on craigslist, or just wanted to be done with him. But either way, we inherited an awesome Turtle, and we love him. :) He has a pretty sweet set up, and he's pretty low maintenece, some Romaine leaves or Kale leaves every day and he's happy. I do need to clean out his tank. But he is a pretty easy going happy little guy, and actually moves around all the time, and is pretty active. My kids like to let him out and let him roam around Tucker's room. (That is his room, too) We love us some Gomer. We got him on the same night we got Scout for the week. So my kids were in animal heaven. :)

And lastly, our final animal friend, is this beautiful red bird here. In this picture he looks like a pretty fat bird. Who knows... He sat on this branch outside our living room window for a week straight. And not only would he sit on this branch for hours at a time...

But he would fly directly into our window. Over and over and over again. At first we could not figure out what it was, we just kept on hearing a thud over and over again.  Then we realized what it was, we laughed for a good half hour at him flying over and over again into our window. 

I love Taylor's face in that picture above. But then the very next day, we heard it again, and then the next day, and it went on for a good 5-6 days of him just flying over and over again into our window. Tucker was on a mission to capture it on film. And I think he got some pretty decent shots. The two shots below are all Tucker:

We were kind of sad when the thudding stopped. Maybe he'll be back to visit another day. :) Maybe I'm starting to turn a corner here in my animal loving ways. I wouldn't mind having a little Scouty dog all to ourselves! :) We'll see!!! :)