It's A Girl!

With all the excitement and pictures from the cruise, I forgot to tell you that our new baby is a girl! She's 6 weeks old and a total doll. She's a catahula/german shepherd/shar-Pei mix. She looks like a shar-pei with little wrinkles instead of deep ones that pure breed shar-Pei has.

So far things have been going really well. She was an outside doggie before coming to our house. Everything in the house has scared her at least once-tv, dishwasher, vacuum.....! But she's starting to come around and claim this place as her own.

We stopped on the way home from the port Monday to pick her up. We really wanted it to be a surprise though. So Mike used his god given ninja skills to sneak her into the car, keep her quiet in the car, and then sneak her into the house and under the tree.

The amazing part is that both kids were surprised. Ashlyn went to sleep in the car so that helped and Braden was so tired that he didn't catch on. I told them I wanted them to pose for a picture by the Christmas tree when we got home. While they were doing their best "Cheez", Mike came in the back door and put her under the tree.

They both looked at her for a minute like they thought she was some kind of toy dog. After a few seconds Braden's eyes got big and he yelled "its a dog!". He's been in love ever since that moment.

It's taking Ashlyn a little more time to warm up to her. Ashlyn loves her name, Ariel the little mermaid puppy or Ariel for short. Ariel is a little hyper for Ashlyn. Ashlyn wants to sit and pet her and Ariel wants to wrestle and play tug-a-war with Ashlyn's hair. Once she gets a little older and mellows out a little, I think Ashlyn will be more fond of her.