Cocoa, Thanksgiving, Ben Roethlesberger, and being the Little Brother

This is Cocoa. He came to live with us on November 13, 2007. It was a bittersweet day at our house. In one of my previous posts, I included a picture of our new dogs.......KC and Love. Well.....on this day, KC (Kid Chaser) was lying in one of the Adirondack chairs on the back porch by the big tree. The only thing we can come up with is that when he had his head down on the chair, that his name tag got stuck between the slats in the chair and got twisted perpendicular to the slat. He panicked and tried to get off the chair---but, being a Shih Tzu, he had very short legs and could not reach the ground and eventually choked on the collar. It is all very sad and my stomach hurts retelling the story. I loved that dog......even though we had only had him two weeks at that time. He had been to the vet, the groomer, and everywhere else with us! Thank goodness that Jonathan was the one who found him....I would have freaked out.
That afternoon, J was taking Jill to the allergy Dr. in Waco for her weekly shot, and he called his friend Trent to see if there were any more Shih Tzus in the paper. There was one----in Speegleville---so J drove there and got it for me...for us. I did not know he was doing that---being the Budget Nazi he is---I thought he was done spending money on dogs he did not even want, much less the groomer and the vet. But he did.......and Cocoa has been a sweet addition to our family. He kind of lessened the hurt a little and gave all of us something new to focus on, not that KC is forgotten. His pics are still on my camera because I have not gotten them printed off yet. I will get around to it sometime.

This is a Thanksgiving shot. Notice that Lady is in charge here----telling the kids how she wanted them to write down the things they were thankful for----but not to include the usual answers----church, family, God, Jesus, grace, etc. Their answers were great! The bigger cousins helped the younger cousins with the spelling----they love each other!

Snow on Thanksgiving in Abilene-----how fun that was! The cousins had a good time pounding each other with snowballs---and trying to get the parents, too. J thinks we should use this as our Christmas card.....I dont know about that.
Thomas loves the Steelers. He even has a Roethlesberger jersey that he likes to wear everyday! Since his bday is coming up, we had a mini-cousin party while in Abilene. Thomas shares a bday with his cousin, Ben, and Uncle Jimmy's is the day before Thomas and Ben's. He loved this cake. I will post more pics of him and the cake soon.

Little Brother........G got mad and threw an airplane at Thomas last night, so T threw a block at G and hit him right on the eyebrow. This was some major drama with lots of dripping blood. HOWEVER, I did not faint (this makes my stomach hurt too---thinking about the blood)! Jonathan took him to the ER in Waco for some stitches and he was mostly fine this morning. We will have another claim on the AFLAC accident plan----the one we got mostly for Thomas----has been used for Grant three times and Jonathan twice. OH MY.......Thomas cried because he felt guilty......Boys will be Boys! I know someday this will all be funny....right, POPS!

Love to all..........and, in addition to praying for the Hortons, please pray for Linda Hill, a secretary at the High School in West, who beat breast cancer 5 years ago, and now has cancer in her back. She is such a sweet woman.