Dogs and Horses

Yesterday was, for my boys, the greatest day EVER!! Justin and I have been talking for a while about getting a dog. We always come to the same conclusion: our house is too small, our boys are really young (when we look at rescues out here, they say your kids have to be older than 5 in order to qualify for a dog), and we have no income. So the answer is always, "Not right now, but maybe in residency." This topic comes up about once a month. Our boys both LOVE dogs and we know that, even though it would be a lot of work, a dog would just fit right into our family dynamic.
So, back to yesterday, we got a real treat! My good friend Mindi and her husband have a beautiful black lab named Maggie. She let us "borrow" Maggie yesterday! We got to have Maggie with us all day yesterday - plus she got to spend the night!!! Needless to say, the boys were in HEAVEN!! They adore her and they spent the entire day yesterday following her around endlessly. Clayton especially loved it. He spent the whole day pretending he was a dog too. It was so much fun (and perfect for us because we got to see how the kids would do with a dog without actually having to get one)! We came to the conclusion that, someday, a dog is definitely a must for our family (which kind of surprises me a little because, after growing up with millions of dogs, I never thought I'd want one)!!
The boys wanted to do everything with her. They loved that she followed them everywhere.
She thinks that Noah is especially tasty (although, in fairness, so do I). She can't stop licking him. This is just fine with Noah, he laughs and smiles and gets so excited when he sees her coming at him.
She played tag with Clayton. This was so nice because Clayton always wants to play tag and I just don't have the energy to play tag for hours (which is what he wants to do). Maggie, however, has endless energy and didn't mind an endless game of tag!
Here are my puppies.
Both boys were fascinated by Maggies dog bed (they'd have slept there last night if I would have let them).
First thing this morning, Clayton turned back into a dog! (And Noah decided to eat dog food as an 'after breakfast' snack - delicious!)
The other fun thing that happened yesterday was that we got tickets to see the Lipizzaner Stallions. Just a brief history for people who don't know what they are - Lipizzaner Stallions are white horses that are from Austria. They are incredibly intelligent and very well trained. Anyway, they dance. It's fun and if you have an opportunity to see it sometime, it's worth seeing! A guy in our ward had three tickets that he couldn't use so he gave them to us. We took Clayton (we didn't want to have to chase Noah around the arena, so we left him with friends) and it was great! The horses were amazing, we were all pretty impressed with them. For some reason though, all of our pictures of the horses were either blurry or really dark. Sad, but here are the best of the ones we took:
I wish our pictures would have turned out better, because these horses were so cool and my pictures just don't do them justice!!
The horses performed for about an hour and then there was an intermission. During the intermission, we had some SERIOUS fun!! Clayton has decided recently that he is a photographer. He loves to take pictures but we rarely let him. Well, during the intermission, he was given the camera and told to shoot away. We got some really funny stuff. Here are a few of my favorites (I know Justin and I look ridiculous, but it was so much fun and we were all laughing so hard that I just had to post these!):




And here are my favorites that Clayton didn't take:

I love it when Clayton is silly in pictures - it cracks me up!

It was almost sad when intermission was over and we had to go back to watching the horses (but not that sad since the horses were awesome).

Anyway, it was a fun day. Though Maggie was DEFINITELY the highlight of the day (and probably the week)! Thanks Mindi and Troy for letting us watch her! She's such a great dog it was hard to give her back!!