Havelock Moved Out and Other Updates

Kevin, saying goodbye to his cousin.

This weekend was one of some pretty big changes. One of my sisters moved across the country while my brother-in-law Havelock, who has been living with us for some time, moved into his own apartment.

On her way through, my sister stopped to say goodbye to us. Kevin enjoyed playing with his cousin for a little while. It was nice to see her before she and her family left.

 I avoided showing you her face because she's not my kid, and I don't have permission (yet) to show her on our blog. These are cute pictures anyway though.

Before we moved into our current apartment, we felt inspired to ask Havelock if he wanted to come live with us. He had been wanting to come to the west coast for some time, but hadn't had the opportunity. He accepted, and so we decided to get a three bedroom apartment.

Living with Havelock has been a great experience. He and he nephew are really good friends, and we all learned a lot from each other. Sometimes it was challenging to have someone else live with us, but it was definitely worth it.

As he prepared to leave, I experienced my first taste of what it's like to send your kids off to college. It's a little scary, because after they leave, they're kind of on their own. You just kind of have to trust in them and the Lord that they're going to be okay. I'd always kind of assumed parents couldn't wait to get their kids out of the house once they turned 18, but now I understand that letting your kids leave is also an exercise on faith.

Here's a picture of us with Havelock and our snake.

I'm sure Havelock will be just fine. All of us have matured since he came to live with us, and I think he's really enjoying the college life, even though he's not going to college. He's just learning to be independent. He felt like it was time to move out, and so he got his own apartment up on campus. Luckily, campus allows non-students to live in their apartments.

Dakota (our dog) was in a lot of pain Sunday night. I woke up to hear her panting at a million miles an hour. Thinking she needed to go outside, I took her out, but after we came in, she continued to pant. She calmed down a little bit, but a couple of house later I woke up to hear her breathing very quickly again. Grig took her out, (I was busy with Kevin), and he said he thought she was in pain from her arthritis because she didn't really need to go and she was hobbling down the stairs.

She laid down on the floor in obvious distress. So, after I finished feeding Kevin, I got off the bed and laid next to her. I proceeded to give her a full-body massage. As I worked on her sore muscles, her breathing slowed and she fell asleep.

She was able to sleep the rest of the night, but the next day, she was still very still and sore.

So...last night I gave her a bath. She's funny, because she doesn't like to get into the bathtub, but once she's in there, she'll relax and lay down in the water. I massaged soap into her fur and gave her another massage as she relaxed in the water.  When we finished, I dried her off and she was a completely different dog! She went running around the house and for the rest of the evening, she was relaxed. She didn't even pant. It was bizarre because she pants all the time, but she was so quiet that I had to keep looking around to find where she was.

I'm glad that helped her so much. We might need to look into getting her some pain meds. Poor girl. At almost 14 years old, she's starting to fall apart. I guess that's what happens when animals and people age. Grig and I are trying to decide if we should get another dog before she leaves us, or after. It's a hard decision to make, and hard to think about her dying at all.

We'll at least wait to think about it until after our trip back east this summer. We're going to be driving across the entire country to visit family. I'm pretty excited. I love road trips, though we're not sure if Kevin is going to. It's going to be at least 32 hours on the road.

Well, that's about it for now. It's been a crazy few days, and this week is looking to be equally crazy, but good!