Spending Money

We've been making a lot of big purchases lately. They always seem to clump together. Here's what we've been spending our money on:

It started with this:

A lovely find on KSL... a changing table/dresser with detachable hutch. I knew I wanted a changing table, and they are SO EXPENSIVE, I also knew I wanted it to be able to grow with the child and be a dresser someday. This is perfect. Lots of vertical storage, lots of drawer space, it looks good, and I got it for about half the price of any changing table I could find retail. Win!

Today, we got one of these:

And filled it with this:

To supplement this...

We've been looking at freezers for a while. As a family, our diet consists mainly of frozen pizzas, frozen tortellini, frozen chicken breasts.... You get the idea. We are not a fresh foods type of people, and our existing side-by-side was woefully inadequate. I would often be shopping and think "Oh no, can't get get that, it won't fit in the freezer." Now we can buy meats in bulk AND have a neverending supply of potstickers! Hooray!

And last, but certainly not least, about a week ago, we got ourselves another one of these:

Crazy? YES! But it was the right thing. For a while, our days kinda looked like this:

But with some good solid discipline, it's a little more like this:

So here's the thing. We've always talked about getting another dog. We never thought we'd stop with just Chess. Granted, we didn't think it would be so soon, but when we sat down and really thought about it, we knew it had to be now. Getting another dog is hard work, and total chaos for a while. You have to really devote yourself to training both of them, and setting down the rules. This would have been infinitely harder when I was hugely pregnant and couldn't move, and infinitely harder than that with kids around. So I tentatively agreed to let Brit start looking, thinking we'd begin the search in earnest after Christmas. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), he asked a trainer friend if she knew any rotties looking for a home, and that's how we met Sadie.

Sadie is a perfect cross between a rottweiler and a german shepherd. I agreed to meet her JUST to see if she was an ABSOLUTE PERFECT match for Chess.... and lo and behold, she is. They spent an hour running around a friends yard, wrestling and playing, and Chess is not usually a player. Sadie really brings out the dog in her, and they adore each other already. Sadie is definitely more Dog than Chess, a little crazier, a little more curious, and not as completely focused on her humans. But she's already mostly trained (she was rescued by a professional trainer), she's a beautiful smart girl, and she's the perfect sister for Chess. So, even though it's a little sooner than I expected, we are now a 2 dog family. And it's working out pretty well. I love both my puppies to itty bitty bits.