teeth cleaning

over the weekend while hanging out at phil and lauri's house, ethan took his love affair with goldie to a new level. i don't know how it started, but i turned around to see ethan headed towards goldie with puckered lips like he wanted a kiss. goldie licked ethan's lips and he liked it so much that he kept putting his face in her's trying to get more and more goldie kisses. finally, she just let him have it, licked his whole face off, gross i know but he's my fourth child and pretty much by now i know that kids are made of rubber and that dog's kisses aren't going to kill them, so i was laughing pretty hard about the whole thing. ok, so then ethan started laughing while he was getting his face licked off and i'm pretty sure that we don't need to visit the dentist again for a while because goldie took care of anything that may have been stuck to his teeth. ethan laughed and laughed and there was nothing left to do but grab the camera for a video. sorry about how much i'm laughing, it was just so funny, but in a really disgusting sort of way. kind of like jim carrey.all i have to say is that this is proof that i've totally mellowed on the germ phobia, because two years ago this would've totally put me over the edge.
**EDIT: rich said he cannot believe i posted this video because it's so gross that someone way repot me for child abuse. blah blah blah.

rent-a-pet

We have been babysitting the Merrill's dog Goldie this week while they're out of town. Allie and Spencer took care of her because Taylor was at camp and I must say that did a fantastic job. It was fun to see her in the backyard chasing bees (please don't let her get stung in the mouth, I'm not up for a vet visit), and especially to take her for walks. Ethan LOVED standing on the couch to get a good look at her out in the back yard, every time pointing and grunting until I said, "yes that's Goldie". Our laundry room was converted into a dog hotel room complete with her bed. The kids didn't like closing the door on her while she was in there (what if she's afraid of the dark mom?) and so they rigged the laundry buckets in front of the door so she could look out but not escape. My kids are geniuses. One night we took Goldie on a walk and I started day dreaming about having a dog of our own and how fun it would be because we would be forced to take walks, usually as a family and how the dog would bring about such family unity. So continued my thoughts until I remembered Lauri's story about Goldie throwing up in the night more than once, dog diarrea in the basement, vet trips when the bee stung her in the lip (see why I was worried), grooming, expenses, etc. etc. Then I thought to myself, how fun it is that we can be like grandma and grandpa to Goldie, we can babysit her while her mom and dad are out of town and then we get to give her back for all of the crap we don't want to deal with. Literal and proverbial crap.