I admit it; I’m not a good blogger. I’m also not a good facebook-updater, tweeter, flicker-updater, or any of those things. I have pictures and notes about my family here that is 2 years old. But big changes end up making me do it. No; I don’t quite have a new son, but we did get ourselves a dog.

His name is Angus; We got him from Micki and Beulahful Bulldogs in Middletown, NY. He’s currently 9 weeks old.

It’s a tough thing, choosing a dog. We, of course, are serial dog-owners. Notes and pictures about Roscoe are here on this site (somewhere). We loved him, and with the kids, were basically looking for a more-stranger-accepting, smaller version of him. We first decided we wanted a Bulldog; We thought about a Bulldog the first time, but Jenn wanted a dog that was a little more protective. (We sure got that with Roscoe!). Now, with the kids, we decided to get the Bulldog; a dog that’s sturdy enough to play hold up against the kids, has the “just ran into a wall” looks that always gets us, short-ish fur, etc.

Then, choosing the pup. We were 5th to choose from a litter of seven. (The family who chose Jimi wrote about their choice on his own blog.). So we had three pups to choose from. It’s hard to make such a long-term choice in a couple of visits of an hour or so, especially when your real choice is to find the pup who will do the best with a family with a 4, 6, and 8 year old, and all of their friends too. We want a pup who is on the submissive side, so he won’t be too apt to challenge the children for authority, but yet one who is confident enough to not be afraid of the children or new visitors.

That led us to Angus. The litter was named after Woodstock performers, and Angus was named after Edgar Winter, a reference kinda lost on me. (I got who Janis, Carlos, Arlo, and Jimi were named after right away). We spent a lot of family time (mainly in car rides to and from Christmas activities) trying to choose a name. We were thinking of TV character names, and I asked Aaron what MacGuyver’s first name was, since I remember we looked it up a few weeks ago. Aaron, of course, remembered it was Angus, and it stuck, with the MacGuyver reference, as well as the thought of a big slab of beef.

Angus seemed to be just right. He was clearly very interested in us people, he wasn’t scared of the kids, but he was also the one who seemed that he would be the least challenging. The other pups we chose would probably be great dogs as well, and I even liked their coloring, but would probably be a bit more challenging in one way or another with all that’s going on around our house.

He’s obviously already growing on us. He’s already found his favorite spots (he likes sleeping on a big red pillow on the floor in the living room), he’s figured out he can make it up the three steps into the back door, and he’s doing a lot of what puppies do all day, which is sleep.

I’ve got a few photos here, as well as a video:

Photos:

Video:

It’s the first time, in a long time, we made this trip, and didn’t even have an infant, or an infant on the way. The three kids got along so great (so far). We took way too many pictures; a few pages of them are in the gallery:

For Hanukkah, Jenn bought me a model rocket, and today (as it was 70 degrees in January), we went down to Jones Beach to launch it. It was pretty foggy (and a bit windy) when we got there. We launched three times, but the third time, we didn’t see where it landed; it turns out it landed about 1/3 mile away, in the next parking field.

Photos


Video

Michelle and Alex’s wedding was October 22.