Introducing Lily!

Here's our new girl, the day she arrived in our backyard. Her name is Kentfield Lily of the Valley. We just call her Lily, of course. Ain't she a beauty?!

Some of you who've been in-the-know about our plans for a puppy are probably saying, "what? that's not a chocolate lab!" Well, the plan was for a chocolate, but the breeder was having problems breeding her chocolate girl. We gave up the wait and accepted an offer for a yellow girl born on August 14th, 2011.

We first visited Lily when she was 7 weeks old. Of the original 9 puppies, just 5 were left that day. As we walked into the puppy room, Ethan said what I was feeling: "Mom, I think my heart is melting." Those puppies were adorable!

All of them were sleeping, except for one (the one sitting up next to Eliza). She showed interest in all of us from the moment we walked in the door. In that way, she chose us! She had a little green collar with two jingle bells on it. We attempted to get a photo of the 4 kids with all the puppies. This is the best we got. Eliza is holding our girl. The puppy by Ethan is peeing :)

Ben picked up and snuggled every single puppy. Over and over again. He was definitely spreading the love. Here he is with our girl.

I got started right away with telling our puppy how she should behave in our family.

And she immediately got to work causing trouble with her little puppy buddy ... and with daddy's shoes.

We said goodbye to our girl and drove home puppy-less that day. Over the next few weeks, we made final preparations for bringing our puppy home. After much discussion, we chose the name Lily.

The breeder sent this photo of Lily and her mom, Jemma. I assume when she grows up she'll look like her mom!

When Lily was 10 weeks old, we drove back to Sebastopol and brought her home. She sat next to Ben and whimpered most of the way in the van, pausing occasionally to climb up on him and lick his face. Ben loved it.

And now we are adapting to having a puppy in the house. It is LIVELY. It seems that we now have twins! I don't know if they are twin puppies or twin toddlers or what, but they are two peas in a pod. A troublesome pod.