Love Sweet Love ♥

So I keep reminding myself to post on here and then I never do... either that or I end up updating our other blog (which is more of our family blog that I've mostly just been using as a catch-all for all of my wedding ideas) instead. That and even though our schedules always seem so busy, it still feels like we haven't really done anything... which I know isn't true...

How about them Packers? Did anyone happen to hear that they won the Super Bowl??? Exciting stuff. This was even celebrated in the Primm household...

Penny was such a good hostess! Above she is feeding Alan some pretzels... later on in the night, she was bringing me my beer from the coffee table... classy, huh? (Don't worry... she was only carrying it a whopping 2 feet to me and no sips were taken...and in the pic below, she is sucking on her sippy cup...)

And Penelope was as cute as ever in the little tutu I made her :). However, she wouldn't wear the matching shirt I had made because the tulle around the neck was too prickly for her... but her Packer onesie did just fine.

For Valentines Day, we all got sick. We took Penelope to the ER at the Children's Hospital the night before because her temp sky rocketed to 104.1 despite being given a fever reducer and having a cool bath. Luckily it was just due to an ear infection and not something worse.

Valentine's morning, Alan wasn't feeling well, so he stayed home from work. He wasn't feeling ill enough to stay in the house though (he was mostly just congested and had a really sore throat) and the little boys that I normally babysit on Mondays were sick with the Croup, so I didn't have to work... so we went to the Mitchell Park Domes as a family. They have a free day on Mondays and it's tradition for Penelope and I to go if I don't have to work so that she has a chance to run around "outside" since it's been so cold!

Alan really liked being able to read all of the plaques for Penny and pointing out all of the details of each plant... Penny and I basically just run around and stop to look at pretty flowers when we go. Alan actually hadn't been to the Domes since he was a kid, so he had a lot of fun.


The Sunday before Easter I had to meet my mom and sisters in Green Bay so that I could pick up my dog, Bailey. We've known for some time now that we would have to find a new home for her. I have had her since she was 6 months old - I had purchased her with the money I had gotten as gifts from my Confirmation. Now 11, Bailey just isn't fitting in with our family. She gets along with Penelope about 95% of the time... but the other 5% frightens me. Penelope finally understands that she needs to give "nice touches" to the puppies... but Bailey just doesn't always appreciate the love. Unfortunately, she has snapped at Penny several times and actually bit her once.
For the past year I have been terrified of having to find a home for her... but after doing some research I found a rescue in Shorewood, WI that only takes in and adopts out Cocker Spaniels. When I originally contacted them back in December, they were completely full but I e-mailed them a few weeks ago and they had some spots open. We'll be surrendering her this coming Saturday.

As sad as I am to have to give her up, I am glad to have found such a nice organization. They're called The Shorewood Cocker Rescue - they take in only Cocker Spaniels, mixed and pure bred. What will happens is - I will bring her to them and they will be placing her in a foster home, where they will do temperament tests and get to know her so that they're better able to understand what kind of home she would be best in. When the right match can be found, the family will be given a background check to be sure that they're not breeders or animal abusers, they're homes will checked to be sure that it is suitable, and the family will have to sign an adoption agreement to ensure Bailey's safety. If they break anything on the adoption agreement (abuse Bailey or anything of the like) or if the family can no longer provide for her, the rescue with take her back... which are all things that I would not be able to do if I were to find a home for her on my own.
The woman that I have been talking with told me that they have a lot of members who love adopting out older cockers, and that's probably what will happen with Bailey. They understand the breed and provide a good home for them in their final years.

It hurts to admit that we're not providing a good home for Bailey here. She's constantly being chased by Penny and Penny just loves on her so much, giving her hugs and kisses all of the time. When Bailey starts getting ornery, I have to gate her off in the kitchen to give her a break from Penny. Some days it feels as if she's in the kitchen most of the day... which she is... and that isn't fair to her. Our house isn't big enough for her to just be able to separate herself from Penny, so this is our only option. Even if she started to tolerate Penny more, we plan to have another child within the next year or so... and by then Bailey will be even older and less likely to tolerate a small child loving on her.
Even worse, I know that if any medical problems came up with Bailey, there's no way that we'd be able to afford treatment. We've been very fortunate when it comes to her health and the family she'll be adopted to will be aware of the health issues Bailey will have and will be ready to pay for anything that she may need.
So as much sadness as I have for this whole thing, I am also just very content knowing that I am going about it in the best way possible for Bailey.




I'm going to hold out hope that whatever family adopts her would be willing to send an occasional update... but it's more important that she just goes to a good, loving home.
Ever since we got Bailey back into the house, Penelope has been OBSESSED with her. As soon as we walked in the door, I didn't even have to remind her what Bailey's name was... even though she hadn't seen her in a month, Penny came running up to us screaming, "Baileee! Baileee! Fwoof! Fwoof!" I bought a new ball for Bailey to take with her since her old one is well worn. Penelope LOVES playing fetch with Bailey (and Sophie... but mostly Bailey). The first thing Penny calls out in the morning is "Boo Boo! Boo Boo!" (our pet name for Bailey). If anything, I am glad this process didn't take longer as I'm sure Penelope would grow even more attached to her and would understand more of what is going on as she gets closer to turning 2.

lame LAME lame

I've been super lame and have been doing a crap job of keeping this as updated as I had told myself I would so far this year.... oh well.

Been SUPER busy busy busy.

We went to California to visit Alan's family for a week - January 24th - 31st - which was glorious. I was a crazy lady and planned a lot of stuff the weekend before leaving. Penelope and I had gone up north to drop our dog, Bailey off at my parents' house the Thurs., Fri., and Sat. before we left. My 1/2 brother, Ryan and his family were also up there visiting, so we spent some time at their hotel, which had a nice-sized indoor water park, which Penelope absolutely LOVED. We got back late Saturday afternoon to tidy the house up - we had a party at our house in Milwaukee on Sunday. The mommy and me group that Penny and I use to go to has a monthly get together, and I had volunteered to host. Lucky for us many people got sick and weren't able to come - about 20 moms had RSVP to come... which would have been 20 women, their husbands and their babies... and some of them have twins! Thankfully only 11 woman came (only about 6 dads and 12 babies total) and some came earlier and some later - so our poor little house wasn't as crazy packed as I was fearing. It all went really well and the babies had a ton of fun playing with all of Penelope's toys.
Since it was a Packer's game day, of course many of the babies came in their gear - especially since it was a post-season game. One family had even brought a Packers cake to share.

...Penelope was the only girl in green and gold, but she fit right in with the boys! That's my girl :)

Our plane didn't leave for Cali until 2:00pm on Monday, so we had plenty of time to wind ourselves down and finish up our packing. The house stayed surprisingly clean through the whole party and we ended up with hardly any dishes, which was awesome. We had a lovely week in California, staying with Alan's mom - Grandma "Mimi" as we call her. We've been back for about a week now and Penelope still asks for her :) She was certainly spoiled having 3 adults around all day for over a week!


The weather out there was fantastic for our trip! It was in the mid 70's to low 80's for the larger part of the trip - it only got cold the last day or two... and even that wasn't NEARLY as cold as Wisconsin, so we couldn't complain (it was nearly 20 BELOW in Wisconsin the weekend before we left)!
We got at least one beach day out of our trip - we went to the Dog Beach in Huntington. Penelope LOVES dogs - so she had lots of fun watching all of the puppies running around and she got to play in the sand and walk along the water.


We took a nice trip down to Oceanside to visit Penelope's "Oma" and "Opa" Primm - Alan's Father's Parents. They moved into a lovely new senior center, so it was nice to see their new home. Penelope had a blast running around in their yard areas as we sat and chatted. We stopped in Dana's Point for a lovely dinner with Alan's Father "Papa John", which has become a family ritual every time we visit.

Alan's mom sent us to see the musical Hair at the Orange County PAC so that she could be alone with Penelope, which was a lot of fun! Alan and I realized how much we've changed though - after the show we were waaay too tired to get a drink and went home to go to bed even though it wasn't that late!
We were able to spend a lot of time with Alan's brother Steven and his wife Jill... and even their dog Riley.


We even made it to Disney a few times - Alan, Penelope, Mary Ellen and I went to their character breakfast one of the mornings, which I have always wanted to do - and we had a blast! Afterward we walked around downtown Disney and shopped around. Alan and I returned a few days later to go to their movie theater to see The Black Swan together and then went to an Italian restaurant - intending to get dinner - but ended up ordering Italian cream sodas and one of every dessert on the menu! :)


Our flights home went loads better than the flights to California. Both ways we had a lay-over in Dallas. Penelope is still young enough that we don't have to purchase a separate ticket for her... but she had SO so so (soooo) much energy on all of our flights. She was literally bouncing off the walls. We were super fortunate to have understanding people in the seats surrounding us... but they also didn't help :P
Penny kept on spinning around to say, "hi" and play peek-a-boo with the people behind us on all of our flights... and for each of our four flights, the people behind us were way more than willing to play along! So, of course, Penny delighted in playing every chance she could. On our last flight from Dallas to Milwaukee, the man behind us even made a little puppet for her out of the subscription card from his magazine! We also were excited to have a few celebrities on our flights. Danny Gokey from American Idol was on our flight from Milwaukee to Dallas and Ben Stein was on our flight from Los Angeles to Dallas on our way home. Penelope and I even got to shake Ben's hand (and I successfully resisted the urge to ask him to say, "Bueller?")
I was super thankful that we actually had a decent layover in Dallas on our way home. On the way to California, we just barely had enough time to use the restrooms, change Penny, get to our gate and grab some food. On the way back we had almost 3 hours, so we were able to sit and eat in one of the airport's restaurants and (most importantly) we were able to let Penelope run around in their tot lot for a good chunk of time!

LOL - driving miss CRAZY! She was going nuts and was running around like a wild woman!

Our return home was a bit bitter sweet. We got into our house at about 1:00 in the morning... so we went straight to bed. Luckily I didn't have to work in the morning, but Alan did. That night we were hit with what is being called the worst blizzard in history... also referred to as snownami, snowpocalypse, snowmageddon and snOMG! Our area was hit with 14.5 inches of snow... further South, they got up to 25 inches! Needless to say neither of us had to work Wednesday. Alan ended up with Thursday off as well because it took Kenosha 2 days to shovel itself out.


We literally had snow up, past our window ledges! In the above picture you can see that it completely covered our front stoop and most of our shrubs - that snow is over 4 feet high.
Surprisingly, most of our driveway didn't have ANY snow in it... it was just the last 12 feet or so that did... but it was about 5 feet worth! Poor Alan had to shovel it all by himself because I had to stay inside with Penny (poor me, right?). Lol... I was actually pretty busy myself, getting us unpacked, cleaning up the house, making some stew and taking care of Penny. It took Alan over 3 hours to shovel the end of our driveway and sidewalk and walkway.


...the above photo is a good show for JUST how much snow we got... Alan's nearly six feet tall! Some of the snow has now melted, but we still have a 4 foot wall of snow on either side of our narrow driveway, which makes backing up onto our busy street terrifying. I did it once, and I'm not sure when I'll try again. I got stuck 3 times and I was lucky it was a slow time of day. You're basically backing out blind!

Needless to say this is what we get for deciding to move. I guess if I haven't mentioned it before, within the last month or so, Alan and I have decided that we will be moving sometime this coming summer. Tentatively, we're planning to move sometime in late July or early August - we plan to move to Santa Ana, CA to be closer to family, better our careers and most importantly improve Penelope's health. Penny's eczema has been a pain this year... and she's likely to have it either until she's grad school age or for the rest of her life. Our research has shown that either California or Florida has the best climates for those with eczema and allergies, so of course California is an obvious choice for us.
We're considering this last snowstorm a giant "f**k you, Primms!" from Wisconsin - leaving us with a great lasting impression of it's climate. At least we'll have great images and stories about exactly why we no longer live in Wisconsin!

Today is an exciting day in the Primm house. The Packers are in the Superbowl (GO Pack GO!!!) and we have also started a venture into the antique jewelry business.
I made this cute little number for Penny to wear while watching the game tonight:


Last night I created my own shop on Etsy.com - for the past several years we've been holding on to a dresser full of Alan's Great Aunt Sylvia's old jewelry, so we're just trying to sell it to make a little extra money for our wedding and for our big move! (Also, we just need to get rid of it because we're not bringing it with us!)
My shop name is RebeccaAnn - I'm super excited to start this - I have always wanted to create a shop, so I'm thrilled that it was so easy! Eventually I would like to start making childrens' items to sell... when I actually get the time to make things!