Happy Friday, everyone! I hope you all are enjoying your day and looking forward to the weekend. Also, happy December 1st! (Yay! Now I officially don’t have to feel odd for listening to Christmas music- not that I did anyway in November.)

Today is another #FridayIntroductions post, and you all get to meet my amazing husband Zach. Please forgive me if I gush just a little bit in this post.

Zach is a Lancaster County native, having actually lived much of his childhood in the house where we live now. He is 23 years old and is a hard-working, loving husband and father.

He is my opposite in nearly every possible way. As a child, he was one of those very boisterous, sometimes naughty boys. He was maybe also a bit too smart for his britches. He now tells me about all the ways he sneaked candy and did other things he knew he wasn’t allowed to do. I’m sure his mother would cringe if she heard some of the stories he tells me. He spent his childhood building bike ramps and teepees, picking on his sisters, and doing all sorts of other adventurous boy things.

In elementary school, his teachers couldn’t figure out how to keep him quiet and in his seat. In high school, he was still as talkative and social as ever. He irked me just a bit because while I studied hard for my good grades, he never studied and still got good grades. But I forgave this injustice when he spent his study halls helping me with Advanced Math homework.

Ever since graduating, Zach has worked as an electrician. I am very grateful for his hard work ethic, since that is one of the main reasons we are able to afford having me stay at home full-time with our little girl. He is also a great handyman, and he loves to be presented with a problem and come up with an out-of-the-box solution. He always has home-improvement projects going around the house, and I have to remind him frequently to take time to relax. (His response is usually, “But then I won’t get anything done!”)

One thing that surprises most people about Zach is his eye for colors and decorations. He is very detailed and organized, and he puts that to use in what our house looks like. He picked most of our paint colors and has done more of the decorating than I have. While I love having a nicely decorated house, I am not good at envisioning a final product. That’s why I’m glad he can help with the details!

Fun Facts:

1. What he may lack in compassion, he makes up for in his faithfulness and determination.
2. When we got Mia, he declared she wouldn’t be allowed in our bedroom. A few months later, he was the first one to cave and invite her onto our bed to sleep.
3. He enjoys reading.
4. He enjoys hunting- Mostly deer, but also pheasant and small game.
5. He badly wanted a son but now has fallen head over heels in love with his daughter.
6. He LOVES winter! The colder, the better!
7. He hates clutter. I can ignore clutter, but it drives him nuts.
8. He enjoys gardening and flowers. While he rarely buys me flowers, he often brings me fresh cut stems or bouquets from our flowers in the summer.
9. He loves camping and being outdoors.
10. He restored an antique John Deere B tractor that he got from his grandpa. He enjoys using it to plow our garden and do hayrides in the fall.

Enjoy these pictures and your weekend!

Zach & Reese camping this summer

Quality time with his favorite little girl

Working on the nursery before Reese was born

Hunting selfie

Shooting clay birds at the cabin with his family

Successful pheasant hunt with Duchess

Plowing our garden with his tractor

I’ve decided to do a few fun posts for #FridayIntroductions. (I’d like to do a post for each 2-legged and 4-legged member of the family. Don’t expect a post every Friday, though. I’ll probably post these sporadically as I have the time.)

I have had this blog for a little over two years now, and my list of followers has grown quite a bit during that time. Many of you know me personally or have at least met me, but there are a few of you who only know me through my blog. I realized that since most of my posts focus on my dogs and puppies, some of you may know very little about me.

So here I am! A 23-year-old momma to an amazing little girl and four very special dogs. I am married to this pretty awesome guy- Zach.

Here are ten fun facts about me:

1. I am an introvert, and I love getting quiet “alone time.”
2. The job I’ve had most ill-fitted to my abilities was a part-time waitressing job I had during high school. Waitressing is a job that’s good for an extrovert. I found it stressful and draining.
3. I hate socks. And shoes. I can tolerate flip flops, but I prefer to be barefoot year-round. (And, yes, I have gone barefoot in the snow on multiple occasions.)
4. I love a good story, whether it’s a book, movie, or children’s story.
5. When I am home alone for an evening, I indulge myself by making a snack and binge watching documentaries.
6. I am not a very creative person.
7. I had a pet raccoon as a child. And, yes, his name was Rascal. See what I mean about creative?
8. All of my chickens have names- Mabel, Maggie, Emma, Sadie, Henny, and Penny. (We are on the the second Henny and the third Penny thanks to the neighborhood cats.)
9. I want to get some Nigerian Dwarf Goats.
10. I love to eat peanut butter. I pretty much eat it every day. In fact, I’m eating some while I’m typing this.

I am blessed to come from a loving home with, honestly, the best parents. I grew up (and still am!) a Mennonite. For those of you who are not familiar with the Amish and Mennonites, we are a conservative Christian community that strives to live out the principles of the Bible in our every day lives. Although we are certainly far from perfect, we do our best to live simple, godly lives full of love, family, and community.

As a child, I was always a homebody. I didn’t like going new places, unless there were animals there for me to play with. I have always loved animals, and my parents blessed me with a childhood full of them- dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, fish, salamanders, chickens, and, of course, Rascal the raccoon.

I am the youngest of three children. I have a brother and sister who are 12 and 9 years older than I am respectively. Without any siblings close in age, I spent a lot of my childhood playing with my cousins who lived next door. I also liked to read and write.

I thrived in school, as I loved to learn. I committed my life to Jesus Christ in middle school, and my relationship with Him grew during that time and especially in high school. (It still is a growing process!) It was in high school that I met this outgoing and irritating guy. It took a couple of years, but my initial judgment softened a bit and we started dating after 11th grade. (Spoiler: I marry my high school sweetheart a few years later!)

During my senior year of high school, I took a Teacher Apprenticeship class. I spent one period a day at the neighboring elementary school, working and teaching under the direction of one of their teachers. After graduating, I accepted a opportunity to do volunteer service as a teacher in a very small church school in northern Pennsylvania. I taught third grade and had four students. I taught school there and helped with some ministry work in the community for one school year before returning home.

After that, I began teaching second grade at a local private school- Shalom Mennonite School. My class size grew from four to seventeen! During that year, Zach and I got engaged and started planning our wedding for the following summer. Thinking I wouldn’t be able to balance the pressure of teaching and keeping after a home, I moved over to the school office after we got married. I spent the next few years working as a secretary at Shalom Mennonite School. I thoroughly enjoyed my quiet hours in the office. I still had the opportunity to interact with the students, but I didn’t have as much of a workload as a teacher.

I stopped working in December of 2016, preceding the birth of our first child in January of 2017. And that gets me to where we are now! I am currently a stay-at-home mom, and I am extremely grateful for the chance to stay home and raise my baby girl. Being at home full-time also gives me the ability to invest more time into our dogs and puppies, which is such a joy! During the summer months, I did a good bit of canning and freezing various fruits and vegetables. We got a lot of these, though not quite all, from our own garden. Now as we approach winter, I plan to do some scrapbooking and de-cluttering while I don’t have as much outside work. We’ll see how much I actually accomplish by spring.

That’s my 23 years of life in a small nutshell! Feel free to ask any questions in the comments below!

My tiny classroom from my first year teaching

Wedding picture- June 14, 2014

Hiking with Mia and Duchess

My first chicks

Pheasant hunting with Duchess

The most recent picture of me with Reese!

I try to keep my blog mostly dog-oriented, but this news is too big not to share here. 🙂

On Saturday, January 21 we welcomed baby Reese into our family. She was 6 pounds 14 oz, so she is just a little peanut.

We are so grateful to be blessed with a beautiful and healthy little girl. The past ten days have been the biggest adventure of my life thus far. It has definitely been a huge adjustment, but I have the greatest husband ever. He has done so very much to help this new momma keep her sanity as we both adjust to a new baby in the house. We also have had great support from friends and family. I have a refrigerator full of food and several meals in the freezer that people have dropped off for us. Today is actually the first day that I am alone with Reese. My mom, mother-in-law, or Zach have been home with me other days.

It hasn’t been all sunshine and happy thoughts in the last ten days; but overall, it has been good. Reese is a very content, sleepy newborn. She is finally starting to be awake more; but for the first couple of days, we hardly saw her eyes at all. As for me, I’m hanging in there. The nights are long, but she actually sleeps well for a little baby. I really can’t complain. I try to take a nap during the day, and I usually spend most of my days right now in my pj’s. That’s allowed, right? 🙂

Dear Mia is adjusting well, too. She is very forgiving when her breakfast doesn’t come until 11:00 am or when I accidentally step on her on my way to the nursery at night. She is excellent with Reese and checks on her periodically throughout the day to make sure she is okay. Mia likes to know where Reese is, and she doesn’t like when we put her someplace new. The first night that we put Reese in her crib in the nursery, Mia was very worried about her. When we lay Reese on the floor, Mia likes to snuggle with her. The other dogs have only had an introduction through the glass door, but they are very intrigued by this new little bundle.

Here is a picture of Reese in her carseat to come home from the hospital. She looks a little lost in there!

And this is a post-bath picture. She may look happy now; but, believe me, she HATES baths. 

This sweet little girl looks just like her daddy’s baby pictures. I haven’t been able to claim much of her appearance except for her ears. 🙂

Have a blessed week!