MEET OUR SON AND DOG

Besides Marty and LeAnn, our family consists of our sweet five-year-old son Matthew and our adorable dog Henry. Life is a lot of fun with these guys in the house...and we expect to have even more fun (and chaos and mess :-) when we add another child into the mix.
  MATTHEW   HENRY
 

Matthew is a wonderful child who is so fun to raise! He is bright, shy, beautiful, and happy. Matthew is into typical boy things, like trains, planes, building with Lincoln Logs and he loves cars like his daddy. He is not afraid to get messy and some of our favorite projects include mud or shaving cream!

Matthew likes babies. For the past year, LeAnn has babysat a little boy for a couple of hours each week, starting when the little boy was 6 months old. Matthew has been great at entertaining him and we can tell from their interaction how nice it will be to have a second child in our home. Matthew is a gentle person so betwen his gentleness and his maturity, we foresee far less squabbles than if we had two children close in age.

Both LeAnn and Marty have siblings and we find such comfort in these relationships. Not only will it be great for Matthew to have a little sister or brother, but the baby will get to have a big brother. The sibling relationship is usually the longest-lasting relationship of a person's entire life, which makes it special.
Although we have one child now and will hopefully someday have another, our "firstborn" will always be our dog Henry. Henry is great with children! He has been poked, prodded, pulled and jumped on by kids and always takes everything in stride. He never growls; at the most, he'll just get up and move away. Since Henry loves being with kids and is so good around them, LeAnn gets to take him to school, playgroups, and other outings. This lets kids that don't have dogs get used to them. Marty calls him the ambassador to the dog world.
 

DOG CRAZY

We love dogs! Both Marty and LeAnn grew up with dogs. LeAnn can't remember a time in her life when she wasn't crazy about them. And when she was in high school, she raised three seeing-eye dog puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind as a 4-H project.

We have gotten to know several families in our neighborhood that we help out by taking care of each others' dogs. Ernie, also a seven-year-old yellow lab, is Henry's best friend. We host doggie play dates and they always have a great time. Together, that means 170 pounds of goofy yellow labs!
 

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