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born leader

Yesterday afternoon we went with 2 other families (Tompkins - new family and Koks- our neighbors) to an indoor playground. Madeleine and YaLi have been there before but Phil and I hadn't. It was so much fun. The place has a ball pit, slides, tubes to crawl through, a swing, see-saws, a trampoline, and other fun stuff. All together there were 7 foreign kids and 5 adults. There were a hand full of other kids playing there too but not very crowded at all. Afterwards we all went to KFC for dinner and then played in a fountain. It's the type of fountain that's set to music and easily played in.

Madeleine was the first of the kids to venture into it. She was so cute and even though she slid down twice she couldn't get enough of it. She did get a bit cold and it always brought a laugh from the masses when she had a big shiver. When we arrived at the fountain there were lots of people watching it but when we all left it was packed. Every kid was soaked and I was pretty wet, too. It was a great evening. Phil and I were so proud of how Maddie was the first to start playing in the fountain. Definitely the highlight of my week.

Our colds are lingering. Madeleine's is a cough now and mine seemed to be improving and then last night my throat got sore again.

Yesterday morning the 3 of us went to a dog/pet and plant market. We had gone there on Friday afternoon too but it was practically dead and we were told to come back on Saturday because there would be a lot more dogs. Well there were and it was packed. We had Maddie's stroller and it was a minor miracle that we made it through the place. I thought it was a horrible experience since I have a cold, it was already blazing hot at 9:30am and Maddie didn't want to sit in her stroller. Oddly, Phil enjoyed it. It was a bit of a success (we'll see down the road exactly how successful) in that we found a man who raises Italian greyhounds. He told us that they're raised for catching rabbits. Which sounds right but not really what we need ours to do. Maybe roaches but not rabbits.

He has some month old pups and we had set up this morning, Sunday, to meet him and check them out. However, last night we realized that pups shouldn't be taken from their moms until they're around 8 weeks old. So Phil called and explained that we'd like to wait a couple weeks. It seems that he has various ages of pups right now so we may still meet him and see some older ones. When I went to bed last night around 11pm it wasn't worked out yet so we'll see what happens today.

It's not as easy as just popping over to his place because he lives outside of the city somewhere. So we're kinda working through a middle-man who has a shop and knows this guy. We do feel confident that he does have Italian greyhounds though. So that's nice.

I feel a bit like were adopting a child. Which in reality is pretty much what we'll be doing if this works. Puppies are like newborns in a lot of ways. So I'm a little nervous. But really excited, too.

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