Nolie Girl

 Sweet Nolie August 2011

 One of our favorite pics from Penny Sylvia

Planetjill Ornament (My favorite picture of her will be in here)

We walked into the puppy room at the SPCA in August of 1998. We were newly married and I wanted a dog. I never had one growing up although we had almost every other kind of animal. Picture cats, birds, fish, turtles, lizards, mice, etc.....but no dog. I was so excited when I saw a little brown and black pup named Missy with a long tail. We took her out to a little bench and my husband looked at her and said "I don't know, look at her tail, its going to knock everything over". I started picturing glasses of water flying, books strewn about, and I giggled. I knew she was meant to be mine. She had beautiful brown eyes, a sweet disposition, she was perfect, we named her Seminole.

I spent the next few days getting ready. I bought food, a bed, a collar, a leash. I had no idea what to expect but I was going to be ready. Much like getting ready for a baby. She was my first child. What I didn't expect was how instantly I would love her, how happy her company would make me and how she would be there for me through so much of the joys and trials of the next 12 years. She is so wrapped up in our honeymoon days, the births and childhoods of our boys, the moving of houses, the making of friends.

It is the pictures that truly show what a part of our family she was. After she passed away on July 29th, I started looking through our old pictures for shots of her. There she was sitting by the dinner table, in the middle of wrapping paper on Christmas mornings, laying in the background as I captured my boys crawling, walking and eventually running.  I see her running behind the boys looking for Easter eggs and sitting next to them as they posed in fresh uniforms on their first days of school. There were pictures of her standing in our houses in different states of remodels and paint changes, laying in the living room during the home tour last Christmas. One picture I found I didn't remember taking, It was a picture of her with my dad who passed away in 2009. I never realized how often she was just around,. Until the very end she just enjoyed being with us. No matter how hard the stairs were she followed us down to the basement and up to the top of the stairs at night. And after she was gone it amazed me how empty our house was without her presense.

I love pictures, I always have. I love taking them, looking at them, making them into books for my boys, jewelry for me, and presents for friends. Every year, after finally deciding which picture is going to be THE Christmas card picture (It is quite a decision based on the number of pictures I take) I have it made into a planetjill ornament. I now have 5 of them. They are my treasures. This year there will be two more....one of THE picture for 2011 and one of my favorite picture of my good girl.