This summer has been a complete whirlwind of work and travel and garden and more work. In the midst of it all, we have added two new furry babies to our farm family.

When I was away for work, Ben texted me that he was going to meet a few local litters of puppies in person (he’d been trolling Craigslist for weeks for the perfect breed combo at the right age, etc, etc). A few hours later, photos of two adorable faces showed up on my phone. And a message from Ben that he’d put a deposit down on one, but he was in love with both.

I was hundreds of miles away and falling in love with those two sweet faces. So when I arrived home, he picked me up from the airport and we went to bring our puppies home.

Here we are at their original home…our first family portrait!

In this photo, they were a couple of days shy of  10 weeks old. They are litter mates with an Australian Shepherd father and a German Shepherd mother. We named them Okra (the black female) and Fletcher (the Aussie male).

And, now that they’ve been with us for three weeks, we are even more in love. They have practically doubled in size already—we’ve had to let their collars out and they clean their food bowls twice a day. Fletcher is definitely out growing Okra, but she’s the mean one and regularly makes him beg for mercy during their wrestling matches. They are super sweet, funny, and smart. And Milly is patient and kind most of the time. The puppies trying to entice Milly to play is very reminiscent of Milly trying to get Sadie to play. What goes around comes around, I guess!

Here are some of my favorite photos from the last few weeks. Get ready for the “Awwwwww!”

Ms. Okra

Mr. Fletcher

Who knew a boot brush could make a good pillow?

One of my favorite things is how they snuggle with each other when sleeping. So sweet!!

We’ve been trying to get a photo of these two with Milly, but having three always-moving dogs doesn’t seem to work out well when it comes to photo-ops. Maybe soon!