TWINS !!!

It's confirmed! We're getting two girls!

I'm so "encited"!

Tomorrow marks 17 days

(I never count the day you're on)

R is a sport, as always.

Sugar has no clue!

Weekend refresher course...

We trailered our boat down to Key West a few weeks ago.

I love KW. Reminds me so much of P-Town. Got in Fri evening in time to meet up with our friends for dinner at Duffy's. If you ever make it down there, we highly recommend at least one meal at Duffy's!

Early Sat. morn we left our luxurious suites at the El Rancho! (which we affectionately dubbed El Raunch-o! ) and headed out to Boca Grande and Marquessa Keys. Gorgeous day!!! We didn't clean up on fish, but Ray landed (barely) a nice Dolphin. I say barely because we thought it was a goner for a minute when it fell off the hook as Ray was bringing it up into the boat! Collective holding of breath ... then, in true "incredible fish-story" fashion, it bounced off the side rail, onto the deck and flipped itself into the baitwell!

Strangely enough, his second catch, a barracuda, also fell of the hook but, collective sigh of relief!, didn't make it into the boat. For me, the highlight of the day was having gone 25 miles offshore without feeling any indication of sea sickness any of the times we stopped to fish, which is just short of miraculous. I’m crediting it to the ginger root pills and all natural seasick remedy I got from the health food store. Zero side effects, worked like a charm!

Another highlight was meeting “Dad”. What a character! Some people just have this incredible spark. Pops regaled us with the tale of a recent altercation he’d had with this with this huge guy. “You’re going to have to grow up before you can kick my ass!” Pops challenges. Not surprisingly, this winds up in fisticuffs, reportedly with the old dog teaching the young one a thing or two. Pops acts out how he adopted the stature of a crippled, defenseless old man (quite convincingly, I might add) when the cops arrive to sort things out.

But the cops aren’t buying it and the story progresses to Pops dropping his drawers and mooning the cops. “And how did they take that?” I ask through laughter. “I go to court on Tuesday” replies Dad. He reaches out to Ray, “I like this guy! Take our picture!” which we're happy to do. (I love the Energy sign above them! )

A great refresher course in enjoying the simpler things in life. Beautiful weather, great company, happy boating and meeting "Dad".

Expecting

I'm BUSTIN' AT THE SEAMS! And I'm not referring to my shirt, LOL!

There's a new baby-girl on our horizon... She's a miniature pincher!!! Only about 3 weeks old, so we've got another 5 weeks to go (feels like Christmas!). This pic is one out of the litter of 5, so I don't know if this is "her", but I sure hope it is! We'll get to meet her this week. We're getting her from one of our guys' mom.

This past year was really rough on us. Our three dog-kids passed away. Having three old dogs, I once dubbed the would-be period of loss as the Trail of Tears. It started last July and concluded this April.

Of the three, Kahlua, our dobie girl, left the biggest hole because she was always in constant motion, whereas Cream & Buttercup had an appreciation for the finer things in life ... like sleeping. Kahlua never lost her puppy enthusiasm and her humorous approach rarely failed to engauge someone into getting off their keester and into doing something (with her or just to escape her, lol), including Cream and Buttercup, if only for the nightly food parade.

Anyway, I thought it would be a really long time before I'd be ready for a puppy. Maybe we'd enjoy the freedom of a one-cat household. But it's quiet. Really quiet. You never get over loosing someone you love, you just learn to deal with it. So, I'm not over Kahlua, Buttercup or Cream.

But I realized that I am ready for puppy love. puppy breath. :::sigh::: even puppy pee ("that I could sop up with my sock like it was nuthin'", lol).

Ooh-boy, Sugar-Plum is in for a treat.