Catching Up: January Part 1

Traveling is so tiring.

So now I'm going to play catch up with the things we've been up to since this is 'our' blog.  Even though I'm the only one who seems to post here.  Oh well!  Bear with me.

In January, Jim & I drove back to IL to visit family.  We brought our little dog with us.  She is in no way a good car dog.  So we got doggie Valium and ginger snap cookies.  Darby LOVED the cookies and they seemed to help since she didn't get car sick once.  We did learn that too many of these cookies can make Darby a hyper puppy.  She really didn't want to go to sleep at the end of the day.

We were able to surprise my parents.  I told my brother, but no one else.  I needed him to keep my dad from leaving for any long periods of time.  We weren't going to be staying for more than a few days so we didn't want to alert our entire family.  We feared feelings would get hurt.

So if we didn't see you while we were home, our apologies.

Jim's mom managed to figure out we were in the area because Jim kept texting her.  *sigh*

Darby discovered that she LOVES crunchy IL snow!  I spent a large chunk of time taking her out to do 'business'.  Which was really just her finding new areas to stomp around in.  Silly dog!  I can understand though, because the snow here is wet and mushy.  Not nearly as fun.

So a large part of Jim's family showed up at his grandma's house.  Not what we had really intended, but once word got out everyone wanted to see Jim.  He hadn't been back to the area in something like 4 years, so they all wanted to visit.

Jim's grandma isn't a huge pet person, but was kind enough to allow Darby to stay in the house.  It was really appreciated!  And Darby was pretty well behaved.  It was a bit overwhelming for her.  I mean it was a new place and there were lots of new people in the area.  And children.  Something she is really not used to.

And Jim's cousins fell in love with the little dog.  They wanted to carry her everywhere.  So Darby fell in love.  LOL

And of course they were camera crazy.  I myself did not have my camera on me.  Most of these photos came from my iPhone.  However, they were kind enough to share photos with me.  I guess when you only go back to a certain area every few years people are bound to go a bit crazy with the photo taking.  And if you know me, you know I was dodging those photo snappers like crazy.  The paparazzi can be so tiring.  LOL

And of course there were all sorts of line ups and groupings that HAD to be done.  Which can cause me to get very cranky.  So of course I'll add the shot of us with Jim's mom and her husband.

Darby also did pretty well in the hotel (dog friendly) that we stayed in.  Although it was a bit disconcerting for her to hear people in the hallway.  So she did bark and growl a bit when she heard them in the hallway.  And she LOVED the king size bed.  So did we.

And in case you didn't notice...

Official Luggage Checker

Pumpkin really missed us and felt the need to sniff and examine our luggage once we got home.

Apparently we passed the Pumpkin inspection.  All was well, except for the cold I caught from someone.