A Visit from the Beagles

A couple of weekends ago, my "sister" Megan came to visit us from Austin, and she brought my two cousins, the beagles with her.  There were some people at our house building a new deck in the back, so we couldn't go outside and play very much, but we still had a good time.  Meg took them for walks in the neighborhood, and when the deck was finished, we got to spend some time out there, just hanging out.  They're pretty cool pups.  Peanut is almost ten years old!  Franklin is just a kid; he's just one year old.

Cappy doesn't like dog hair very much, so she put sheets and blankets and stuff all over the furniture while they were here.  That looked kind of funny.  She says she likes poodles, like me, because we don't shed, whatever that means.  I will get to see the boys again in a couple of weeks when we go back to Austin and stay at their house.  That will be fun.

Boat News AND Our Trip to Moody Gardens

I know it's been a really long time since I've updated my blog, but I've just been so busy that I haven't had much time, and of course, not having thumbs makes it really hard to type.

Anyway,everything has changed for us.  Cappy took a new job (She won't have to travel all the time anymore, and it pays better - more treats for me), and she said it doesn't look like she will be able to take much time off from work for a while, so that means no trips for us, for a while.  So, she and John decided that rather than leave the boat in Florida, and just drive out there when we can to use the boat, they would bring the boat back here to Houston, so we can use it when ever we want.  Cappy said that just means, "Now John can WORK on the boat when ever he wants." 

Anyway, since it took us forever to get the boat over to Florida in the first place, Cappy was afraid that she wouldn't have enough time to do the trip.  So, John's brother Tom (I like him a lot.) agreed to help him bring the boat back.  Fortunately, as John said, they had good weather and good wind, and it only took them four days to get to Houston from Destin.  I remember on the trip over there, it took us four days just to get to Louisiana.  And if you look that up on a chart, you'll see that's not very far.

So, in the middle of April (That's what Cappy said.) the boat came back home and now we get to spend more time on it.  Since then, we've done a lot of work on it, and we got to take a really cool trip.  We had a long weekend (I think they said it was Memorial Day, what ever that means.) and we sailed over to a place on Galveston Island called Moody Gardens.  It's really pretty there, and they have a nice beach and all sorts of fun stuff to do.  John said the wind wasn't very good that day, although it seemed OK to me, and it took us a long time to get there.  But when we did get there, there were some other boats there that were friends of John's and Cappy's and we had a really fun weekend.  My good friend Lilly came with her people and we got to hang out for awhile.  That's always fun.

We had to come back home on Sunday, and John said the wind was a little bit better, but it still took us a long time to get home.  I managed to get in a couple of naps on the way, but I was still right there when they needed my help.

The Boat is Back

Well, a couple of days after our fun trip to Moody Gardens, John had to leave to go help his brother Tom (the one I mentioned earlier) sail his boat from a place called Naples, Florida to some really cool sounding place called the Bahamas.  Cappy said, "Poor John has to go help his brother with his boat."  I don't know for sure, but I think she was being silly, because she really wanted to go too.

While John was gone, we didn't do much on the boat, but my "cousin" Travis came and spent a Sunday night with Cappy and me while he was waiting to start sailing camp on Monday.  We had a really good time, and I think Travis is now officially a sailor.  I wish I could have gone to camp.


The last weekend that John was gone, Cappy and I drove over to Austin for a weekend.  It was my "sister" Molly's birthday and we went to help her celebrate.  I got to see my cousins Casey and Riley, and we had a really good time.  Cappy and I drove back on Sunday and we were supposed to pick John up at the airport on our way, but he had some problems getting home, so we didn't see him until really, really late that night.  Actually, I didn't see him until the next day, because I was asleep when he got home.

The next weekend, we got some really bad news.  My good friend Sammy died, and everyone was very sad.  He was such a cute little dog, and everybody liked him a lot.  But something happened and he got really sick and died.  We are all still very sad.

This weekend, John and Cappy, and I worked on the boat and took a bunch of stuff apart.  John said we can't take the boat out again until we get it put back together, so I am hoping that will be soon.

A Nice Sail

The night after we did all that hard work on the boat, I got back to Morgan's house and found her bed empty. So, I was able to get in some really good back scratching before she caught me.

Then, the next morning, we drove over to the boat and John worked on some stuff for a little while, and then we went for a sail. It was an awesome sunny day, and I got to get a very nice nap in the sunshine. I love Florida!

We sailed aroudn the bay for awhile, and I could see that the water was a really pretty blue color. The wind was perfect, according to John, and it was nice and warm.

After we sailed around for a bit, we came up to this really big bridge thing that went from one side of the water to the other. John said it connects Destin to Fort Walton Beach, but he said it's not tall enough for our boat to go under it. Our main mast (That's that tall stick thing in the middle of the boat.) is almost 50 feet tall, and he said that there isn't enough room for us to go under it.

After a couple more days of working on the boat, John said it was time to go home. So, we loaded up the truck again, and drove back to Texas. I can't wait to go back to Florida again, but I'll be glad to get home, at least for a little while. I'm tired.

Back in Florida

Wow, it's been a long time since I wrote to my friends. But I've been really busy. I'll try to catch you up on what's been going on around here.

First of all, John and I had to make another trip back to the boat in Florida, for him to do some more work on it. We drove over in John's truck on the morning of February 20th. That's a really long time ago, isn't' it? Anyway, we drove all day and finally got there late that afternoon. I was happy to see my family there,

especially the baby, and most especially my cousin Morgan, the big dog.

John and I got up early the next morning and drove over to the Air Force base where the boat is "vacationing" right now. Cappy keeps saying it's vacationing, but I think she's just joking. It's just living there for a while. John said water had been coming in around the windows (They call those things ports on a boat.) and stuff inside was getting wet. So he was going to take the windows all out and put them back in again with some new stuff he called rubber gaskets. I'm not sure what that is, but I think it helps keep the water out. Anyway, he had some problems with that (He said the rubber was the wrong size for some of the ports, whatever that means.), so he had to spend a lot more time working on that than he had planned to spend. Good think Cappy wasn't there. John made a really big mess while he was doing that.

He finally got all of the windows, or ports, put back in, and then started working on a bunch of other stuff. My friend Tim (actually he's Cappy's son-in-law, so I'm not really sure what that makes me to him, but I know that I like him a lot. And I think he likes me too. He always scratches my belly and gives me treats.) does really awesome things with wood, and he made some wooden rings to fit around the thingies that let air into the boat from the top of the cabin (living room). I think they're called vents. Before, they didn't look very nice and I think air was coming in around them, so Tim's wooden rings solved that problem. And they look awesome!

By that time, it was getting late and I was really tired. So we loaded up the truck and headed back to John's daughter's house for the night. John and I shared a really nice bed there.

The next morning, we got up and went back to boat to do some more work. John fiddled with all kinds of stuff down below, while I stood guard up in the cockpit. Thank goodness I was there for him!

He worked on a bunch of stuff that day, and then he told me that the next day, the two of us would go out for a sail. Yea!

Florida

Hey! Look at me! I'm in Florida! We finally made it. This last part of the trip was way better than the others. We didn't have to sail at night, and we didn't get all wet! I even managed to get in a couple of naps.

When we left the little place where we had spent Thanksgiving night, we had to stop at a gas station so we had enough gas to make it the rest of the way. It was really windy, but after we finished getting the gas (John says it's not gas; it's diesel. I'm not really sure what the difference is. Maybe you should look that up.) Cappy got me off the boat and took me for a walk. It was really nice to be able to walk around and find a real puppy bathroom in the grass. Whew!

That day, we had to go under a couple of really low bridges and John and Cappy were kind of nervous about that. But we made it under all of them and finally got to a place called Pensacola Bay. It was really big and there were these giant houses and towns all around. I think a lot of people must live there.

Then the coolest thing of all happened. John's son-in-law came out in his big power boat (That means it's a boat that doesn't have the big white flappy things on it like we have.) to meet us and to show us the way to the new marina where we were going to leave the boat for awhile. He had some other people with him, and it was really cool to be sailing along and to have another boat right there so close that we could talk to them!

We made it to the new marina in a place called Fort Walton Beach, Florida, and everybody helped us tie up the boat and get everything all set.

Then we left the boat there and went to John's daughter's house where I finally got to meet my cousin Morgan and the new baby I had been hearing about. The baby is awesome and I think she likes me. Morgan (She's a golden retreiver.) is a lot of fun, but she's really big! Doesn't she have pretty hair?