Welcome to Webkinz!

This is our new friend Bernie!

He also came to join us for Christmas (although he can't fit in our car). But Bernie is a Webkinz, and he has a whole world of friends on the internet!!! Kinda like our blogging, but different. He is a puppydog Saint Bernard, so when he grows up, he will be SO SO BIG.

He's lots of fun, and we are enjoying the chance to show him stuff, and enjoy California with him.

Zoom Zoom!!!

This is the best Christmas EVER!!!!
We got a CAR! We have been wanting a car for Sooooo long!!!
She's a Mini Cooper with a radio and great speed!! Zoom zoom!!!!!
Just wait til we show you the video!
Thank you thank you Fr Christmas!!! We must have been soo good! This is sooooo cool!!!
Yeah! Life is a highway!

A Quick Stopover

Wow! We are on our way to the holiday travels! Time for a quick stop to MI and the snow! And guess what!! We were able to go to the Detroit Zoo and see some friends!


We also got to see JM, of course, and enjoy the snow. Georgia has been fun, but it sure is nice to have real hot chocolate when it's actually cold! We also got to eat lots of cookies. Yummy!!! So now we are ready to make our way to CALIFORNIA baby!!!

Time to catch the rays, catch up with the fam, and see if we can catch some waves! Yup, it's still surfing weather. Oh yeah. So we're racking up the frequent flier miles and looking after Ann while she relaxes on vacation. Life is good.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

We are all set for the holidays!! We have put up our stockings (and climbed into them!) and put up our tree! It's HUGE!!! For us. Yeah. Huge.

See our toucan on the tree? He's from Costa Rica. He came back with us. He's cool. :-)

We have been baking too!!! Lots of cookies and stuff! Yummy! The whole place smells good. Here we are, with Santa Bear and Humphrey!! First Christmas in the South!! YAY!

The Holidays are Coming!!!

And we wanted to share a few of our favourite Holiday moments with you from the good times we've shared with Bear at the Big Blue House! Yup! Do you have your reindeer wreath?


Pip & Pop: "It's a reindeer wreath!"

Bear: "Oh! A wreath for a reindeer! What a great idea! But... what's with all the stuff?"

Pip & Pop: "Oh! It's the coool things reindeer like!"

Pip: "Like, some apples in case they get hungry..."

Pop: "And a tennis ball, in case they wanna play catch."

Pip: "Yeah, cause you never know."


Hee hee. And how is the Christmas shopping? We know it is hard.


Tutter: "What do you get the bear who has everything?"

Treelo: "Bear has everything?"



Pip: "Well, he has a swing in the living room."

Pop: "I'd say that's everything!"

Pip: "Yeah."

Pop: "Yeah."

More from Costa Rica

We will be sad to go home!! Costa Rica has been amazing, and we have loved it here!!


This is a coati, at the Monteverde Reserve. I guess he believes it is important to recycle too!! We saw a few coatis, they were pretty fun to watch. One of them decided to drink all of the hummingbird food!!! Must have been some sugar rush!



Then these are some teeny tiny orchids flowers!! We saw them in a garden that a man showed us. He also cut us some fresh sugar cane! We always thought orchids were big, but these were tiny and that's saying something for us!













Most of all, Costa Rica is just amazingly beautiful.
We will be back! Pura Vida!!!

Buy Fair Trade

We got to go out with this group of people from Earth Watch. They were doing work in coffee farms. We like coffee. But we'd never seen a coffee plant before. They are pretty. W learned a lot while we were there. We learned about how you grow coffee and how you pick it and roast it. We learned about where to buy and sell coffee, and we learned all about Fair Trade Coffee, shade grown coffee and bird friendly coffee. Birds are good for coffee! And shade grown coffee is also good for the coffee, it makes it taste better. Otherwise, even though it grows faster in the sunshine, it makes it go bitter. Blah.

So you really need to buy Fair Trade Coffee, like Cafe Monteverde! We went to their store and talked to the people there, it was so fun!
You can buy good coffee through the Santa Elena Coop too! We liked it and bought lots for gifts for Christmas! We were in Santa Elena and got to meet many of the people who worked with the Coop and the coffee farmers. It was really special and we loved to be with them.
Please buy the Fair Trade and bird friendly coffee. It is not only very good coffee, but it helps make life better for people everywhere. Next time you go shopping, ask if your favourite coffee or tea is fair trade.


Another place we went to was the CASEM cooperative. This was a special place where local women in the Monteverde area make arts and crafts by hand. They are beautiful ornaments and clothes and decorations!! It has also been a very good thing in the lives of the women in the community and allows them to make good things and sell them at fair prices.

We have learned so much in Costa Rica, and met so many kind people. It's a good place for otters to go - it's a good place for anyone to go! Pura Vida!!!

PURA VIDA!

Hola!!! We are in COSTA RICA!!!!!
YEAH!!!

Ann had to come here for work, and when JM said he was going too, we knew this was a party we had to be a part of. :-) And then Ann's whole family decided to go!!!!
Costa Rica is awesome! Yeah! It has, like, everything here.
It's Sooooo cool. We saw toucans and monkeys and hummingbirds as big as us and and and.....


Check out these ants!! They were by our room and they were coool!!! See, they take these big pieces of leaf and carry them back to their house! And then, the leaf grows this yucky fungus, but it's ok, cause the ants like it!

Moving time!

Yup, we are moving again! Off to a new otter pond!!!!
We packed up all our favourite stuff, our best clams and our toy boat. :-) New pond, here we come!!! We think this one is going to be much closer to .... the pool!!!!




Everyone has been lending a paw to make sure we get things moved safely. We had to take apart Ann's desk! Perdita decided that she better take control of that. Parts of the desk were really heavy!!! She worked really hard with Ann for a few days. We made sure the bed was made and comfy. And had lots of tea for Ann. But not the sweet tea. She still doesn't like that. Yeah.

Happy Halloween!

Check out our cool Halloween jack-o-lanterns! :-) We are very happy with them.
Halloween was so much fun!! We hung out with our puppydog pals at a party. We also met up with Mr Incredible!!! And Pukka, a lady bird and Ellen DeGeneres, who seemed to be 'partying' with the puppies... hmm.

Well we had lots of fun and yummy candy!!! :-)

Uh-oh...

We have a problem!!! There's no rain!!! We knew it was crazy hot here, but there has been no rain for... for.... we can't remember!!!!!!!


This weekend, we went with Ann and JM to a park where there was a waterfall. We were *so* excited! Waterfalls are great fun! But... when we got there, it was like little drizzle of waterfall...



Pretty, but how are we supposed to belly slide down there?? Owch! The rocks will hurt our tummies.

So on the way back, we stopped by the lake... but.... the lake got smaller!!!!



It was scary. And sad. So we are praying for rain. Luckily, Ann brought us back home and we got to play in the pool. But, if things are bad, we might have to go back to MI or CA for water! That would be fun too... but scary to lose the water.



But happily, we did have some fun things. JM saw this amazing thing as we drove past on our way to the waterfall ....

PUMPKINS!! HUGE Pumpkins!!!


We ran and ran for hours! We tried rolling them, and pushing them, but they would not give!!! There were white pumpkins and orange pumpkins and fried apple pies and mmmmm!!!! It's the great Pumpkin otter!!!

Otters, otters everywhere!

Woo hoo! Our cousins from New York came to visit us down here in Georgia! YAY. It was so much fun to have them here!! We had to go show them around.
We went to a gorge... ha ha! It was GORGEous!

We wanted to cross it on the wire, like the Great Wallenda!!!! Ann and J-bird weren't so sure that was a good idea... Come on! The Great Pip & Pop could do it!!!

Up North

Whew. One thing about Georgia, we have to really travel to go find some good water. So it was time to take a vacation. We told Ann, it was time to head somewhere a little cooler for once. She agreed, nodding sagely, and got on the phone. Actually (hee hee) we had, um, already talked to JM about it... Needless to say, he was all for a trip up north. We plotted, er, I mean we talked it over and found a few days Ann could get off and if we packed her bags, then we could go. :-)

Ahhhhh nothing like sunsets on the water! And smores! And stars!! We sat out on the beach and watched the stars shoot out over the sky!!! It was *amazing*! We'd never seen stars like that before, and we were able to talk to our good friend Luna about it too. She's seen it all. It was a wonderful vacation. A chance to swim and rest and relax. We camped out in a tent and it was so nice to be outside. JM made a great fire and we snoozed by it, feeling all warm and fuzzy from our swim and the good food. :-) Mmm. A very good vacation.

Ice, ice baby

We are SO hot! Oh my goodness, Georgia is so so hot. We have never been so hot. It seems the only way to be cool on these 101F days, is to just climb right into the ice box. Aaaahhhhhhhh! :-)

P-Otter blog

Wow! So Ann finished her book, and gave it to us. We finished our version, but this one seemed to have Ann's attention, like all weekend. So we figured, it must have some good things. But it's SO big!!!! We will be reading this book forever!!!


Looks like lots of people have already finsihed though. Hmm. We better get going.

It's here!!

YAY! We are SO excited because it's finally here!! OK, we are all stocked for the weekend with munchies and coffee. Mmmm. Pour us some sweet tea and lead us to the book, baby! This looks kinda different from the book that Ann has, but we think ours is more fun. Certainly shorter. How does she lift that thing? No need for the gym this week!

4th of July!

Woohoo!!! We LOVE fireworks!!
4th of July is so great! Ann had the day off work and JM came to visit! We had so much fun just hanging out and being lazy!! Oooo and eating fish-sicles!!! MMMM YUMMY.

Hip hip hooray!

A BIG round of applause for CRD!!!!


He has been writing and writing and writing.... and is finished with his book!!! He is going to be Dr CRD soon!!! Wow. We are in awe! So hooray! We are looking forward to lots of celebrations, especially by the end of next week then you give your last talk on this big book. :-) We don't understand it, but we know we feel obliged to give you a big CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Turtle crossing??

Wow this is funny huh? Ann and JM went to Tybee Island in Georgia. Pretty!! But you can get there on the road, it was neat! We drove (well, JM drove, but you know... we helped navigate!)

But anyways, on Tybee Island you can go to the beach and there are sea turtles!!! The sea turtles hang out on the beach in the sand, but sometimes they walk off to explore and go over the road. We told JM to be VERY careful as he was driving. We tried to look out for sea turtles for him.
Well we didn't find any sea turtles on that trip. Probably a good thing. we like this sign better anyways!

Minneapolis

Tah-dah! Ann had a work 'thing' in Minneapolis, and we decided to go with her to check it out, meet otters from around the world, and hob-nob. And of course, see the sights! So this is the LARGEST spoon and cherry ever!!! Isn't that cool? It's a fountain. Can you see that??? We played and played and swam for hours! It was so cool! Ann went jogging past it with a friend, and even met up with someone she hadn't seen in years!!! See! Everyone comes to the spoon and cherry. What's not to love?

Brooklyn - How Sweet It Is!

YAY!!! We made it to NYC!!! to J-bird's new place in Brooklyn. And here we are with everybody!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was so great to see the gang and be able to hear all the good news. And of course, we had a great day to roam around the city.
We walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and we could see *everything*! It was so cool. Waaaay back in the distance over the water there was the Statue of Liberty!!


We celebrated with our cousins! And got to tour the city. We ate good food, got good coffee and uh, other fun drinks! :-)
We thought about opportunities to stay in New York


Cause we were having so much fun celebrating with our cousins!!!!



It was Ann's birthday and it was so good to be in NYC with J-bird and all the gang. Ah Brooklyn - how sweet it is!!!