Visiting family in Cali

We've been away from the blog because we went home to visit family! Here's some of our cousins from California! Aw!
We had a great time in California with the fam. It's a big party every time we get together. They showed us the sights and the sounds of the West Coast - woo hoo! We sunned ourselves on the beach, got ice cream and Pop worked on his tan. He's a nice deep shade of purple now.
You gotta love family. They feed you and look after you and let you watch lots of daytime TV. They take you to the beach and make sure you don't get burned in the sun. They help you make friends with seals! Speaking of which, we're worried about the seals at Seal Beach in San Diego!
http://www.calcoast.org/news/beach0040627.html
http://www.amwest-travel.com/awt_sdseal.html
The people don't want the seals to come sleep on the beach anymore, and the seals like this one special beach. People used to be able to go see the seals there and watch them play, but now it looks like they won't be able to! :-( Now they are chasing the seals off the beach.
What would happen if they wouldn't let us otters have a place to rest? How would we make friends with the seals? Or blog, for that matter? It makes us sad. I mean, everyone needs a place to swim and a place to sleep. We have our own otter pond! We are lucky otters.

S'mores!!

Oh yeah, last month we went camping!! We hadn't been camping before, but wow! We like it! It was cool. We drove up in the car with Ann and Scott and Daniel and Christine! We sang songs and ate pizza and got up North to the campsite really really late. It was dark! We were both asleep in the car, but we woke up in a tent!!! It was so cool! You set up this tent and it's HUGE! We slept in there with like 4 other people. We had our own sleeping bags and had plenty of room on the floor. It wasn't bad! But it was hot. When we woke up in the morning, we were sweaty...eww!

We rolled out of bed, or bag, and headed over to get some food! Mmm. Bagels. No doughnuts though. We had to move quick cause we were off to go to the river!! YAY! We swam and swam and swam... the others were in these long canoe things, but we didn't see the point. Two of the girls fell in, we thought they were coming to swim with us!
That night we made s'more! We have decided that camping is all about the s'mores!! And we want s'more! MMMmmmm! So yummy! Sthicky marshmallow and melty chocolate...! What more could a little otter hope for? CLAMS!!!! Yes, clam marshmallow chocolaty goodness. MMMM!!!! My whiskers are quivering just thinking about it!

We stayed up late and ate s'mores and sang songs that Daniel played on his guitar. We thought about playing, but our paws were sticky. Ah, beautiful night under the stars! Not so hot either, so a good sleep.

The next day, we packed up and our friends went off to go home! We went back to our car, but we didn't want to go home yet. So we drove around for a bit and then went to a Marina, where Scott found us some sailboats! There were big waves, and we were glad we were strong swimmers. We did a little sailing, but we were better at swimming the boat back when it broke. Not our fault!!! Promise! Here's a pic of Chris in the big tent. She had to go home, far away. Bye Chris!! So another good drive home and more yummy pizza. We like camping!

Castles fit for les loutres!

We visited castles! We stayed in a castle in France, outside of Tours. No, we didn't go on a tour, that is the name of the place. We visited big castles, and grand castles and small ruined castles. We liked the really old ones best. Look at these stairways!
They were so narrow and windy! We got dizzy after awhile of walking up. But they went up and up and up! Pip took one and I took the other... it was a DOUBLE spiral staircase! That's at Chambourd. Two paws up!
Chambourd is pretty empty actually. Except for this one room which was a tribute to brave beagles! We know two beagles who would have loved it. But there was no tribute to brave otters. So we went to the next castle.

This castle also had tributes to beagles! And other dogs. But they don't want the dogs to get too excited about all their praise. This castle is named Cheverny. It was pretty! Pretty gardens. Lots of dogs! Loud dogs.

Then we went to find more castles! We went in search of the really old castles.
Some of them were really really old and there were only bits of them left. No ceilings! Wow. That would be bad when it rained. This is us by an arrow slit - it's so narrow!

We like visiting castles! We finally found our very own size castles!
Castles fit for an otter!

Pip and Pop = Les loutres!

'Allo 'allo! Nous sommes les loutres! That's French! Yup! We just adjusted to the jet lag (and of course, our older brother visited for the 4th and stayed til Friday, hope you like his photo. We love him!) and now we can write about France!

France was so cool! We have SO much, plus de news to tell you about! We are some traveling otters, uh, loutres! :-)

So to start, we had to learn some French.

It's kinda hard. But we're smart! Oui, oui!

Uh-oh. Way past otter bedtime. More from France later mes amies! Bon nuit!!!

4th of July and now it's Friday!

Ah, we know we've got lots to write about from the last few weeks, but come on, we just got back from another adventure! Then we had the 4th of July (woo hoo!) and hey, now it's Friday! It's time to hang out with some friends and enjoy the sunshine! We'll be back after the weekend!

On the road again

Hi! We can't add any photos this entry, cause we're in Chicago! Only for a bit. We're in O'Hare. Typing away! We're off on another adventure!!! Can't tell you where yet. But boy, is is a good one.

So we're in the airport. Ho hum. There's lots of stuff to do here. Our plane from Detroit was little! It was a crazy morning. We were up late, packing. We ran off this morning to get some movies to watch. And some food. We were up watcing TV and baking cookies kinda late too... but we got to pack cookies!! Yummy! Not as good as the fudge, but good.

They do otter massage at the airport! Wowhee! They say it's very relaxing. But expensive! And hey, we travel light. And we usually have good seats. :-)

Pip wants a doughnut, we gotta go. Mmm. Very sleepy. Maybe after the doughnut we can nap. YAWN. Nap would be nice.

Do be do be doo.. on the road again!

More Fudge, Please

So more stuff we did at Mackinac! We checked out the local tourist attractions.


Some of them are scary.


We posed with the monuments.

We tried to get up close.


We called our Mom.


We brushed up on our history! This is the Fort. You can see everything! We stormed the fort. Ha ha! Betcha never saw us coming. We otters can be sneaky! ;-)




We sampled the fudge. There's LOTS of fudge!! Wow. We tried the mint fudge, peanut butter fudge, chocolate cherry fudge, chocolate chip fudge, vanilla fudge, fudge with walnuts and white russian fudge. But no clam fudge. Huh. So we have a plan! We are going to open a fudge shop on Mackinac! And sell clam fudge! And chocolate covered clam fudge, and peanut butter clam fudge and and and...!!!

Mackinac

Woo hoo! We have been everywhere! We went to Mackinac Island! It was cool! We had to take a boat to go there. On our way, we saw a bat! Look at him. Too bad he was sleeping and we couldn't talk to him much.

Oh well. But then we went off to Mackinac Island - it's really called Mack-in-naw. Funny spelling! We can spell better than that!!

There was cool stuff on our trip. On the boat, we went fast! Our whiskers blew in the wind! Whee hee!!! The boat went over a lake - some big lake! Sure is bigger than the otter pond. We went for a dip.... ch-ch-chilly!!

We like the boat. Here's one that we're going to save up to buy. It might take awhile. Right now though, between us, we have... $1.03. But these things add up!

Visitor to the House

Whoa... we have a visitor! A BIG furry one. He doesn't look like an otter... but he sure does have a tail like an otter!
He's a little slobbery. But you know what?
We like him!

This is Rocky, who stayed with us for a few weeks. He wasn't too sure about us at first. But then we became friends!
We got to ride on his back! Rocky could get us around the house in no time! It was super fast!
And we taught him tricks! Look here is Pop, daring to put his life in (no) danger with the ferocious Rocky dog! This will make us a big hit when we take our show on the road. :-)

I want my MTotterV!

Woo hoo! Yea! We got our guitar! Playing a guitar like ringing a bell! Go go! Go Pip and Pop, go! Pip and Pop we be good! Yeah!

Pip takes the high road up there. He does the pushing.

and Pop takes the low road. Much more plucking here. Like we when have to pluck our whiskers.


We can play "The Ballard of Old Clamanka" and "The Wreck of the Clam kipherald". Good stuff.

Easter Otters!

Easter is Great! We got eggs! And hid eggs. Lots of them. I put Hershey's kisses in the eggs and hid them under the bed. We hid some in Scott's shoe (hee hee). We ate *lots* of candy! Pop had a tummy ache the whole next day. Time to start swimming upriver!

Two Traveling Purple Otters

WOW! We're on the web! Hee hee! This is so cool! Wheeeee!
So we are Pip and Pop! That's right, I'm Pip, I'm Pop. Oh wait. See our photo? That's Pip on the left. Pop on the right. Easy huh? :-) So now that we're acquainted, welcome to our blog! It's an otterblog. That's right, a blog about the otters. Twin otters! :-) This otterblog should be fun! We think it will be a great way to describe our travels and adventures and the search for (oooh!) CLAMS!