Happy birthday Dexter!

The doodles turned 4 years old yesterday. He's grown into a fine young man, as you can see here. No, he's not spoiled.

Sue's 52nd birthday is coming up on Nov. 11. I think we'll celebrate that at Thanksgiving. Then we are done with birthdays for the year, starting over with Zoe in January and Bailey in February.

Bailey is going to be 9! Hard to believe. But the queen of the house is still going strong.

Canyon comes for a visit

Our friends Matt and Greg are off to Las Vegas this week and needed somebody to watch their yellow lab, Canyon. Ed and I love the load that is Canyon, having watched her last summer when Matt and Greg went to Hawaii.

She's a very good dog, but full of energy. She'll keep Bailey, Dexter and Zoe quite busy this week I think.

Not to mention Ed, who will have to deal with that energy when he's home at night and I'm off at work. He'll probably be just as tired as everybody else by the time Canyon goes home on Saturday morning.

Back to reality

Now that the vacation is over and Josh has gone home, it's full-bore back to the gym.

Had another nice workout today. Stepped on the scale when I got home and I'm now at 171. I've lost 18 pounds since Jan. 16. Pretty proud of that. Especially since we ate like pigs on the cruise. I'm aiming for another 5-10 so I can be between 160-165 by the time softball starts April 21.

Speaking of Josh -- it was really nice to see him and get him out of Arkansas for a while. I think he really enjoyed watching the dogs while we were gone, especially Zoe -- Zoe was actually named Origami when Josh and Brenda had him. I felt bad for him though because he was sick a couple of days. He's got a skin condition called cellulitis that really knocks him out when it hits. He was feeling pretty good, though, by the time he left, and he was able to see some sights in D.C. while he was here.

He's talking about coming back and possibly even moving here. We'll see.