First (real) steps!

Today I started walking! I got fed up just being at ankle level and realised if I stood upright I could see so much more and get up to so much more mischief!! It's all Tommy's fault that it took me so long to be brave enough to take these first real steps. Every time I took more than one of two steps, mummy and daddy would get very excited and clap and cheer. This made Tommy very excited too and he would come bounding over and knock me down!! This made me very scared. But now I am just about as big as Tommy so I decided that he wouldn't scare me anymore and I would stand up to him! Now HE is the one who is scared as I chase him all around the living room on my two little feet! Yeah!







More walking.....














Yeah - I'm a star!!








Of course I still like climbing and will climb onto almost anything I can find. This is my favorite spot! I can see lots of things from here. Sometimes I see Kiki, the little black cat outside and little birds in the trees. And sometimes I see Daddy working in the garden and I bang on the window to get his attention!! When he hears me and looks up and smiles and waves at me. That makes me feel very happy...

Little miss Piggie (tails)!

It's crayon time at our house, and little miss Piggie is having a fine old time! What an artist - eh? She's growing up to be a right wee Madam who knows exactly what she wants to do!

Unfortunately, apart from creating artistic wonders like the one in this photo, she also likes to eat the crayons and generally cause a big mess in the kitchen. Oh well, a messy and unorganized mind is a creative one, or so I say...John may beg to differ ;-)

Mini Elvis

My mummy and daddy keep laughing at me and telling me I look like Elvis - whoever that is. They don't know what it's like to suddenly have all these little sharp white things in their mouth when they've been used to a tooth-free environment. They came in so quickly too! I went from two little teeth to six in about one week! It's taken a bit of adjustment, but I've been practising different looks in the mirror in the morning when Daddy is cleaning the kitchen (which he says Mummy always messes up - but he doesn't see how hard she works creating all my lovely meals and making him pies!) To tell you the truth, Daddy spends most of the morning drinking coffee, surfing ebay and playing on his boat!

Anyway, I'm getting used to these teeth now. They come in really handy sometimes. I can rip big chunks of bread apart with them and once I bit Mummy's finger so hard that I made it bleed. I felt bad about that though and won't do it again.

I've also been working on my Taylor Hicks (American Idol) look and hope to perfect it any day now. Won't Daddy be suprised when he see's that one. As long as he doesn't whisk me off to the hospital thinking that I'm having some sort of weird seizure then I'll be ok ;-)

The veggie car...

Sunday morning bright and early we head down the coast near Pescadero to a small environmental retreat called the Venture Retreat Center. We're going to hear a talk by a guy called Shawn Sears about how he converted his car to run on vegetable oil! The additional pull to driving down there so early on a Sunday morning is that they have goats which they say we can feed and possible milk!

The talk itself is really interesting! We're told of the difference between converting you car to run on straight veggie oil (essentially putting heaters in the engine to heat the oil, hence thinning it) or removing the glycerin from the veggie oil itself to produce a thinner oil. All-in-all an interesting talk.

The above photos is of Skye listening avidly to Shawns lecture...I think she was making comments but we couldn't quite make them out ;-)











Here she checks out a sample of biodiesel.








As the lecture goes on, Skye become restless and we go look at the goats and feed them. She gets really excited to see them and make lots of 'oh' sounds!





We then get to check out the car and to sniff the exhast pipe! Yes, it does smell like french fries!






Soon it is time to go and we decide to have lunch of fish and chips at the harbour. I wonder what gave us that idea ;-)

But before we go, we get to milk a goat with VERY big udders! I don't know if she was very amused with our efforts though.










Here we are ready to go and impatient to get our hands on those fish and chips!