The family is all doing fine and Lisa has recovered from all her medical issues of last year. Her job is still going well although she is complaining she has to spend a week in New York very soon and the weather there is still very foul. Sadly her little dog, Maui, of 16 years did not make it past Christmas. Her and Melanie are still working on their house with improvements and decorating and are currently having a new front door to replace the old one which cracked up from the hot sun over the years. They plan to visit the UK in June so are excited about that.

Ian is coming up to the end of his first year of living and working in Hawaii. To nobodies surprise he is very happy to live there but complains a lot about the cost of living which is much higher than the mainland. He and girl friend Kari became engaged over Christmas but haven’t announced the wedding date yet. We will visit them in June or July for a couple of weeks. Sadly, Kari’s old dog, Maka, finally succumbed to his cancer and also didn’t make Christmas. Since then they have adopted another rescue dog, Koa, as a companion to their other dog, Lucy.

Gary has made the big jump and quit his job at Earthlink to go it alone as LavaTurtle Software Development Inc. I am actually a board member and own 5% of the company so when he is a huge success down the road and gets bought up for a $100 mil or so then we get rich too…..its nice to dream isn’t it. No doubt for a while it will be a hard grind for him but he hasn’t looked so relaxed for years. His first product launches at the end of May at a Notaries convention in LA so fingers crossed for lots of sales.

Our puppy has now turned into a 95lbs dog and apart from some skin allergies is doing pretty well. He loves his daily walks and they certainly aren’t doing me any harm either. He has grown out of his car sickness, thank goodness, and loves to go everywhere in our SUV that we do. Our cat, Thatcher, probably lost one of his 9 lives in early March when he contracted a very virulent GI tract bug and spent 4 days at the vet receiving lots of treatment and TLC, which cost us an arm and leg in the process, but he fully recovered and as we speak is out rampaging round our garden as usual.

Here’s looking to a pleasant summer for everyone.

This year we have done no really long distance travelling as we are trying raise and train our puppy who we picked up on March 7th in British Columbia. Gary and family, along with his new puppy, stayed with us for the week before Easter. Lisa and Melanie also came up for a week at the end of May and on returning home, Lisa had to have an emergency gall bladder removal. It was done by the “keyhole” surgery method and went fine so she recovered quickly. Currently, everyone else is fine and we have been enjoying some lovely summer weather.

As I mentioned, our 8 week old puppy, who we named Warwick, moved in and settled quite well, although our kitten Thatcher was a bit leery at first, but soon got over that. The pup was 13lbs and has grown to 81 lbs already and we all just about survived the house training period. Luckily, we had plans to re-carpet the living room and change to a wood floor in the dining room.

As he grew we found he became car sick, which put quite a damper on things as we planned to drive him and Thatcher down to CA in Sept to stay with the kids. Rita flew down there anyway, as Lisa had surgery performed to correct a known, long time problem, so Rita helped look after her during convalescence. The surgery was successful and she is well on the road to recovery. With two surgeries in such a short time period she has had a rough year, poor kid. I stayed home to pet sit and keep working to help get rid of the pups car sickness. We have him up to 50 miles now providing the road is not too bendy. Sometime soon we plan to try a trip to the beach which is 70 miles and over the coastal range mountains, so we shall see. If we make it he is absolutely going to love playing in the sea. We have found some wonderful local parks that he loves to walk in and his favourite is one that has hilly trails, two creeks, a pond and a small lake full of ducks. No, he’s not allowed to chase them. He is into his second training class and a puppy agility class. The daily walks are also proving good for me as I’ve toned up quite a bit and lost some of the beer belly. When Rita is here and not playing tennis she also comes along.

Our other big news is that Ian has changed jobs to a development company out of LA and his first task is to construction project manage a job in Honolulu for at least 2 years. He and girlfriend Kari have bought a small house in Kailua and Kari's place in Costa Mesa is up for sale. Since their dogs had to have a 4 month quarantine Kari had to stay in Costa Mesa while Ian was working in Honolulu. Once completed, they got the house emptied fairly quickly and did actually make the Hawaii flight on time, thanks to a bit of running round by Lisa and Melanie. The two dogs survived the flight just fine although Ian did learn just before they left that Maka's cancer is back, so he had a last shot of Chemo to help him handle the flight, but amazingly he still looks good and loves to play on the beach. They moved into their house with little more than an airbed and some lawn chairs until the furniture container arrived, which they were told could be 4-6 weeks. Amazingly, they got their household goods after only 2 weeks of waiting. He told me the big tip he gave each of the 2 moving guys was money well spent as 4-6 weeks would have killed them. They are now all unpacked and are relaxing in their free time on the beach about 2 miles away. It looks to be a pretty rough life to us……. www.hawaiibeachcombers.com/kailua-beach.html