Louise

 We took a break from having a foster dog since I had a few work trips, but we picked up Louise last Wednesday.  She's a 3 month old, BIG, 20 lb. puppy.  She's really sweet but dealing with kennel cough which has been a challenge.  I had to take her back again to the rescue for additional meds, but hopefully she's on the path to getting better. Yesterday she was feeling much better, so active the entire day and getting into EVERYTHING.  She especially loves paper and ate the back cover and several pages from Silas' card game book.  

Otherwise, the kids are getting excited for the end of school.  Only 3 weeks left!  I'm excited for Silas to start Middle School, but also a bit nervous about the change in routine.  It's so easy with both kids at the same school just 0.25 miles away.  I'm sure we'll figure it out... at least it will be easy again for high school.  

Zelda!

 I realized I didn't post anything about our newest pet addition yet!  Daphne picked out Zelda the end of February.  She shares her tank with mystery snails Urbosa and Mipha, and some smaller ramshorn snails.  

Setting up Daphne's tank actually encouraged me to get my own.  Now that I'm working from home I have a 2 1/2 gallon shrimp and snail tank on my desk.  

Palm Springs

 The kids and I went to Palm Springs a few days over Spring Break.  It was HOT, but we had fun.  Lots of time in the hotel pool.  The zoo there is really nice, would definitely go back sometime it's not so hot!

Quieter Times

 We've had a pretty busy start to the year.  Steve went to Hawaii for a couple weeks to help his Dad while recovering from surgery, then the RSI construction started early February to replace all the doors and windows and add A/C.  It definitely was a mess during the construction but am very glad it's done.  

Our balcony was falling apart... again... so we had one of the construction guys redo the balcony flooring.  We'll see if this holds up any better.  We also discovered a leak in our attic so had our roof repaired, and we had a corroding neutral line so had some unstable electricity issues for a while that took a lot of harassing of Edison to get them to fix.  On top of that, we also fostered another little family, Mama Gumball and her two babies Chiclet and Bazooka.  Having only 2 puppies was definitely much easier, but the last couple weeks with them were still tough.  And Gumball was a handful as well.  I do feel bad for her, she definitely has a lot of anxiety and doesn't have the skills to cope with it.  She's with another foster family now since I'll be traveling for work a bit, I do hope she's doing well. 

Now that we're back to only having Ruby, and all the work on the house is done, things are definitely quieter.  The kids are doing amazing in school, I can't believe the school year is almost over.  Daphne has been doing cooking at Rec Park and Jiu Jitsu.  Silas is doing track.   

San Diego

 We finally had the construction to replace our windows and doors, but the kids had a Monday off during that same time.  I took them to San Diego Safari park to get us out of the house.  It was a lot of fun, we stayed at The Welks, a fancy resort spot in Escondido and went to the Safari Park. 

Mamma Mia

 We had to drop off Mia last week at the Wags Adoption center because of the construction.  They said she's doing well, but I miss that girl!  She was our longest resident foster to date.  She's such a sweetheart, I hope she finds a wonderful forever home soon.