She objects…

…to being told when to nap.

And no, I’m not letting that thing, whatever it is, out of her little pen. I think it might be a small, nippy demon.

Epic ramen fail…

My goal is to try every type of ramen sold in the local Japanese grocery store. This one had no English anywhere on the package, so if there were cooking instructions, but how hard could it be? It’s cheap ramen.

Look how simple and organized everything is! This is gonna be *so* good!

Something horrible happened. It was inedible. I was so disappointed.

And so we met our next little pack member…

(We would come to understand the truth behind those shoe-button eyes, and those tiny puppy teeth sooner than we ever imagined…but I’m getting ahead of myself…)

These are not my photos, by the way. They were taken by people with the rescue from which we were to adopt this little beastie. More on that later…

The colors! The colors!

Had a great New Year’s dinner with Friends-Who-Are-Family, and received an especially warm welcome from the Labradorks. These greetings go something like this:

Or sometimes they just climb on your lap. There are no photos of this happening to me, because everyone was pointing and laughing too hard. Trust me, it was a special experience.

Get a load of all of those Christmas trees in the background. That’s not even all of them. It’s a regular holiday forest!

A grand start to the year. The bar has been set very high indeed.