We see, monkey do

Wow. What a holiday! We went to the beach. We rode lots of miles. We walked a lot in the sand and got a lot of sandspurs in our paws. (Luckily, we're really good at pulling them out on our own.)
We saw our aunts and uncles and made new friends. But with all that, we got a bit irritated. It seems that all the humans had a new friend, too. They adopted an inflatable monkey and took it everywhere we should have gone. They said since some folks couldn't be there, they'd take the monkey everywhere and send pictures to those who missed out. So wait a minute: They have 2 perfectly fine dachshunds and decide to take the monkey all over town? What is the deal?
If they hadn't kept it up on top of the refrigerator, that monkey would have a few puncture wounds as souvenirs.

Happy Birthday Aunt Jenn!!!

From Maggie: This is Aunt Jenn (and that is not Uncle Brad with her). And, we hear that she's changed her hair color to bright red, and we think that's very cool.
Most importantly, she had a birthday this week, and I want everyone to wish her happy birthday. Even if you don't know her any way but through us, it's OK. You can do that here on this site by leaving a comment to this message, because we know she reads our stuff.
She's 40, right?
From Bandit: NO, she is not 40. Mom's threatening a big party for that one. (Sorry Aunt Jenn. You know Maggie just wants everyone to be older than she is. In dog years, she's ....nevermind. She's staring at me.)