We've been slacking

No, we haven't been in timeout -- and we're pretty sure that's what you thought. We've just been slackers. We've just been having a pretty good time, and we took a break. But we're back.

We'll try to catch you up with our latest adventures:
- Right before Christmas, we woke up one morning and heard all sorts of strange sounds outside...it sounded like the chainsaw and giant suck machine (vacuum cleaner?) all at one time, so that couldn't be good. When we finally got to go outside and check out the noise, we found our favorite big pine trees were missing from the backyard. Bandit was particularly upset to find all the excavation work he'd done around the tree near the weird bush was all gone. Now there was a big hole full of wood chips. We're not really sure what caused this, but we figure there will be lots of termites and grubs in that part of the yard when summer comes. That can't be bad.

- Christmas was fun. Grandma came and slipped us food under the table a couple of times. Staffer Mom took some time off and when she does that, she tends to cook a lot. This time, she cooked so much, she dropped food on the floor a lot, so that worked out well. She can stay home more often.

- The staff got a Wii. And frankly, we think those things are hazardous. First of all, they always move the furniture to play with it, and when Staffer Mom is Wii boxing she gets pretty violent. Last night, she nearly stepped on Maggie twice. When Staffer Dad's playing Wii bowling, he won't let us in the den at all. This was quite unexpected for us and remains an annoying situation.

- Then, we spent New Year's at the beach. It was cold there, but the staff lets us sit on the couch at the beach house and that made up for a lot. Unlike last year, they didn't make us watch all five "Planet of the Apes" movies. Instead, they took the stupid Wii to play with. Now we're worried they'll take away our Wimbledon and U.S. Open vacations to play with that stupid toy.

So that puts us about even...except for our new nighttime yard game. We'll tell you about that later.

We are back (OK, out of timeout)

First of all: We're sorry.
Second: We are making a public apology to Ernie. We didn't really mean to knock over the cat food tower (right), and we're pretty sure we weren't the ones who put cat food all over the den and dining room. If we didn't, it was truly an accident because we truly believe in immediately picking up any food we drop. (Sometimes we even fight to see who gets to snarf it up!)
Here's what happened: Staffer Mom filled up the self-feeding cat food tower, and we got a little excited and at some point it went flying across the kitchen and food went everywhere.
We admit mouthing off a bit about Ernie even needing a self-feeder and if she didn't want us to taste it it shouldn't be on the floor...yadda, yadda.
Basically, she told us we couldn't blog again until she quit finding food in the rugs and floorboards across three different rooms and until we figured out how to share our toys and when we quit digging up her new bed of pansies.
And then she wouldn't let us try to help by sniffing out the strewn food -- one of our more refined skills, she had to pull out the sucking vacuum cleaner thing and it never works right....anyway...more than you wanted to know.

But we're back.
Staffer Mom says that the first day of Tar Heel basketball season is special one and all household shenanigans are forgiven for another year. We are really glad every year when that day comes.
Go Heels!