Howdy Lee,

We've been living in the house since two weeks after the fire, but with the kitchen boarded off from the rest of the house at the entry point of the "butler's pantry" to the dining room. It's a sort of small passage where we have some cupboards and shelves for the dishes, as well as a sink and the dishwasher, so fortunately the fact that it was a narrow access helped minimize the smoke damage to the rest of the house, though it was still pretty nasty. I can't imagine what a house with "extensive smoke damage" must be like. Sheesh.

I should take pictures of my current "kitchen" - it's the spare table set up in the dining room with my hotplate, toaster oven, and microwave When I get that moved back into the kitchen, then we can move everything out of the dining room so they can come in and paint the walls in the dining room and replace the ceiling tiles. It's all smoke damaged, but we were able at least to clean off the smell enough to make it livable, though it looks pretty crummy right now. However, I'm thankful we could be home even so - I'd have lost my sanity by now if we'd had to live in a hotel room all this time

Re. the dogs - we're also training ours for bird dogs. Ishtar, our first dog (golden retriever) was an excellent bird dog. Sonya (the one we lost in the fire) was gun shy, and while she was great with the kids, she wasn't squat for hunting. We're hoping that at least one of the current brood turns out to be a good bird dog. Mahala (10 years old) just completed her hunter's safety training this fall, and has her provisional license and has been out a few times already with Bill. However, guess what was in the garage? Yep, I had to make a hasty order for a good bit of his hunting gear

JoJoe looks like a sweety - he's cute on his own merits, but I do hope he makes a good bird dog! What kind of birding do you do?

ttfn,
Sherry