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Sammy and I had a great day today, and there are some newsworthy items to post. Dave paid off BOTH cars last night, and Sammy is talking!  (Click for video.) We decided it was time, since we’re writing checks for thousands of dollars almost daily, it seems. Since everything is more expensive here, we opted to increase our cash flow instead of living close to the edge. Dave has taken such good care of our finances – the expenditures and money movement is dizzying, but thankfully he has it all under control.

Sammy has some news – he’s been saying his first real word this week! We’ve been working on counting – fingers, wheels, Cheerios, toes – and started asking “How old is Sammy?” He responded with a cute “mwaaaaan” – his lips are so fascinating to watch as he works out the sound. I posted a big video (a fan request!) from the SamCam this morning. Enjoy! (It’s 16MB so it should download relatively quickly if you have high speed Internet; if not, grab some coffee and come back in a few minutes 😉 ). Oh – about the subject of this post – I went for a run with our jogging stroller (which we finally got today with the rest of our “unaccompanied baggage” – going a full month without “essential” items teaches you they’re not so essential!). We ran through a base, out to the beach and my plan was to head back down the beach through an ironwood forest (so the ground would be firmer). Unfortunately, in order to get to the ironwood forest, I had to go through about 1/4 mile of thick sand…with a jogging stroller filled with water and large 31lb baby… So, feeling like an extra on Lost I decided to PULL the stroller by the front wheel since that was easier than pushing. I had to pull very low (picture me hunched over and Sam leaning way back, looking at me quizzically) in order to reduce the load on the back wheels so they didn’t sink in too much and stop us dead. We managed to get to the forest and ended up enjoying a nice (long) stroll home over 2 miles of sandy forest floor! The forest has a nickname – Sherwood forest – because people have been robbed there in the past. So the whole time I was kinda wondering about our fate and just how ridiculous I’d been to attempt this adventure without Dave. I think the rep is misplaced – we had a great time and nothing unseemly happened.