This year's review is much tougher than in the past, which is one reason why it's a week late. It's hard to judge an entire year against others in a lifetime, but this one has got to be about the most difficult. Accordingly, why not start with what might be called this most difficult personally then on to what is just different, precious or maybe just worth noting.

As the year started off, nothing stood out as abnormal or different, and daily life turned into monthly life to us, and we went on as others do about our business. On March 17th, we got a call from Florida and both looked at each other as we saw a hospital number on the caller ID from Florida...fearing the unknown and receiving worse, we got word that my stepfather, Terry, had passed away from a sudden heart attack. Trying to deal as best we could and take care of ourselves and our families, I drove quickly down to Florida to be with the family as Tony stood watch over our lives at home, and as soon as I made it back home, Tony took the next watch and flew down to Florida to help out the family. A few weeks later, another scare all too close hit again, Tony's father also had a heart attack, which Tony flew home to monitor, thankfully to see Ronnie recover.

Alot happened through the year (as will be discussed, but lets get through the nastiness first), then in October we got another call. My grandmother had taken suddenly ill. She had lived her whole life with Multiple Sclerosis, and had gotten pneumonia or worse. Unfortunately, within a week, she too passed away. (thankfully our first vacation in a few years was spent at our family reunion visiting her in Kentucky). Thinking this tragedy might be the last within a year, we moved on and hoped for the best, however it wasn't meant to be. In December, Tony's grandmother also became ill and soon had passed away. This was the third for us (as the saying goes, they tend to come in three's), but it meant soo much more than that, we lost alot of special people to us and I tend to think that it made us appreciate things so much more. It's hard to express exactly what the loss means, but it changes us day by day and hopefully will make us cherish what we have as we go on.

Nor were we the only ones that suffered losses, and we wanted to mention a few of the people closest to us that went through the same things...In memory of their losses (and others that we do not mention but would not forget) we want to express our sorrows to Brad for his grandfather, Kim for her grandmother, Rick for his grandmother and Rich for his father.

Life Continues
As everyone suffers tragedy, so we must all go on about our lives, and what a year it turned out to be. As we closed out last year's review, we had shut down our Pet store delivery business. Just about 6 months later, we not only found a new location to reopen Fetch-It, and did so with the help of Rick, Brad, Robin & Greg, but it is turning out to be a better success than we had hoped for. It also changed our work lives tremendously. As we both put alot of time into the store and continued working our other jobs as well, it was alot for both of us to handle. Then Tony's office offered him a good full-time position at the office. It was an offer not to refuse, so he went back to the office and I took over the store for the most part. It turned out to be a difficult task for us both, but Tony was thriving at the mortgage office and for the new year his reward was a nice promotion and raise. I continue to work at the store and do my websites from home and there. Which is a good time to introduce RJ.

RJ is a semi-"nephew" of our neighbor Robin. He moved here from VA in July and we rented our downstairs room to him. He's a really nice guy and not only rents our room, but works at the pet store part time and is a cool friend of ours. Although Tony won't probably admit it, he's been a great influence on him (well from my standpoint)--(also I hope we are able to give him some guidance)...RJ has helped Tony see how cool it would be for us to have a kid of our own, and seems alot more open to the possibility and talks about it much more then he used to...Finally he seems ready! (Thanks, son RJ).

Public News of our Own
Again, life in our area was not boring this year and the nation took notice at some of the events...Starting in February we had a blizzard with a couple of feet of snow, leading to a flood in July that left us with a couple of inches of water downstairs (it was a big mess and lots to clean up but thankfully nothing was damaged). Soon after we had our part in the big blackout (during a naasty heatwave of course)...and the year in the news was capped off in December by another blizzard.

Family Matters
In last year's summary a stray cat Witness was mentioned. She quickly became a member of our family and fits in all too well...Otherwise and thankfully our pet family stayed the same at home. Wallace made her home at our Pet store and is very happy there, and spends her time with our 2 new adopted Guinea Pigs, Weezy and Wilma. We include our good friends as part of our family and are very thankful that we can call them our friends and are lucky enough that they view us the same way (we hope). A quick congrats to Jim & Ann for having Jake Patrick (their son) and for Kim & Rich who are now expecting a brother for Sofia) and Greg & Robin who just got married.

Tony moved on to 36 years, while I stepped up to 32, but more importantly we celebrated our 12th anniversary together.

I could rattle on with this summary for another year (but our calendar is always available to flip through and see what happened day by day), But Tony assures me that this year is going to be the best in a long time, so instead of listing more things that happened, or listing some of our resolves of what we would like to happen, I'll just close out and say that we really do have hope for a great year and with the help of our family and friends, we have no doubt that it's exactly what it will be...

Another year down...lots more to go,
Greg & of course Tony (& Whisper, Wink, Willy, Wiggum, Wexler, Weirdo, Wallace, Wicket, Witness, Wicket, Weezy, Wilma, The Fish & Frogs)