Mumbo Gumbo!

 If you haven’t  noticed my byline it says that this is “The story of a girl, her husband, the tiniest diplomat, an ugly reindeer sweater and her traveling scarf.” Last week we heard the detailed story of the traveling scarf and today I am going to tell you about The Tiniest Diplomat, more commonly known as my Chihuahua named Gumbo.

Ahhh he’s so cute!! Well how did this little guy become part of my family?? This is one of my favorite stories to tell! I haven’t owned a dog since our family Coker Spaniel, Lady died back in 2008. Patrick and I had gone over to a friends house and they had the cutest little French Bulldog named Basil. I wanted one SO bad! I got online looking for one and soon realized French Bulldogs were hard to come by and if you found one you would be paying big bucks for it. I’m not  one to pay big money for something when there are plenty of animals out there that desperately need homes. So I switched my gears to rescue organizations. This went on for about a week or so of me emailing Patrick pictures all day long of cute little dogs. Needless to say I’m sure it got a little annoying and Patrick finally says “Stop looking at pictures and pick one already!” Silly Patrick, he might not have known better back then but I’m sure by now he has figured out once I get an idea in my head it sticks! So the next morning I called up my friend Sophie and told her we were going to go find me a dog! She accepted the mission and hopped in my car to go  shelter hopping, except our journey began and ended at only one place, The Washington Animal Rescue League. I highly recommend the place for anyone looking in DC! It was here that Sophie and I stumbled upon a little dog named Tarzan! They let me take him into the special visitor room and I fell in love! (with the dog not the name)

So I went and talked to the people that are in charge on adoptions and they told me they needed to meet with everyone in the household before they would let me take him home and also bring by Patrick’s other dog Dexter for a meet and greet. When I told them Patrick wouldn’t be available today they said “That’s ok we can just speak to him on the phone” So Sophie and I got back in the car and drove back to the condo to get Dexter, Patrick’s deaf and nearly blind Weimaraner. Patrick’s response to my “I think I found a dog at the shelter” text was “Of course you did.” uh oh not going as smoothly as I thought…. ok well we will work on Patrick later lets just have Tarzan and dexter meet and see how that goes.

Trip #2 of the day to WARL – Meet and Greet with Dexter. They took us outside into the “meeting area” It didn’t go excellent but it also didn’t go bad… it did however include everyone pooping all over (the dogs not the humans) they sniffed each other and pooped some more and then sniffed again and then just ignored each other but the guy who was supervising deemed this acceptable enough and went to tell the rest of the staff Tarzan was ok to go home with me if I wanted him. Yelp… Let’s try Patrick again. “But I really want him and you told me to stop looking at pictures and to act on it!” responded by “I thought it would take longer!” Ughh anyway back to adoption staff where their newest statement was “We don’t need to talk to your boyfriend anymore you seem really responsible!” Ahhhhh… I can take Tarzan home and I don’t even need Patrick’s say so??? No, Amanda this is not what people in adult relationships do so Sophie and I left the shelter without Tarzan and sad hearts 😦

Sophie and I went home for awhile until I made the decision that this battle wasn’t over! I said “Sophie, we’re getting back in the car, going to Petco and back to the shelter to rescue Tarzan from the jungle” I was pretty confident and just after we got everything from the pet store we needed Patrick calls and says “If this is what you really want, go get him but you need to get food, a bed, a collar…..” (interrupted by me) “Don’t worry we already got it! we’re already on our way back!” 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Trip #3 to the shelter: Time to take Tarzan home! Ooooeeeeoooooooeeeoooo! (that was my best Tarzan impersonation)  Once we got the papers we realized that little Tarzan had been at the shelter for over a month, and before he was here he was at a shelter in Louisiana and his name was Boo. Poor little guy! I can’t imagine why anyone would give him away.  So we took him home and since Patrick wasn’t there to pick him out I gave him the honor of renaming our little jungle warrior. Patrick says “He’s from Louisiana, he needs a southern name!” and that was that….

Hello my name is Gumbo!

That was almost exactly one year ago and we have had so many fun moments since!

We have the same great taste in movies!

He loves belly rubs!

Likes to sleep on top of my head….

And he likes to dress up and give kisses!!!!

Happy Birthday to the Tiniest Diplomat! I love you so much and have had the best year ever with you!!!

Chimp Chimpiny Chimp Chimp Cher-oo!!

This week has been filled with so much I am not even sure where to begin! I forgot to mention in my last blog the arrival of 2 very important things, If you can recall back to my engagement blog you will remember that I had left my engagement ring at home. Thanks to a family visiting the States last month and my Mother in Law going to meet them I finally have it back!! I forgot how pretty it is  🙂 So exciting!!! The second item, which for those of you that know me can imagine how excited I was when it arrived was my Diet Dr.Pepper! Oh the sweet taste of America never tasted so good!

Does anyone ever experience those little moments where you see yourself becoming more like your Mother or Father? This week I have actually felt like I was becoming my Aunt Carole because our home is turning into the Scoville Zoo! My Aunt and her kids have always loved animals and at any given time it is more likely that there are more animals in the house than people.  When we got here the score was: Humans – 2 Animals -1

So we took in black kitten (at least until we can find him a proper home) last month and last week we just found out that one of the families here was returning to DC early for a work opportunity and was trying to find a home for their dog Charlie…. Charlie is a water dog mix who happens to be about 20 times the size of Gumbo…. In fact I think Gumbo might be the size of one of Charlie’s feet.                So new score: Humans – 2 Animals – 3 

Ok, so we were only outnumbered by 1 at this point, no big deal…. until the gardener came home with 15 baby chicks on Thursday.   Final Score: Humans – 2 Animals – 18 

So after all of our domestic animal excitement we decided to step it up a notch! Patrick had a colleague in town this week and he had some free time over the weekend so we decided to take him away for the ultimate African weekend! We were also joined by Olivia and Huw. Our journey started on Friday afternoon and we traveled to the Budongo Forest located about 3.5 hours or so from Kampala. I’m sure some of you are aware that Uganda is most famous for their Mountain Gorillas but considering a Gorilla permit will cost you your first and second born children and you must plan way in advance we didnt get to see those… this time! But we did get to go chimp trekking! It still required me to wake up early but this time it was for chimps and not birds so I was a bit more enthusiastic.  After walking through the jungle for almost 2 hours the disapointment began to set in that we might not find them. But just as we had given up all hope they began to appear! Pictures cannot even do the experience justice….

After our trek we headed back to the lodge for lunch and then continued our journey to board our river cruise! We saw tons of hippos, a few crocodiles, warthogs and antelopes! I got a little sun but I promised I wouldnt complain because I had refused the sunscreen. This is me simply making a statement and not complaining…. because it doesnt hurt at all and I am proud of my soon to be hopefully tan not sunburnt skin 🙂 We also were able to see the amazing Murchinson Falls!

After our boat ride we headed to our new accomodations, enjoyed a nice dinner and woke up early again… but I put on my favorite sweater and grabbed the scarf before heading off on a game drive at Murchinson Falls National Park.

Here we saw tons of animals to include giraffes, elephants, water buffalo, bushbucks, waterbucks, oribi, hartebeest and lots of other things! Unfortunately Murchinson does not have Zebras and that made me a little sad 😦 No cats this time but we still enjoyed the experience.

Ive grown accustomed to African toilets and sometimes lack of… but I must say I was surprised at how “untouristy” some of our options were on this trip I was even more surprised to find 3 mosquito bites… on my butt. I’ll spare you an actual image just this time!

We ended our trip with a walk up to the top of Murchinson Falls and said our goodbyes…

I would say it was a pretty successful weekend! Tomorrow I will be going with some of the Kids Club crew to purchase the shoes for our Katanga kids! We are hoping to hand them out on Friday!!

Thanks for stopping by!