Kinley

After months of waiting, the day has arrived. Ken's folks and the puppy arrive tonight at 7 (barring temperatures in Boston & Minneapolis being lower than 10 degrees, meaning the puppy isn't allowed to fly). He's 10 weeks, about 20 lbs and apparently very sweet. We've named him Kinley*.

Poor Hughes.


* The puppy was born two days after the rest of the pups in his litter. Too sleepy to get out of bed, just like me. After that, he kept sleeping like crazy. If you couldn't find him among the other pups, just check under the blankets and sure enough, there he'd be -- sleeping. Then one day, he woke up and kept eating and eating, getting bigger than all the other pups in the litter. In the meantime, we were trying to think of names (I originally wanted Kerns since I've named all my pets after where I was living at the time. But Ken vetoed the name since it was too close to his good friend Chris' last name. I was reading Backpacker one night about Alaska & Denali, where we'll be going this summer and saw Mt. McKinley... a giant, sleepy beast of a mountain. I asked Ken "how about Kinley?" It stuck. Our giant, sleepy beast of a puppy.