We're beary sorry for getting so far behind in our journal, but, as you might remember, we're busy making a good solid fort/hotel for our small city animals and any displaced teddies or animals to live in if they lose their homes from some mean ole weather.

The weather has been warm enough (high 60s-70 most the time, with a stray day only in the upper 50s), but also beary wet this month. The Weather Peoples are saying this has been the wetest month on record for this area, which, of course, means many of our small animal friends, who could have helped a little, are too busy, not only storing food for the winter, but fixing up their nests every time the rain water-logs them! Fortunately, after befriending the ducks and geese near our fort in the Teddy Bear World section of FDR Park in South Philly last winter, they don't have to store up for the winter, and don't need nests now that their babies have grown up over the summer, so they are helping us! They're limited in what they can do, given that they have no arms, however, they've been bringing us the rivots, nails, and smaller tools, when we need them, as well as bringing us coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee from our buddies at Dunkin Donuts and hotdogs from our favoritest hotdog vendor on Passyunk, between 23rd and 24th! (We had Daddy and Mommy buy us a few dozen pounds of smelt, a type of fish a little bit bigger then lake minnows, to give to our ducks and geese buddies for something special to eat for all their hard work too!)

Anyway, although we aren't finished, we have finished the outside of our fort/small city animal hotel! Now, before we show you the picture of it, we need to s'plain, because, well, if you know what Buckingham Palace looks like (the home of the royalty in England), you might just think we just took a picture of that, but we didn't! You see, Mommy is fond of telling the story of how part of her family ended up in the United States, and, because of that, we've intentionally designed our fort/hotel to look just like Buckingham Palace on the outside, (inside rooms are much smaller then most of Buckingham's rooms, given they are for living in, not entertaining in, but we have left a couple of "great rooms" so everyone can gather together and play or throw a party, if they want to) but in 1:5 scale (for those who've never collected toy trains or had a doll house, 1:5 scale means it is scaled down from the larger version, so that every five feet of the larger version is one foot for the smaller version) in honor of Mommy's ancestors. We like the way Mommy tells the story, so we're gonna let her tell it here:

Some time, during the 1500's -- I think that's the right century -- my ancestor (a great-great-great, etc. grandfather) was the Duke of Buckingham, but the king of England took his land and title away from him. Well, once my ancestor complained, he also lost his head, literally!

Two generations later, that ancestor's grandson decided to confront the king of England to get the land and title back. (I come from stubborn people.) He, too, lost his head. To avoid the king's wrath, the rest of the family moved to America, and we have not, to my knowledge, bothered asking for Buckingham Palace again! LOL

(On the other hand, for anyone who wants me to pay them for "reperations" because their ancestors were treated poorly by some other's ancestors, I will offer what I have always offered -- if you can talk the royal family into giving Buckingham Palace back to my family, you are more then welcome to my current home. LOL)

:::::::::::::::::Teddy and Spaulding look strangle at Mommy, not quite understanding what she is talking about, but, after she gives them that look of "OK, back to you," they sigh and continue on with their entry::::::::::::::::

We like the story, but we don't understand rep...rep...rep..par-racshuns?!

Anyway, now that you know why we made it look like Buckingham Palace, here's the picture of our new Small City Animal & Teddy Bear Hotel:

The red in the front is some of the bushes turning autumn colors finally! We're still not at the peak for autumn colors yet, but we are getting there!

Sadly, we are pass the need for bulldozers, cranes, and shovels, but we still need hammers to put up more walls and storage rooms, after we finish putting in all the electricity, heating, and plumbing. (We can't talk any of the animals into using toilets, but we have talked Molly, the mouse, and her mice buddies into cleaning up the place every day, and everyone still needs water to drink, when the pond freezes over.)

This project has cost us much of our gazillions of Teddy Bear dollars won while playing Jeopardy! over the years, however, we keep remembering what Mommy told us (What's the use of having money, if you don't use it?) and, even as we continue to build, we are also still playing Jeopardy!, so we're making more money. Last week was "Childrens' Week" on Jeopardy!, and so, we've made even more then we usually do, since we can answer 95% of the questions!

And, most importantly, we won't have to worry about our fort falling apart over the winter, now that we've made it a full-fledged building. It will be nice to know that our small city animal friends won't have this home crash during a heavy snowstorm! And, not being small city animals, it will be nice to play card games with our buddy during the winter, without being so cold in their nests! Our fur will stay dry too!

So, if we're still not posting much in the near future, don't worry, we just have to finish this before it gets too cold! We'll be back soon. We promise!

hey there, its holiday. turtle is too busy to respond too much she wanted to explane that thanksgiving comes before halloween here in canada so she has more time to knit stuff before christmas. so dont worry about catching up. plus shes taking me to hawaii for christmas so she wont actually be here on christmas day. so turtle has to get all her gifts done before she leaves...lol take care my friends and I will talk to you soon.