A Special Mother's Day Gift

We have some very cool neighbors.  It's common for us to do things for each other - lend tools, pick things up while you're at the store, help with parties, etc.  So when Amy from across the street said she could use some raspberries while Carol was making a run to the store, it was no problem at all.

After Carol comes back from the store, she sees Amy outside across the street.  She asks Jake to walk the berries over to Ms. Amy.  He takes his happy little self and scoots on across the street, the whole time with Mom's watchful eye over him.  And so after Jake delivers the goods, Amy, in total jest, says to Jake in a loud voice so that Carol across the street can hear, "You tell your mother she's the WORST neighbor ever!"  Amy repeated it just for good measure.

Of course, Carol could hear the whole thing.  Both Moms got a chuckle out of it.  Carol and Amy have really gotten to be good friends and so the ribbing is common between them.

Jake trots on back to our driveway.  Already knowing the answer, Carol asks Jake, "So what did Ms. Amy say?"

"Umm, let's go inside first," Jake says.  They go into the garage.  "We should go into the house too," says the little guy with some nervousness in his voice.  

So now with the garage door closed and them deeply imbedded inside the house where Ms. Amy surely can't hear him, a very curious Carol asks Jake, "So what did Ms. Amy tell you to tell me?"

And Jake lifts up those big brown eyes and quietly says, "Umm, Ms. Amy said thank you."

There's the little guy that didn't want to hurt his Mom's feelings.

Mother's Day at the Air Force base in Osan, Korea two years ago.

Mom with the boys over 40 years ago in San Diego.  I'm the one drinking the bottle and being held by Mom.    That's the Coronado Bridge on the left.

Mom with the Cruz boys (three of them anyway) at our house in Coronado.  This was when Dad was working at the BOQ on North Island.

Another Coronado picture.

Here comes Darby!

And along comes Lee.  Here we are at the Botanical Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia.  I used to like looking at the airplanes takeoff from one of the hills at this park  The hill had a great view of the Norfolk International Airport.

While the whole family is rocking the heck out of some polyester, I'm starting a whole new fashion trend with my patches.

Happy Mother's Day to all you fabulous Moms!

American Idol

Say what you will about Fox's hit show, "American Idol."  The show has fans in the Cruz household.  For the horrible singers, it's like watching an episode of "Cops" or a train wreck.  You just can't look away.  And then for the singers with talent, you get to watch their lives change right in front of your eyes.

Me personally, I'm all for anything that provides good quality time for the family.  I love football but at the last game I went to, Carol and I had the Def Comedy Jam sitting behind us throwing f-bombs all over the place - and that was during the singing of the national anthem.  Plus it cost us a second mortgage for tickets.  At one baseball game, no joke, I offered this annoying stranger $5 to shut his pie-hole for five minutes.  He couldn't do it.  I digress but you get my point about wholesome family entertainment.

Jake can hardly control himself when American Idol comes on.  He hears the theme music come on and his little body just takes off.  See for yourself:

Every now and then, you get some really special moments on the show, like Randy Jackson accidentally punching a female contestant in the face.  And she was a Harvard graduate White House intern too.  Here's another, albeit very different special moment:

Update:  video was taken down by the video/copyright police.  Oh well.

Eye Protection

Eye incident #1:  Curiosity gets the best of Jake and gets hit in the eye with a ceiling fan while investigating the view from the top bunk bed.

Eye incident #2:  Jake gets hit in the eye with a plastic baseball bat.

So this morning, Carol and I wake up to see Jake like this:

Maybe he's doing his best to prevent a third incident?  For those who think things come in three's, I should point out that the real incident #1 was putting his finger in the pencil sharpener. I think he's had his fill of incidents.  Here's to a safe Halloween.

World Record Curly Fry

There's good and bad in this picture:

Yeah, Jake's eye looks pitiful after accidentally getting hit in the eye with a baseball bat.  Good thing it was a plastic bat instead of something like adamantium.  So Carol and I had one of those long parenting evenings in the emergency room where you're quickly reminded that your other perceived emergencies like work stuff, the weekend plans and piles of laundry don't mean jack squat.  You just want your kid to be okay.  And he was.  Whew.  Side note:  Couldn't the hospital have given us the reams of paperwork to fill out while we were just sitting around the waiting room doing nothing?  Instead, they give us the paperwork at the end of the visit to ensure we get the special wonton extended ER experience.  Grrr.

So after our late night ER fun, we do what any good nutrition-conscious parents would do - hit the Arby's drive thru window.  And that's where Jake stumbles across this beauty of a curly fry.  That's gotta be a world record holder there.  I challenge you to show me a longer one.  And we even had six inches of this fried magic break off.  I know what you're thinking.  Chris photo-shopped that bad boy to impress friends.  Nope.  That's pure potato goodness you're eyeballing there my friends.  You can live a lifetime without experiencing a starch that amazing.  It was yin and yang in action.  A baseball bat to the orbital socket followed by the mother of all curly fries.  A good trade-off?  I think you know the answer to that one.

Pencil Sharpener

Don't talk to strangers.

Look both ways before you cross the street.

Don't put your finger into a pencil sharpener.

Two out of three ain't bad.  In a span of the millisecond that Carol turned her head away, Jake let curiosity get the best of him.  Hmm...I wonder how this thing works?  Bamm, he sticks his finger in the pencil sharpener and I think he tries to crank some shavings out of his little digit.

I don't think he'll do that again.  The damage wasn't too bad.  A couple drops of blood and a slightly mangled fingernail should be enough to dissuade him from doing that again. Ah, the joys of parenthood.

Now I know where all those warning labels on products come from.  Those warnings are there because people have actually tried to do certain things to those products.  Here are a couple of examples of real warnings on real products:

Liquid Plummer:  Do not reuse the bottle to store beverages.

Windex:  Do not spray in eyes.

Toilet Plunger:  Do not use near power lines.

and my favorite:

Claymore Anti-Personnel Mine:  DO NOT EAT

Here is Carol fixing the pencil, I mean Jake's finger.

Maybe some big wig pencil sharpener company executive will read this blog entry and add a warning to their product, all because of Jake's antics.  That would be quite the accomplishment for a 5 year old.  Well, gotta go.  I think Jake's putting his grilled cheese sandwich into the DVD player.

Seoul Trip

Ah, Seoul and its 23 million people.  Gotta love it.  The family hopped in the car and took a road trip to this massively crowded city during Spring Break.  It was unusually cold for this time of year but it was still a great time.

One of our first stops was Lotte World, the world's largest indoor amusement park.  There's also an outdoor portion of the park that has a castle that looks eerily similar to the Disney castle.  I was reminded of the McDonald's clone restaurant, McArnold's from the "Coming to America" movie.

Here's a short video from our Lotte World trip.  Fear, laughs, mini-Viagra commercial - this video has it all.

Starbucks in Insadong.

Carol loves these paper lamps.  She was in hog heaven.  Travel tip # 17:  While overseas, if you see something you like, get it.  You just don't know if you'll ever  be back again.  Later on, you may simply forget how much you paid for the thing but the value of the memory just increases with time.

Unfortunately, Jake wasn't a huge fan of the lamps or anything else in the many stores.  He started acting up and got a little extra attention from Dad.  This is Jake's "not happy" look.  Parenting tip #37:  Kids need to know they will be disciplined outside of the house too.

This is the best waffle guy in all of Korea.  You can get a good waffle from any street vendor in Korea but not with the friendliness and charisma of this guy.  The boys love this delicious treat.  They lather the waffles up with cream and syrup.  Makes a big mess but puts a smile on your sticky face.

The first step towards world peace.

We stayed at the Dragon Hill Lodge on the US Army Base.  There's a swimming pool, lots of restaurants, kids play area and shops in the lodge.  These are the flags right outside of the hotel.  You can see Seoul Tower over to the right.

This was taken just a few doors down from our room.  Bow-chicka-bow-bow.

So I had this awesome barbeque meal at one of the restaurants at the Dragon Hill Lodge.  I highly recommend this meat extravaganza.  Who knew it was a precursor for all the great BBQ we'll soon be hitting in Memphis, Tennessee?

We stumbled upon a toy museum in Insadong.  These characters are from an old TV show my siblings used to watch everyday after school.  It was called, "Battle of the Planets."

I really freaked out when I saw this.  The blue and red spaceship on the right is the ship from the "Battle of the Planets."  The gray and red ship is the Argo from "Starblazers."  Ho hum for the uninitiated.  Totally awesome for those that know these two shows.

More cool stuff from the toy museum.  The two smallest waists in all of Hollywood history.

How many of these shows do you recognize?

I think I know all of them except for one.  That officially makes me an old fart.

Maybe my favorite picture from the whole trip.  That's what I call protection.  Until next time -- C2.

Jake & the Wii

There are probably many videos like this of kids going nuts with the Wii, but this one is mine:

We have created a Wii junkie!  Up until last Christmas, Carol and I have avoided the whole video game thing.  We'd rather have the boys playing outside, hanging with friends, reading, drawing, etc.  For many kids in the US, it's just hours upon hours of mindless video games.  Kids - what am I talking about?  Adults too.  The other thing was so many of the video games were all about blood, guts or boobs.  While I don't mind seeing that stuff on date night with Carol, I'm not ready for the boys to make it a daily event.

I am a big fan of the Wii though.  The boys can actually work up a sweat on that thing.  The characters are innocent looking and the games are just a lot of fun.  I really don't understand the Wii boxing game though.  I was a dang National Champion boxer in college for goodness sake and my five year old is whooping up on me on a consistent basis.  He can kick my butt while he's sprawled out on the couch.  It's amazing.

Wooh! Taco Night!

Mexican food can be tough to find in Busan. I've heard about a tiny Mexican restaurant in Haeundae Beach that only has a couple of seats. You have to go through some back alleys, say the secret password and enter a time warp aka Jack, Kate and Hurley to get there. I hear the food is pretty good though.

An easier trek to mexican food is the Fuzzy Navel:

The Fuzzy Navel is next to the Seacloud Hotel in Haeundae Beach. The food is decent. My favorite is the chimichanga. The Fuzzy Navel is more renowned as a foreigner hangout bar than for its Mexican food. You'll see things happen here that you just won't see in bars in the US because of safety standards - things like a tall stack of glasses getting lit on fire for a specialty drink. You really have to keep your distance when this drink is rendered. If you care about keeping your eyebrows that is. On one particular visit, there were a couple of Korean girls getting temporary tattoos in the boob region at the table next to us. Not that I was paying attention.

Jake is a fan of Mexican food - especially tacos. If he had his way, we'd have taco night every night in the Cruz household. That boy loves him some tacos. See for yourself:

Jake showing off his taco inhalation skills

CJ can be a picky eater but not when it comes to tacos.

Here's a quick story on one of the most memorable taco nights we've had. At a mini family reunion at our house in Miami, we celebrated my older brother Beanie's birthday. It was his choice for dinner - go out, sushi, Chinese, whatever. Beanie decided that we should stay in and have taco night just like back in the day with the family. Taco night was always a nice family memory. Much better than reminiscing about one of Dad's rampages or getting kicked out of the house. It was always a source of pride that we were able to polish off 4 or 5 tacos, whatever our personal best was at the time. Dad would be the only one to put onions into his tacos. I've since graduated to putting jalapenos in mine. I just don't remember a bad taco night.

So on this birthday taco night, after scarfing down some El Paso tortilla shells filled with meat and veggie goodness, Beanie opened up his birthday present - a Ric Flair "Nature Boy" action figure. Back in the day, the Nature Boy was one of the most boisterous and charismatic wrestlers out there. If you're not a natural lip-reader, let me assist you. In unison, Beanie and CJ are both yelling out a big "Wooh!"

Whenever something good happens, it's always appropriate to do the Nature Boy strut (as depicted in action figure form) and yell out a triumphant "Wooh!" Got an "A" on your math paper? "Wooh!" Promotion at work? "Wooh!" Taco night? "Wooh!"

If you don't have any dinner plans tonight, go ahead and get your taco on. C2

Brotherly Love

Jake was having a fit the other night.  I'm not sure what got him all riled up but he was crying and just having a heck of a time.  He was inconsolable - until CJ came to the rescue.  Big brother hopped into the bed with Jake and started talking and playing games with him to help him calm down.  Soon enough, Jake's cries turned to laughs.  Good job CJ.

Well, the next morning, here's what we see in Jake's room:

After calming down his brother, CJ had fallen asleep in the bed with Jake.  Sometimes their fighting, bickering and tattling drives Carol and I crazy.  It was really nice to see this episode of brotherly love.  Until next time -- C2

Coloring Buzz

This just in. Jake likes to color. He'll do this all day if you let him. If you look at the picture closely, you'll see that almost all of the coloring pages are of Buzz Lightyear. That kid already has a countdown going for the Toy Story 3 movie that comes out next summer.

For the parents out there that haven't discovered it yet, Toy Story is like crack cocaine for kids - at least for little boys. Don't say I didn't warn you. Jake is still upset with me that I put a couple of CJ's old Buzz Lightyear toys in storage. Heck, we couldn't bring all of our stuff to Korea. Yeah, I know. What's a kid doing with more than one Buzz Lightyear toy? We're trying to work on that spoiling the kids thing. I like to think we balance it out with the verbal abuse we heap on the boys. Kidding for all you social workers out there.

I digress. Jake's a coloring fiend. At Sunday School, while all the other kids have finished coloring Joseph or Moses on their handout, Jake's still breaking out every last color in the entire box of 64 crayons so he could do his patented psychedelic rainbow pattern. Joseph's technicolor coat never looked so... technicolor. He'll color every square inch of that dang paper if you give him time.

And yes, he has colored on the walls before. I hope my landlord never discovers my blog. Or polishes up on his English skills. Until next time -- C2

A Very Nice Christmas Present

Another holiday season is coming to a close. Seems like all the Christmases blend together as they years pass by. I can hardly remember what the boys got for Christmas just last year. Every now and then though, you're privileged to receive or give a very memorable gift. Like when CJ was three years old, he asked Santa for a red fire engine with a remote control. That's when the whole Santa thing really came alive for him. That boy was asking and asking for that fire engine. When he opened up that present on Christmas morning, it was magical. The rush of great Christmas memories came flooding back to me. I felt like a little kid again. It was that way with Jake this year.

Tyler Allen is the American Presence Post Officer / US Consul here in Busan. His wife, Jen and Carol have gotten to be very good friends. Their middle daughter, Hannah and Jake are in the same class at school and are best buddies. Anyway, last year for Christmas, they gave Jake this nice Pororo book:

Pororo is a popular penguin here in Korea. The Pororo cartoon show is a little different in that they sometimes tackle non-traditional topics like diarrhea and bed-wetting. My kind of show.

The special thing about this present was that Tyler translated the entire book from Korean to English:

How cool is that? Between Tyler and Jen, I know that was a lot of typing, cutting and taping. What an incredibly thoughtful gift.

We're really gonna miss them. The Allen's get to stay in Busan a year longer than we do. It's gonna be terrible for Jake to say good-bye to his best buddy.

Happy New Year's everyone! Until next time -- C2

Fred

It was a sad week in the Cruz household. Our dog Fred fought the good fight but went to sleep for the last time on the 19th of December. He lived to the ripe old age of 15 years and 7 months. We were very fortunate to have him that long. It's kind of a tough thing to talk about for those that aren't dog lovers. How can you explain that special bond if you haven't experienced it yourself? Fred really was a best friend to our entire family. He was our first child and CJ's watcher and big brother for many years.

We wish we could've taken him to Korea with us. Had we known his health would deteriorate like it did this past year, we would've done just that. We were extremely fortunate to have my brother Alan, his wife Danita and their kids, Joel and Jena take such great care of Fred in Virginia during our absence. Little did we know how difficult this undertaking would be.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Fred. We got him from an animal shelter in San Diego shortly after Carol and I were married. I usually favor large dogs but our landlord at the time said he would allow us to get a small or medium dog. So off to the pet shops and animal shelters we went. I would visit the local animal shelters at least twice a week in search for our future pet. On a repeat visit to one of the shelters, I saw that almost all of the cages were empty and had red plastic roses on them. I asked them about all the dogs that were there just a few days ago and about the roses but already knew what the answer was. Because of space, they had to periodically euthanize all of the animals. It was then and there that Carol and I decided that we were not going to buy a dog from a pet store. The right thing to do was to save a dog from a shelter.

So one day at a shelter in Chula Vista, Carol and I see a little white dog with a brown head. Carol thought he was an old dog. I thought, woman, are you crazy? That's obviously a puppy. They told us that this dog was found at a school playing with a bunch of children. We put our names down to adopt this nameless white dog. Unfortunately, two other people had beaten us to the punch. I decided to push the issue. The shelter folks said that the two people who had dibs on this white dog each had a 30 minute block to claim the dog. If they didn't show up during their time blocks, they forfeited their rights to the dog and the next person would have a turn. We got our time slots as the third people in line and hoped for the best.

The day finally came to pick up the little white dog. Or at least try. I went to the shelter bright and early. Well, the first 30 minute block came and went. The first person was a no-show. Oh man, I just might have a shot here. The second person in line actually called the shelter and said they wanted the dog but that they might be late. Long story short, their time block elapsed too. Fred was now ours! So that's how the little guy entered our lives.

Here's Fred with his shelter tag still on. We named him Fred because he looked like a Fred. This kinda complicated things when my Dad would visit because his name is also Fred. We didn't want to insult my Dad with the same name thing so we came up with the bright idea to call Fred "Red" when my Dad was around. The gig was up when Dad started to answer to "Red" too.



Here he is less than a year old in San Diego.  Fred is a Jack Russell Terrier and Corgi mix.  Smart as a whip and full of energy.  Jack Rusells have apple shaped heads and Corgis have barrel chests.  Fred ended up with both.



This is from Fred's first birthday party. Carol and Fred stayed at Martin and Amy's house in Alabama during my first deployment. This is where we discovered that Fred was an escape artist, hence the name, Freddy Dufresne Cruz, after the main character in Shawshank Redemption. There was a fenced area outdoors that Fred would climb over like a monkey. Despite those short appendages, there weren't too many places that he couldn't escape from. Even after escaping, he wouldn't go very far. I guess he just liked his freedom.



Here's his birthday "cake" made of ground beef. Meat cakes are probably one of the reasons why he never went very far after escaping from the pen. Like I said, he was a smart dog.

Okay. So now you're probably thinking we're some of those crazy dog people. You're probably right.

This was our first house in Jacksonville, Florida. Fred loved this place because of the nice walks, a big yard and the enclosed sunroom that he spent most of his time in. If you look real close, you can see Fred's apple head near the bottom of the door.

This is the house where he would terrorize the mailman on a daily basis. As he saw the mailman approaching the house, evil growls would churn in Fred's throat and hairs would stand straight up on his back and neck as he worked himself into a crazy frenzy. Finally, as the mailman would attempt to carefully shove our mail through our slot in the door without getting a finger bitten off, Fred would go totally ballistic - loud, scary barking, eyes black as the inside of a basketball and teeth chomping like the shark from Jaws snacking on Robert Shaw. As soon as the mail would enter the house, Fred would grab it with his teeth, fling it around with his head and on many occasions, totally destroy our mail. Every now and then, he would fling the mail around so bad that it would fall behind the furniture in the room, only to be discovered months later. I once missed a jury summons because of this madness. Fred also bit through multiple credit cards that were sent through the mail to the point where we would have to request more credit cards. Try explaining that to Visa without them thinking you're doing some kind of scam. The mail thing was nuts. He'd also get so worked up because of the mailman that during his frenzies, he'd lose all bodily control and squirt out a little Hershey's kiss. It was terrible. I think he really enjoyed that visceral madness though. It was just Fred exercising his doggie rights. Man, he loved hanging out in that sunroom.

Fred was a great companion and guard dog for Carol when I was out at sea.

Fred hanging out with my nephew Joel in Virginia.

And then CJ came along. Fred was so good with him. When Fred couldn't see CJ, he would wander around the house sniffing and sniffing until he found him. I think he was worried about the baby. Little did Fred know that it wouldn't be too long before he'd be physically tormented by toddler CJ. He was always so patient though. I remember seeing CJ with his finger up Fred's... well, somewhere it didn't belong. Fred remained calm and just gave me that "please remove" look. I was reminded of my annual flight physical.

I think Fred wants his rawhide back.

A very happy homecoming after one of my long deployments.

As Fred got older, he would push the limits.  In this case, he knew he wasn't supposed to be up on the furniture but he loved to look outside the window so much, kinda like in the Florida house.  One day after I left the house, I had to return because I forgot something.  Fred was caught red-handed on the couch.  He knew he had done wrong.  This is his "busted" look.

Being a Navy dog, Fred's lived in many different environments and extremes. Here he is in the snow of Newport, Rhode Island.





Chilling with the boys in Miami.  The swimming pool was like a giant water bowl for Fred.  He loved to chase the ducks back there.

Here he is wearing the cone of shame after having bladder surgery. He's been through a lot over the years. Back surgery, bladder surgery, a torn ACL (I didn't even know dogs had ACLs), a scratched cornea after a cat fight, been pepper sprayed by a mailman, severe heart problems and we think he had an altercation with a burglar(s) that broke into our house. Even after all of that stuff though, he kept on fighting.

He wasn't happy about all the medicine he had to take.

He also loved the deck area of our place on Talbot Avenue in Jacksonville.  He was king of the hill of our backyard.

I think one of Fred's favorite things was heartbeats. He just loved to be around people. That's Jena, CJ and Joel on a tractor ride in Virginia.

Bliss! Fred really enjoyed this bed but liked his "love pillow" even better. Yup, Fred was fixed early on but still had the doggie urges. Every now and then, he would drag his pillow into the living room and start going to town. It was worse than Cinemax after dark. I swear he would do the foreplay thing first, licking the corner of the pillow tenderly before humping it across the room. It was rather impressive I must say. Sometimes he would even get airborne. Even after he was done, his little hips would have remnant humping actions as he would walk away from the pillow. Man, I'd hate to see how things would be if he wasn't fixed.

A short year later, he's basking in the heat of Miami, Florida. Fred has made many cross country road trips. As you know, not all hotels are good with pets staying the night. On one particular cross country move, we were trying to keep Fred as quiet as possible in the hotel room so that we wouldn't get kicked out. He kept us up all night though with his barking. Every little noise that he heard outside, he'd do his guard dog routine. It was a sleepless night. Fortunately, we didn't get kicked out of the hotel room. The next day, Fred can't stay awake in the car because he was up all night barking. To get our revenge, Carol and I would wait for him to doze off then bark as loud as we could in his ear. Yes, juvenile but very pleasurable.

We were reunited with Fred this summer, at least for a little while. Here's Carol and Fred's tearful reunion at my brother's house in Virginia.

This was one of our last experiences with Fred. We took him with us to Leenie's lake house in Alabama. I think he had a really good time.

My niece Jena drew this picture recently. It's Fred dreaming of all the happy things he likes to do. Thank you Jena.

For those that are thinking about getting a dog or cat, here's one very peculiar thing that you need to think about. It's going to end badly. I mean, think about it. That's reality. Unless something tragic happens, we will most likely outlive our pets. We go into the relationship knowing this. There we are at the animal shelter thinking about how cute the little puppy is. We're not at the pet store cause we all know that we should save an animal first, right? But we go into this pet thing knowing we'll have to bury that lovable creature 5, 10, or 15 years down the road. And you know what? It's okay. It's totally okay. I swear Fred taught me how to be a kinder, more loving person. He helped me to relieve all of those work stresses by a simple pat of his head, a lick on my face or a fetching of a ball. He taught my family about unconditional love - the kind of love with no strings, no matter what happens. Where else does that kind of love exist except from God?

Maybe logic says this pet thing might be something to avoid because of the potential heartache at the end. But heck, we could say that about people too right? Friends move on, grandparents pass away and yet we continue to love them. We shouldn't live a life of avoidance. I'm thinking that when we get back to the US, we're visiting the animal shelters again.

I'll end this tribute now by posting this email that I recently sent to my family after Fred's passing. Thanks for taking this journey with me. We miss you Fred. Until next time -- C2


Dear Alan, Danita, Joel and Jena,

This is a difficult email to write. Alan, I'm guessing that you had the same troubles. Carol said that I would know what to write. I think she was wrong. All I know right now is that you all have been a true blessing from God to have taken such great care of Fred. For the heart wrenching day that was today. For the vet visits, the cleanups, the difficult feedings, the pills - everything. We will never be able to repay you for what you've done for us and what you've done for Fred. Thank you Alan for being such a great brother to me. Danita, I know you're not a dog person which made this extreme imposition even more extreme. Joel and Jena - I know you were both a huge part of Fred's happiness in the later stages of his life. I thank all of you for loving him.

As you can imagine, CJ took the news pretty hard when we spoke to him earlier today. I must now do what I told CJ to do - focus on the many great memories of Fred rather than his weakened state of his last couple of months. Memories like the furry guy scarfing an entire loaf of banana bread. Him terrorizing the mailman on a daily basis to the point where he would lose control of some of his bodily functions and squirt out a Hershey's kiss every now and then. Fred up on his tippy toes giving baby CJ soft licks on his newborn face. Fred humping his pillow in the living room like there was no tomorrow. And maybe the most special memory for me was he and I doing sprints when he was a young pup. Even with those teeny tiny legs, he would beat me in a race. Not every time but some of the time. During those races, I'll never forget him flying like the wind - ears pinned back, tongue flapping in the wind and legs like little cyclone blurs. That's the Fred I choose to remember. Kinda like Jena depicted in her recent masterpiece. Thank you Jena for the great picture.

I'll close now by saying that our hearts will be heavy for awhile, but I take comfort in two things. One, the great care and love he received from you guys. And two, the fact that any Heaven that I picture in my mind most definitely has Fred in it. Doing what you might ask? Well, running wild and free in a lush green field, ears pinned back, tongue flapping in the wind and legs like little cyclone blurs of course. It'll be a great day when I can race with my friend again.

Love,

Chris

Fred Dufresne Cruz

Memorial Day 1994 - December 19, 2009