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Thursday, June 23, 2011

Roadtrip to Florida and more Stuff!

 Well we are finally here in Pedasi, Panama in our little piece of Paradise.
Let me start from the beginning.
Firstly I need to share with you the picture we took on our day of moving to show you what we ended up bringing with us after 33 years of being together. This is it folks....Three suitcases two carry on's and three boxes. Yup you are dealing with 'crazy people' :)

Of course Sadie had to be there to make sure we didn't leave her!
Well our drive from Hamilton to Florida went very well. Very uneventful but filled with laughter and chatter with my wonderful brother and sister in law who so kindly drove us there.
We spent two nights and one day getting there, the first night in Virginia, the second in St. Agustine Florida and then off to Lauderdale by the Sea on the third day.
We were met by our Aunt Ruth and Uncle Jim who have this beautiful condo on the beach that they so graciously let us stay in.
We could not have been treated better.
The first night Aunt Ruth had organized a cook-out on the beach with the most huge steaks you could ever find, corn on the cob, salads, and of course lots of drinks. ( you do need to drink a lot when the weather is very warm). Well that is my story and I am sticking to it!
Let me get back to Sadie.
If you follow my blogs you will remember that Sadie is a very nervous dog and she did not like her cage with the door closed and that is what she had to be in to go into the 'belly' of the plane, so the vet had prescribed some pills for her to help with some of her anxiety.
He gave us two different strenghts and told us to experiment with them on her so we would know if we needed to give her just the one or perhaps one and half of another one.
Before we left on the road trip we gave her one and she was fine. A little 'dopy', like Don, lol, but otherwise just fine.
The first night of the cookout we gave Sadie a whole pill as she needed to stay in the condo by herself and she had been under a lot of stress and was just a very nervous dog.
We went down to the beach and after a couple of hours Don had to come up to the condo to get something and when he took Sadie out for a pee she ran up to the top of the hill which was the underground parking garage and went through some bushes and perhaps because it was dark and also because she was very drugged she jumped over the wall which was 12 feet tall.
All Don heard was a 'yelp' and thought that something had bitten her, but when he looked over he saw Sadie on the ground not moving.
When I ran down and around the hill she was up on her feet, but not very steady. I then took her back up to the condo and Sadie was breathing deeply two or three times and then not breathing at all.
Uncle Jim was also there at that time and Don told him to please come down to the beach to get me as he thought Sadie was dying in his arms.
I came up and was so sick I thought that I was going to die. I was so scared thinking that we had killed our beautiful dog by giving her too much of the drug.
Anyway we went to bed and of course neither Don nor I slept the whole night and in the morning I really thought we had lost Sadie. I picked her up and she was still limp and her eyes rolling back in her head.
I went into hysterics!
Don had tried to calm me down and then took Sadie out for a walk to see how she would react.
She was very slow at walking in the beginning, but on her way back she picked up a bit of speed but she seemed a bit better.
She slept all of that day and then the third day the life began to creep back into her.
OMG, I was so relieved. We had our baby back!
She was still sore, but who wouldn't be after falling 12 feet onto a cement driveway?
But, all is well now, and she is here with us safe and sound, but she hates the sound of pill bottles being opened, lol.
The next day we met with Don's Mom and Grandma who we don't see often either as they live so far away. 
We had a great visit and shared many laughs and caught up on a couple of years of things that we had missed.
That night we met up with more of Don's relatives and went to a restaurant in town and filled up on 'happy hour' stuff and of course more drinks.
Our last day there our beautiful Aunt Ruth had another cook-out on the beach. The weather had been beautiful the whole trip. No rain, just sun and fun!
That night was sad for us as it was going to be our last night in North America and we were embarking on the next phase of our life.
It was sad also as we were leaving all of our family there including the best brother and sister in law in the world who did so much for us and helped us tremendously along the way in more ways then they will ever know.
We love them all so much!
We were also very sad to leave our daughter Bobbi and her boyfriend, but also kept in mind that they will ALL visit us here and will probably see more of them now then we did then.
So Wednesday morning my brother picked us up at 5 am to take us to the Miami airport to take our flight to Panama City.
There were a few accidents on the way and a couple of times we thought we may be late as our flight left at 8:25 am and we had 'all of that luggage' to check:) and had Sadie too.
We made it in good time and got there at about 6 am.
Don scared the life out of me there again as he said we had forgotten our passports at Uncle Jim's and Aunt Ruth's. Geez..Men!
I should have known they were under his seat. I think he is testing me somehow to see how much I can take, lol.
We got all of our stuff on two luggage racks and after a very emotional 'goodbye' to my bro and his wife we meandered into the airport to head over to the check-in counter which had a very surprising short line-up, unlike Toronto.
For the past 4 months Don has been calling and calling every airline possible to see if we could buy a seat for Sadie as we did NOT want to put her in the belly, not only because of her anxiety, but also because it was so hot on the tarmack it may be very hard on her.
He tried relentlessly but got nowhere as they all said 'no' that they either had to go under the seat (which she was just a tad to big for) or go in the cargo.
Ok, we had accepted that!
It took forever to check our baggage as we had the three boxes too and they had to be weighed and tagged etc, so we just waited and waited and we had Sadie on the leash the whole time.
The girl knew how anxious was too about putting Sadie in the belly and at one point I had tears in my eyes as I was so afraid for her, and Then at that point the supervisor had come over and said "Why don't you buy a seat for your dog?"
What the?????????????????????????
We could buy a seat? They had told us over and over and over again we could not do that.
I was ecstatic!
It cost us $125 to put her in cargo and the seat only cost $300, so for $175 more we had Sadie with us on the plane.....Glory Be!!!!
Well this was great so we walked Sadie on a leash right to the plane which was just about to board.
(by the way we walked Sadie the whole time through the airport on her leash and NOONE said anything)
It turns out her cage was to big to put on the seat and I had a duffle bag for a carry on with my clothes etc, so the flight attendant said why don't you take your things out of your bag, put them in Sadie's cage and put Sadie in the bag, so Sadie's cage now became a suitcase (which they checked for us), with all of my bra's underwear, hair dryer, etc, and the duffle bag was Sadie's cage...
This was too funny for us.
We had to zip it up so her head was just sticking out and Sadie being the dog she is, she just sat there and didn't care.
We took her to her seat which was in between the two of us and she was quite content. She slept the whole way and never moved.


Sadie on the plane with us
 What a wonderful thing this was for Don and I....and of course Sadie.
Then the breakfast came and Don being the one who doesn't like to eat very much:) made sure that the flight attendent knew that he had bought the seat for our doggie and he wanted her breakfast.
So Sadie had some toast, ham and eggs on her flight. This was fun for Don and I .....We couldn't stop smiling the whole flight, and poor Sadie just slept and of course never will know what we saved her from.
We carried her off of the plane and then walked her on her leash through the rest of the airport which I had never seen before. We then had to take her to the vet at the airport and got through customs without a hitch which I was surprised at as I thought they may question our boxes etc.
Oh, by the way all of the flight attendents that we spoke to said they had never seen a dog in a seat before. Maybe we have started something:)
All is good!
Our friend Kevin picked us up and drove us to Pedasi, our new home.
We got here yesterday after all of this and I must say that we are more in love with this place than we ever were before.
We love our rental place and today the three of us went for an hour walk on the most beautiful beach in the world, stopped at a local beach restaurant and had red snapper and beer.
Ok, now this is the most important part of this. The snapper was $5 and the beer was SIXTY CENTS!!  Heck we even bought Jose and George (two workers) a beer....I mean for $1.20 why not? :)
Life is good my friends, and I hope that those of you who have read this enjoy it as much as I did writing it.
Tomorrow I am sure will bring something more and I will be sure to share.

A special thanks to my brother Gary and his wife Irene for everything they have done for us and Aunt Ruth and Uncle Jim, you know:)
We love you all.

Stay in the Light!