The Who, What, Where and Why of Spike

We miss getting to be a part of your kids' lives. Often years go by without seeing them and we hate the sense that we're forgotten from one visit to another. Annette and I want your children to know us as more than just their parents' friends or that aunt and uncle who live...um..."where do they live, Mommy?"

So, we decided to remedy this by nudging our way into their lives through stories, stories written about our dog that we found in the street a couple of years ago. The tag on his collar had the number of a veterinarian in Laredo, Texas! We called the vet's office and told her that we'd found this Golden Retriever smack-dab in the middle of Mexico...14 hours by car from the Texas border. She asked if there was a number on the tag. There was. She looked up the number in her files and told us that his name was Spike…a name that didn't really fit the cute, gentle and playful 2-year-old pup romping around our yard. Like us, the vet was curious as to how gotten here, and she promised to call the owners and put them in touch with us.

That was three years ago. We never heard back from anyone, so we began making up stories about how Spike found his way to our home in Metepec, Mexico. These stories were never written down, we just told them to each other. But then our friends started getting all Genesis on us - being fruitful and multiplying - and our sister's and brother's-in-law started providing us with nieces and nephews. Living outside the U.S. makes it hard to be involved in their lives. So we decided to try and create a connection that spanned the gap between our every-couple-of-years visits by writing down our "Spike: the accidental adventurer" stories.

Besides hoping that this serialized children's book would communicate a bit of our life with your kids, we also want it to be fun and to give them a glimpse of other countries and cultures. And whether you choose to listen to us read the stories in MP3 format or read them out loud yourself, our desire is that they will provide an enjoyable time for you and your kids.