Rocktober

October has been a good month for us. I always mean to keep up better, but sometimes I get tired of just posting what we do. I like more variety, but then sometimes my creativity is staunched by, say, exhaustion, excessive vomiting, or laziness. I do want to mention some of the exciting things that have happened this month.

1. My niece Alli was born on October 12. She is a precious thing, and I am so glad to welcome her to our world. She weighed 6 lbs. 7 oz. and was 19 inches long. Alli has lots of dark hair, and I can't wait to hold her again. (We've been fighting colds and didn't want to get her sick.) Congrats to Greg, Kelli, and Jackson!

2. Our cat, Wally reappeared after a month and a half of being dead. Really, I thought he was a goner. I was away the night he came back and when Jay told me I was completely astounded. I just kept saying, "no way." Well, it was a miracle in my book. Ruthie was so excited.

3. That same night we had two weed-eaters, a blower, and a circular saw stolen from our garage. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. So much for lawn maintenance. We have learned to keep our garage door shut. We had several things stolen at our old house, so this is not new, but we were sort of naive in thinking we were in a "safer" neighborhood. (Not that that was an issue in our decision to move at all.)

4. The day at the beach. It was wonderful. It brought back all those lazy carefree days of my youth that I spent on Navarre Beach. It brought back the day Jay proposed on the beach, and the times my brother and I drove down to the beach when a hurricane was coming to see what it was like. I have grown up on some beach or other, so I feel the pull, and I love " going down to the sea again." This day the butterflies were flying all about, stopping by on their way down to South America. They were delightful, especially for Ruthie and my niece Annabelle, who loves butterflies.

5. The trip to Meridian, MS. My aunt, uncle, and two cousins live in Meridian, and it is one of the dearest places to my heart because I spent time there every summer with Nanny, who passed away several years ago. I wrote about it the last time we went which was March of 2006 (I think). It was a fun, nostalgic trip including a fall festival (where I won brownies in the cake walk), a ride on the famous 1890s carousel, a visit to the train station (where my grandfather has a brick to commemorate his time working for the railroad), my cousin's daughter's soccer game, eating out at the Fish Camp on the Chunky River, and much good conversation and laughter with my family. My brother and I also found the "Monkey Tree" where we used to climb with my cousin Lang. It is a huge wisteria, the biggest one I have ever seen, growing up and around two large magnolias. We would ride our bikes there, after stopping by the corner gas station to drink an IBC root beer on the curb, and climb all around in the twisty vine.