By The Way...

If you have tried and failed to access my Cracker Rose Cottage link, (brother Andrew and fiancee Ally's blog), you might give it a try now. I reckon I just might have the proper link on there now. You're welcome.

Also, we celebrated my birthday on October 25. The big 35. On the downhill slide to 40. Lawdy, lawdy. We wanted to take the kids somewhere fun, but cheap. What did we do? We went fishing, of course. Caught 5 too-small redfish, 8 zillion catfish, 6 decent whiting, 2 silver trout, and a beer, in a tree. (Just kidding about the beer part, of course. You'd have to be a Gill (or have a brother named Andrew who makes you listen to weird songs, thanks bro) to get the "beer, in a tree" part. Sorry, not everyone can be a Gill. The next day, guess who got to clean those fish? Oh, don't worry, my birthday was OVER I was informed. Yup, cleaned those puppies right on my granite countertops, fried them in vegetable oil, made homemade tartar sauce, and we ate every last piece. In fact, we were crying for more. Alas, there was none. We kept the occasion small, but De Grande (aka Laura) made a chocolate cake with two-inch thick icing, ok, at least one inch thick, I mean, it made my children (and myself) weep for joy. My present, and I use the singular form intentionally, was a king-size mattress that I picked out myself. And it is grand, and worth every bit of present-taking-up-ability for all of my 35 years. Love gettin' old, eh?

Our next venture will be, gasp, CHILD-FREE! Shawn and I are taking a well-deserved 10-year anniversary trip to some place. That's how it is with kids. We're just going SOME place. We don't even know yet. We've tossed around a lot of ideas but nothing has screamed GO THERE! Our official anniversary is Nov 14th, but Izzy's birthday is Nov 15th so we will have to come home on the actual anniversary. (Can you believe she will be FIVE!?) Anyway, if you have any suggestions, in Florida or within decent driving time, please let me know! We don't know if we can leave Willie for three or four days, (I dissolve into nothing without him you know) but we will try. Laura gets the grand and most entertaining job of 24-hour childcare while we're gone. Get em to school, dance, homework, reading night, etc etc. She's going to have a lovely time. And I'll be sure to bring her the shampoos from our place of stay as a nice "thank you" gift. I haven't been on a vacation without kids since our honeymoon to London and Paris. And we managed to come back with a Sarah Downing Stephenson. Hmmm, Shawn may not want to go when I remind him of that! Let's keep it to ourselves, shall we?