We are back in Merida after a lovely 10-day trip north to Illinois, where my brother David and his wife Tricia had a baby boy, their third child, and named him Ford. He weighed in at 9 pounds and was 21 inches long and seemed as sweet as he could be (pun intended). He joins his big Sister Hannah and big brother David.
This would have been excitement enough, but we also saw lots of Marilla and my folks and many wonderful friends up north whom we don't get to see often enough. Saw fireworks twice, got to Ravinia one night for a wonderful concert, saw several movies (Evening not all we expected despite a fabulous cast of wonderful actresses), and ate all those things that Merida does not have yet (like Korean food!!), so we thouroughly enjoyed ourselves. My other brother, Kirk, had a BBQ for us one night, too (this means that his wife Carol cooked and organized and Kirk welcomed us to his home graciously). Stayed at the Home one week and are glad they have nice guest rooms, but are not yet ready to move in there!!!!
We also had a very sad thing happen while in the Chicago area -- our dear friend John Ziebell died suddenly. He was healthy, hearty, and only 62, so we were all shocked and remain disbelieving, as does his wife Patti. We keep hoping it was a bad dream instead of reality. And surely, we think he'll have found his way home by the time we go to Cancun for his beloved Veal Chef Amilcar at La Dolce Vida.
We LOVED the Sopranos finale -- after getting over the fact that the TV reception was not just bad at a bad moment.
Our bowling "team" has decided not to play on a regular weekly basis, and we agree, but probably will try to keep playing fairly often or will completely lose our skills. It is a much faster game with 2 or 4 instead of 6, or 10 as we had last night.
When we got home, we noted that our garden had sprouted yet again. The citrus trees grew about 2 feet taller, more pitaya flowers adorned the vines, our stalk of a tree outside now had giant leaves and sprouts (psuedo bombar or ), and our wonderful Jose had done the moving of plants that we'd asked. Now the flamboyanes bush is away from the terrace so we and he are not constantly cleaning up small flowers and leaves from our outdoor bench sofa.
