Catch-up Time

I talked Felicity into scratching my back the other night and her little sharp fingernails felt so good. After a minute or so she said in her sweet, squeaky voice, "Mamma, I like scratching your back." I was thrilled to hear that. As I started daydreaming of many more back-scratches, at the hands of my daughter she continued, "It's like scratching in mud, your skin is so squishy."
Oh.

Micah was getting ready for church the other day and I had picked out his new navy blue suit coat for him to wear.  He loves this "manly" coat (just like Daddy's) but he didn't like the khaki pants I'd paired with them, being in a phase where things must be the same color to be an outfit. He kept insisting he wanted to wear his dark blue pants, and I kept telling him he didn't have any as I was rushing to help him get shirt buttoned, etc. It turned out he meant his navy blue sweat pants in his drawer. I tried to explain why you don't wear dressy clothes with play clothes. He got serious and asked, "That's called breaking the rules?" Ha ha! The rules of fashion remind me of the spelling rules of the English language: not always sensible and full of exceptions.

We had two wonderful weeks of visitors at the beginning of August. My friend-should-be-a-sister Becky and her family were here first and her three kids and our four had a blast. She and I loved spending time just being together after not having seen each other in 7 years. The only real outing we made as a group besides visiting some good friends was going to the creek for an afternoon. But that was fine with all of us. Just being here at home, shopping at the salvage store in town, hanging out at my mom's and sister's was plenty of entertainment for us.

Two brave girls in the homeschool group agreed to watch all 7 kids one afternoon for about 8 hours Becky and her husband Dave, and Matt and I could go on a double date. We bowled at a quiet little bowling alley and only paid $8 and some change per couple for two games. We'll have to remember Dollar Days there and do that again sometime. From there we took our starving selves south to Gulfport MS and tried out a restaurant called the Half-Shell Oyster House. Man, oh, man that was some delicious food. The restaurant was in an old building, (maybe formerly a bank?) with the brick interior walls and huge window overlooking the street. We sat in the upstairs "balcony" area.  It felt so good to just relax and laugh till we hurt. I provided plenty of entertainment with my bad bowling earlier, and Dave kept us laughing with his stories.
We drove along Hwy. 90, right along the water and looked at beautiful homes and pieces of homes, the remnants of Hurricane Katrina damage five years ago. As we were gawking at those huge homes I remembered having seen a bed and breakfast online that was somewhere near there. Matt got out his smartphone and found it for us. We went in and found someone to give us a tour. We finished the evening up by further stuffing ourselves with icecream at a little icecream parlor on the way home. Matt read jokes to us from his phone until the battery died while we Dave drove home. The babysitters said the kids did great, and they had them all in bed by 9 pm. We finished the night off by watching Hoodwinked at home. Dates are great. :)

Matt's sister Melissa and her family came two days after Becky's left. They have four girls, ages 5 and under. To help Micah make it through we invited some friends over one night for supper. They have a boy about Micah's age, and those two had a great time.  One afternoon Melissa's crew and ours packed up and went to Dauphin Island. We toured Ft. Gaines (Micah is still talking about and drawing forts), ate a picnic lunch at a park with huge, climb-able oaktrees (and most of us climbed them) then spent several hours at the beach. The sun was near setting so we didn't even need sunscreen. This was by far the best beach trip we've taken with that many little ones. The water was warm and shallow. Matt took his kite that he's had since before we were married and flew it. All of us adults gave it a try, but none of us were as good as Matt. He's not been able to fly it for about 9 years because his dear wife accidentally shut part of it in the car door on our first anniversary trip and broke a tip on it. Oops. But he repaired it and finally got a chance to try it out again.

Again, besides shopping, cooking, eating, napping and hanging out we didn't do a whole lot, but had a great time.

Now school has started back and we're trying to get in a routine.

I had some more typed here, but blogger didn't bother to save it, and there were other computer problems when I tried to post, so I lost part of it. Argggg.

Rose