Sunday, September 28, 2008

Weekend Update

The weather has been so spectacular the last week or so. We have been trying to enjoy it as much as possible, and Luke certainly enjoys any opportunity to be outside. Friday night we had a family walk planned in Gma Jackie's neighborhood. As we pulled the stroller out, Gma said 'oh you are taking Luke?' so we left him to play with her and Gpa while Steve and I enjoyed a 2.5 mile walk around town with the dogs...it was really fun even though Steve likes me pushing a stroller or carrying a frontpack more since it slows me down :) You can feel fall in the evenings and you an see the trees starting to change but the days have been just stunning and warm.

On Thursday last week, Luke and I had a wonderful visit with Claudia. She is one of those amazing people that you get lucky to meet and even luckier to be friends with in a lifetime. She was a counselor with me my first year at the high school. Now that she is retired (and busier than ever) we enjoy getting together every couple of months. Claudia has three grandchildren, 3-2-and 1 so Luke was a real highlight of her week. Two of her grandkids live in Japan right now on a naval base so she is really happy to get some baby time in and share stories of their life with me. We had a great time. Not only did Luke get to watch lots of birds at their feeders, we took her lab, Ruby, out to chase tennis balls and he 'walked' through some dewy grass which was of interest to him. The thing that Luke liked best was finding a leather strap with bells attached to it...I am not doing a very good job of explaining this thing but picture a holiday decoration that one might put on a horse carriage. His eyes were as big as ever when he made the bells ring and when he realized that he could CHEW on the leather and ring the bells, I think his love of life jumped up a notch.

I am explaining this because yesterday I went to Mt. Vernon for a tennis tournament with the girls and about an hour into the play I got a picture message from Steve with Luke holding his own "bell-belt" Steve is the best dad - he took Luke to Hobby Lobby and bought him his own bells b/c he heard me talking about how much he loved them...I really didn't even know Steve knew there was a Hobby Lobby in Carbondale. I would have LOVED to see him shopping with Luke among the racks of fabric and other zillions of craft items. Too cute. In order to completely go overboard with this story, my mom was worried about Luke chewing on his new favorite toy b/c it was made in China and everything from China seems to be sending babies to the hospital these days so she found some heavy duty made in the USA fabric and sewed some holiday bells onto it...I hope he plays with her creation until he is at least 1 :)

Other fun over the weekend included seeing Gma Susan and her co-worker Penny on Friday at the Gift Garden. It was fun to surprise her, Luke is always happy to see her and he certainly enjoyed his tour of the Garden - lots of colorful things that sing and make fun noises! We got up early today after a pretty good night's sleep and took the dogs to Kinkaid for a hike. They were on fire, Luke loved watching them from the frontpack, and I loved having Steve with us. He is a great sport about doing spur of the moment things when lots of times he would be happiest just chilling on the couch on Sunday.

Enough from me...what happened to you today that made you smile?

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