Hattiesburg

This past week has been a little more relaxed than the previous few.  We've been in one place the whole time at least!  We drove down to Hattiesburg to stay with "Monty and Pop" for the week.  Our first item of fun was the Petal School District's Health Fair.  I kinda felt bad going b/c we don't live here, but Monty's office organizes it so we felt like it was ok to rack up on the goodies and fun anyway.  The girls got the eyes, hearing, teeth, and speech checked.  They got their height and weight checked too, but the college kids who were in charge of that station didn't make Celee or Lyla take off their cowboy boots, so they both measured heavier and about an inch and half taller than they really should have.  Then various organizations that provide services in Forrest County were there giving out goodies and running activities.  Celee even got fingerprinted by the fire dept.  The girls also got a sack breakfast because we got their early and a sack lunch because we stayed late.  There was also a bouncy house and an obstacle course and balloons, so basically the girls had a blast and we stayed the whole morning.  (And it was coming a torrential downpour outside so I wasn't in a hurry to leave either.) 

Later that night we got to go out to Brownstone's which is a New Orleans-style restaurant downtown where we had dinner with a friend of mine who helped organize the trip I had taken to Guatemala two summers ago.  The food there is super yummy!  And the girls were excited that even the kids' meals come out looking all fancy with seasonings and garnishes around the plates.  It's pretty cool when a restaurant makes corndog nuggets look fancy. 

Pop also got home from Montana late that night, so the girls made him welcome home signs and waited up for him.  We hadn't seen him since Christmas so we were all glad he was home!!  The rest of the weekend was spent having as much fun with Pop as possible.  We went to the movie theater to see the new Ice Age movie (I was pleasantly surprised that it was quite funny).  We ate out.  We went to the indoor inflatable playplace here.  We played in the yard. I must mention that since Celee became a hoola-hoop star, the other two have been working on it and this weekend Lyla finally got the hang of it!  Now she's trying to perfect some tricks to equal Celee's hoola-hoop feats.  The girls also set up a Montgomery Restaurant complete with a menu for us all on Saturday.  They took our orders and brought us appetizers.  They even fixed our plates and brought our drinks. 

Since Lyla's birthday is pretty soon, we also celebrated her birthday here.  I can't believe she's going to be 5!  What happened to my preschoolers?!  Shouldn't they somehow all still be 3 or 4?!  I guess not, so now I officially have 3 school-aged children.  Well, in two weeks I'll have them.  I can still count Lyla as 4 for two more weeks.  Back on the subject, very appropriately Lyla received a light-up hoola-hoop for her birthday.  She also received a Bitty Baby (American Girl baby doll) which she named Kate and who has gotten doctored, dragged around, fed, and changed continually since Saturday.  I think Lyla likes her.  :)

We all went to church Sunday at Asbury Methodist Church in Petal.  This is the 3rd time we've gotten to go there on this trip.  I am so thankful for those 3 times!  I've felt so refreshed and challenged by the sermons and by what God is doing in that congregation!  The sermon this past week was centered around a passage in Zephaniah in which Israel is warned against growing complacent.  What a great reminder for me!  When things get too comfortable, too blessed, it is way too easy for me to just appreciate the blessings rather than to seek out what God had blessed me to do.  I forget to be a steward instead of a consumer.  And I'm pretty sure that God is trying to tell me something because I ran into the other verses read by the preacher everywhere for the next 2 days, from the walls of a restaurant to the passage in my devotional, to things quoted on the radio.  I'm excited to see where God is going with this!

We were all sad to see Pop go, but he had to fly out again Monday morning to another job.  So with just us girls left in the house, we decided to go to the beauty shop!  Gwyn and Celee had decided a while ago that they wanted "swoop bangs" so we headed off to get that professionally done.  (I usually trim the girls hair myself although I have no skill in this area.  I think they are getting to an age where it's best left to professionals though.)  After they got there, Lyla decided she wanted hers' cut too so they all three got new haircuts!  This was Lyla's first time getting her hair cut by someone other than me and she did really well sitting still and being patient.  And thank heavens! they all liked the cuts they got.  It's always my fear they they won't like it when it's done and get upset (that happened to me once when I was little) but they were happy with it.

On Tuesday we got to go to my friend Emily's house to visit with my girl friends from school and to see her new baby Alex!   He's so adoreable!  I got a little of my baby fix by holding him for a while.  The girls got to play with their Mississippi friends.  I've know these ladies since we were 11 and 12 years old and it's so awesome to me to see our kids playing together.  It's always nice to be around people that you share that "sod" intimacy with - the being known kind of friendship.  Nobody knows you like people who stuck with you during the crazy teen-aged years and are still sticking. 

Emily's dad also introduced us to geocaching!  Celee, Lyla and I went with him and Emily and found 4 that were all pretty near to Emily's house.  We even found one whose hint was "a squirrel colonoscopy."  The girls thought it was especially funny to pull the paper log out of the squirrel's hiney to write their names that they found it.  Celee really enjoyed geocaching!  She and I did two more today on our own.  We found one at the USM tennis courts and one at the Hattiesburg Zoo.  The zoo, by the way, has really been made nice.  There is an awesome water play area and they are building new exhibits and activity rooms.  We had a great time there today even though it was really hot and humid.  Thank heavens for misting fans and squirting water!

Now we're off to Decatur for the last leg of our Southern adventure.  And it's t-minus 42 hours until we pick Jason us at the train station!  What can we get into in Newton County over the next 3 days......