Atticus and Fallujah

About a month ago, Jon and I went to a friend's house for a brown-bag wine tasting event. Earlier that day, our friend had rescued two tiny kittens from his backyard in the middle of a thunderstorm. There are a lot of strays around his house and he says he all-too-often sees some of the kittens dead. So he had plans to take these two ratty little creatures to the SPCA. But, after holding them and petting them all night, Jon announced we would take them home. GULP. But it has been awesome. Both of us are NOT cat people. In fact, I used to say "I hate cats" all the time. If I walked into someone's house and saw a cat or evidence thereof, I shuddered. And I am still not a cat lover. Don't get me wrong - I don't love any of YOUR cats. But I love my Atticus and Fallujah. Yup, those are their names. I named the boy and Jon named the girl (who names a female kitten after a city in Iraq?). Fallujah was really skiddish for about the first three weeks and is finally starting to warm up to us. Atticus has been friendly since about after the first week. We think they were only about 4 weeks old when we took them home. Just tiny. And now they have already grown so much. We've had to kitten-proof the house, but they still find a way to knock things over and get to things we have put away. They are serious acrobats. I'm thinking of training them for the circus. Well, enough of me blabbing about these little guys, here are some pictures. You can see how much they've grown even in the pictures.


Fallujah after a bath.

Jon and his girl!

They play with EVERYTHING!

Or just hang out

A new favorite nap spot.

Well, I guess that's enough photos for now. I know that some of you are not Atticus and Fallujah fans. But slowly they might win you over. Come visit and give them a chance.

Everything else is fine out here in Florida. The weather is getting hot - it was 93 the other day. But we have friends with pools. We have a couple trips coming up this month (me to Phoenix, both of us to Michigan/Chicago) which we are really looking forward to. Good thing we got those rebate checks from the good ol' government!

Hope everyone is well!

Do you see why I loved Savannah?

Yes, I pretended I was riding in a horse-drawn carriage as we travelled down this road to a plantation ruin.

This is it: my dream house. Red door and everything.


All that's needed is a wooden bench and a box of chocolates. Look familiar? Yup, it's the exact spot where Forrest Gump sat and told his story. The bench is in the museum.

Lady & Sons restaurant - the famous Paula Dean started this restaurant which serves down home country cooking. We opted not to eat here, but instead....

We waited in line outside of Mrs. Wilkes. This place also offers southern cooking, but it's on the bottom floor of Mrs. Wilkes' home (she died a couple years ago, but the restaurant is still going). At 11:00, they take the first 75 people lined up, sit you down at one of four big dining room tables, say grace, and then everyone helps themselves, family style. It was awesome. There were 21 dishes on the table - everything from fried chicken to sweet potatoes to okra to ruddabega (I have no idea how to spell that - can't say I really liked it, either). It was an awesome experience. Apparently, its in the 1000 Places to Visit book, so there ya go - we crossed one off the list!

Beautiful Historic Savannah

Camping and the Blustery Beach

We had one of the worst camping sites ever. It was basically an RV park that had a few "tent spots". You can't tell from this picture, but we were right beside the huge dumpster, and people could see us out of their house windows. Strange. That first night, it got very blustery and chilly. We walked to the beach and I took pictures of the greyness. It was actually quite nice and refreshing. The lighthouse pictured here is historic. Don't know anything about it though.

Fort Pulaski - Savannah

We took a nice little vacation to Savannah this past week. I was on Sprink Break, so Jon took a few days off work. It's about a 5 hour drive -- we played the license plate game and found 43 states! Woo hoo! It's actually quite remarkable, given we were in a corner of the U.S and only drove in 2 states. No Alaska or Hawaii (the obvious) but we did see Nova Scotia (thats Canada, for those of you who don't know -- and no, the provinces are not part of the 43).

Anyhow, we camped the first night just outside of Savannah. These pictures are of Fort Pulaski. It took 18 years to build this fort and it was destroyed by Union forces in 30 hours. Yowsers. It was then used to hold confederate prisoners. Anyhow, it was Jon's idea to visit this fort but I loved it too. It was really interesting. We watched the cannon demonstration and learned about the history of the fort. In one of these pictures, you can see the outer wall that has holes and damage from Union cannons. Cool stuff. And, to top it off, there were alligators swimming in that moat! Awesome.

Thanksgiving

No trespassing? What? The park is CLOSED? We just drove 30 minutes to get here to see the alligators. Well...lets go for it anyways.Mom (Linda) had to use the port-a-potty....and dad thought trapping her in would be funny. It was funny....for those of us on the outside. What a good sport! Canoeing at Wekiva.





Ballet?

I don't have any other pictures of the long weekend -- I always forget to take my camera out. We made a nice Thanksgiving meal, played games, went go-carting, and watched Allison's soccer team win the National Championship. Lots of laughs and lots of fun.

The Big Game

We went to D.C. to visit Peter and Joe. Jon and Peter had bet on the last Ohio State-Michigan football game -- the guy whose team lost had to visit the other one for the next game. So of course Jon lost and was obligated to go up to D.C. for the game (not that we minded -- we had been eagerly anticipating this trip for months!)
Even the dog was decked out.
Jon, are you even watching?
The game wasn't the most exciting football game ever. Ohio won. Good thing Jon didn't bet again this year.

Trip to DC