Hattiesburg Weekend

This weekend we visited Hattiesburg on one of my work-related trips, and we saw a great deal of the South Mississippi region. We burned up the roads in a minibus with a group of two dozen others. Bill and Hermine, who are from Hattiesburg, were our hosts and engineered the whole thing. The first two photos are of the exterior of Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel, where we toured Saturday. The second two photos are of the exterior and interior of Bill's mother's home in Laurel, where we had lunch Saturday. The second two photos are of the Richton Club House in Richton, where we all ate dinner Friday night. The last photo is everyone loaded up on the bus. I should note that we had to stop to fill the minibus up with gas once, and it took $250 to fill it up - gas is now $3.43/gallon.

So...who does she look like?

So here are photos of the three of us at approximately the same age. The larger photo is Courtney of course, taken this past weekend. The 2nd photo is Todd (who apparently had so much hair at age 5 months that he had to have his bangs cut!), and the 3rd photo is me at 5 months (Baldy). Please weigh in on the comments section re who she looks like. One notable thing is Todd had brown eyes already at age 5 months......C and I both have blue eyes at the same age. So maybe C's eyes will stay blue.

Who Does She Look Like Part 2

Here's part 2 of the face game - photos of the three of us smiling at 5 months old ........... I think she and Todd look a lot alike. She may have a lot of Todd's facial structure but my mouth. Feel free to weigh in. Photo 1 is Courtney, photo 2 is Todd and photo 3 is me.

Baby Photos of Todd

I'm so excited that I found the photo album with Todd's baby pictures in it! (I had lost it for a couple of years and had really been searching for it since the baby was born.) Since he's adopted, the first photos we have of him, he is 5 months old, which is Courtney's current age. So now we can compare how she looks........ The photos below are of Todd in his crib at 5 months, and Todd with his mother Barbara at 5 months.

Courtney Sat Up Today!

Yes, she sat up unassisted today. She did it briefly on Sunday, but fell over after just a few seconds each time. Yet today, she got the hang of it and was happily sitting up when I went to pick her up after work. Here's a video.

Building a Deck (Before)

Todd decided this weekend to build a deck (after years and years of speculative planning). Here are two shots of the back of our house (which is U-shaped). The first photo is Sunday and the second photo is Tuesday (today). The photos are taken from the top of our rotten treehouse platform, which is the next thing to go :-) I'll post another when it's done.

Catching Up - Part 4 (April 16-17, 2008)

We had a very nice work-related event at Jackson's Old Capitol Inn this week. The bed and breakfast in downtown Jackson has a wonderful rooftop garden (pictured) where we had an evening reception with entertainment by vocalist Meredith Virden. The sleeping rooms are terrific there - each has an individual theme and decor unlike any other room. Each room is pictured on their web site. On Thursday the 17th, several of us with the event visited to the Mississippi Capitol to see the legislature in the final days of its 2008 session. We watched action (such as it was) from the galleries, plus we went to sign the book in the Governors office and we caught Gov. Barbour exiting his office. The 2nd picture is of the guv with the people I was with - I'm not in it because I was the one snapping the photo. But it was exciting to meet Gov. Barbour - we just lucked up on being there at the right time. Also my co-worker who is a lobbyist gave us a mini tour of some of the inside stuff at the Capitol, so it was great for many of those people who, unlike me, had never been there before.

Catching Up - Part 3 (April 9-10, 2008)

My brother Breck visited from St. Louis on April 9 and 10 - here's a photo of him feeding her a bottle.

Catching Up - Part 2 (April 10, 2008)

We went to the Fondren neighborhood's Arts Eats & Beats, and took the baby. We walked around during the street fair, watched performance artists, and ate at Sal & Mookie's. Here's a photo of us, Tony/Sheila, Carl, Paco, and Scott at the restaurant. Carl posed with Courtney for another photo, and Todd with his ever present cell phone on State Street in Fondren. The last photo is of the new commercial building being constructed at State and Duling.

Catching Up - Part 1 (April 4-8, 2008)

As I write this, it's late April, but I'm going to go week-by-week and catch you up on happenings at the household. First of all, tornadoes hit our area of Jackson on Friday, April 4, and we were lucky enough to be spared damage to our house. However, we were out of power from Friday until Tuesday night. Luckily after Katrina we got a generator and we were able to use that to keep the refrigerator running while we were without electricity. We did sleep at our house each night, although we had generous offers from several folks to stay with them locally. These photos are of the tree that fell from the neighbor's yard, across the street and up our driveway.........sparing our house. Todd immediately worked all afternoon in the pouring rain with his chain saw to get the tree out of the street, and Paco helped him. Paco posed in front of the tree beforehand as you can see..... Also I included a photo of the generator, which saved the day as far as I'm concerned. At one point Stacey came over and we watched Oprah using the generator to watch TV.