October

We began October with a trip to the South. Dave had a good friend from Westmont that was marrying a girl from Mississippi so we headed down there for that. We flew into New Orleans and stayed there for a couple of days before we drove up to Mississippi for the wedding. As a lot of you know Dave & I had been to New Orleans a couple of years ago with our church to help with some rebuilding efforts. It was interesting to see how far the city had come since we were there. It definitely looked much better, but there is still work to be done. We still saw a lot of abandoned places with the "X"s on the front that rescuers had used after Katrina to mark what/who they had found in the house. And then there is a lot of improvement too, as the picture below shows. It is a part of the Lower Ninth where Habitat for Humanity is building places for musicians in the area.

(Dave is going to write about the rest of the trip - here he goes):

The wedding was a lot of fun and it was good to see a lot of good friends we hadn't seen in a couple years. Emma enjoyed playing outside at the mansion the wedding was at until we were advised not to let her play in the grass because of the chiggers. Just ask Jenn how fun getting bitten all over by those guys was! While in Mississippi we went to Vicksburg National Military Park and drove through the park. We also went to the Coca Cola Museum where the first bottle of Coke was bottled (A lot less interesting than we thought).

Pictures of the mansion where the wedding was (the cannon ball was shot into the house during a battle many years ago and there it remains):

Emma dancing with Daddy at the wedding:

Emma shooting the canon that was on a recovered sunken ship in the military museum:

Then we drove back to New Orleans in time for me to miss going to the Saints game and just hung out in the city. The flight back was pretty miserable since we didn't get back to Ontario until after midnight New Orleans time and Emma decided not to sleep at all on the flights. All in all though, it was a wonderful trip and Emma had a lot of fun too!

All of us at Cafe Du Monde for beignets & iced coffee:

And then we ended October with Halloween. Emma got to be Tigger this year ('cause she loves him so much)!! The day before Halloween she got dressed up and went trick-or-treating at Dave's office. She had so much fun and was sooooo cute. She walked around to all the offices with her bucket and collected all the candy she could get.

Our new house up in Idyllwild was ready for us a few days before Halloween, so we headed up there to participate in some festivities and spend our first night in our new house. The whole town shuts down and all the kids parade down the street and collect candy. Emma has fun, but it was a bit overwhelming with all the people. She was still really cute though. :)

It was a fun month and now we're onto November - yeah I'm almost caught up!! :)