It's so quiet around here, makes it hard to know if I'm sad or relieved; a little of both, really. Ricky & family left for Tampa around 10:30. We had a lot of fun with them, especially yesterday. Mary Ann and I drove out to Vance's new house, which is so far out in the country it's on a graveled road. Their new home is gorgeous with a lot of features I would want to use if I built a new one. Vance did most of the contracting himself and is enjoying the building business in addition to doing his sales job with Zep.

The vacant lot next door to his is for sale and Mary Ann immediately said she wanted it. She and Clay would move back to Mississippi tomorrow if Ricky would agree, but Cooper is less enthused about living in Miss, and Ricky is even less inclined than Cooper. We took all four dogs with us to enjoy this country outing, and they wore themselves out playing with Vance's two - Conner and Trooper. Their inside dog Katie is a silky terrior and can be a little buzzsaw like Gus. Vance killed a copperhead snake on their patio while we were there. That's when I lost all interest in having a place out there.

After visiting out there, we brought the dogs back to the house, picked up Mike, then went to see Bethany and Harlee at their baby store - Nursery Rhymes on Lakeland. Deanne happened by while we were there, so we got to see her and her new diamond ring, too. Harlee is precious, bright-eyed, happy, we never heard her cry, even while eating lunch at the Tex-Mex Restaurant next door. Her hair still stands straight up on top like a Mohawk, and it appeared to have a touch of red in it, but I didn't dare say that around Bethany's sister.

After lunch we went to see Mother at the nursing home. She was in good spirits, and sorta knew who everybody was, but didn't say much. She read to us from the newspaper in front of her. Ricky tried to engage her in working the New York Times crossword puzzle, and she did spell a couple of words, but wasn't really cognizant of the reason he wanted her to spell them. The boys made hats with the newspapers.

It was about 4:30 by the time we got home. I took the boys to Rapids until closed at 6, and was glad we had not planned a longer excursion. Rapids is so small and simple compared to the water park they have in Tampa that the boys were ready to go when it closed. They may even have been a little bored. Or maybe they were tired.

We just hung out in front of the tv for the rest of the evening, waiting on the dark clouds and thunder to bring some more rain, but they never did. We even listened to the old Mariah album that Mike's band recorded back in the 70's. I let everybody fix their own supper when they got hungry, nobody had a big appetite after our Tex-Mex lunch. We mainly just snacked and drank wine.