Rachel is home from the Peace Corps!

Our niece, Rachel, has been in South America since the end of May, 2007, and surprised her mom last weekend by coming home from her "trek" a little early. She'd been touring South America after she finished her assignment in Paraguay.

She came to visit Izaac and me today on her way to Sac City to spend time with her grandmother and aunt. So she read a couple of books to Izaac while she was here.

This is a picture of most of the family that was in Oklahoma recently. From left, (nephew) Joe, Uncle Charlie, (cousin) Margaret, (sister) Shirley, my mom, and (brother) Bob. Not sure what's so funny, but it made for a pretty good picture.

YOU'RE going to "Daughtry"??

My daughter kept repeating this phrase when she found out the news. I said, "You can keep saying it, but it won't change the fact." My friend, Kim, is a big fan, and I like his voice and some of his songs, too, so she talked me into going to Ames last Thursday evening to see the concert. It was a nasty night for weather, but a good concert and we had great seats! (We were not the OLDEST people there, either, Samantha!)

Lucy--out of focus, on the last nice day we had this fall!

Gracey, posing for the camera.

Bogart Wrigley showing his beautiful panther side of himself (he weighs about 18 pounds so it's easy to tell him apart from George & Gracey).

Patrick is back from his 'walkabout'...

Patrick went outside on Tuesday about 5:30pm, and disappeared until last night a midnight! We had just about given up on him, but I had put the patio light on one more night, just in case. He was hardly dirty (surprisingly, with the rain and fields around us), a little skinnier and VERY happy to see us. He couldn't seem to get too many squeezes, and he had the loudest purr we've ever heard.

It was Queen (pictured below on top of the cupboard) who wasn't too pleased about it (he chases her several times a day). Samantha and Marty had planned on adopting Ron & Patrick on Saturday, but took Ron & Georgy instead. Patrick seems to be looking for Ron today, and Samantha will exchange Georgy for Patrick next weekend.

This is just a 20-second video of Izaac dancing to Craig Morgan's "Bonfire".