Back and Forth to Tennessee

It's been a week of travels to and from Winchester for us. I returned back for my last (hallelujah!) school board meeting last week and then drove back down with my parents. This week took Paul back to Winchester for design meetings in Tullahoma, so we've worn out the road thru Mississippi! It was great to visit friends back home and then we had a blast showing the grandparents around Mandeville. They can now visualize where the kids go to school, where they play soccer and the neighborhood that we are calling home for awhile. They even had an afternoon trip to eat oysters in New Orleans (southshore) in between eating shrimp, gumbo, beignets, and red beans and rice on the northshore. They loved the grocery and seafood stands where we now shop, and they met neighbors that I've yet to meet. They saw alligators in the marsh near the Tchefuncte Lighthouse (little ones) and heard the endless song of frogs and critters in the evenings. The kids were SO excited to share their new discoveries with them and we sent them home 5 pounds heavier but smiling. We're ready for the next guests!

August in Lousiana is extremely hot (duh!) and I walked into my hair salon on Thursday requesting a 'butch cut'. I was all done with the relentless humidity which has driven me to use hairspray again. I haven't used hairspray since my wedding day! As a bonus, I have ankles covered in fire ant bites from yardwork (really attractive!) and I now have an 'itch eraser' in my purse which really doesn't work but I feel better having it. My hairdresser (Kim) calmed me down, assured me that by October I would miss my hair, and so I didn't get it shaved after all. I think she gets a kick out of all of us and our reactions to the local flavor. As with any good hairdresser, Kim can fill me in on the 'who's who and what's what' in town, and Paul will be forever grateful that I still have 'longish' hair.

Seems that fire ants aren't the only source for misery these days. New school board members who are not even sworn in are building empires and swarming for trouble. If you're a blog reader in Franklin County who cares about education, please take a stand before the anthill takes victims. Enough said about that.

Zeke and Jacob are both doing alot of practice on their conversational French these days and they're teaching Ellie Grace a bit as well. This will come in handy trying to navigate, order food, and pronounce friends' surnames in this town. They are both really enjoying having a foreign language in school. So far, they are ace-ing all that comes their way. Thank you to all the teachers back home who prepared them so well.

I taught 5 classes at the gym this week and I'm finding new ways each time to build relationships and meet interesting folks. I've discovered that if I tell people that I'm from a town near Lynchburg, home of Jack Daniels, I always get a smile. Seems many folks here have a Memphis connection. Odd. We don't hear much about Memphis in Winchester, do we? Maybe it's the Mississippi River or maybe it's the music, but it seems that so many have family living in Memphis. I'm on the lookout for Elvis down here. I'm thinking he might've escaped to the Quarter and he's disguised as a drag queen, whatdayathink?