sweet summertime

In a couple of previous posts there’s been a bit about my trip back to MS for a couple of weeks this summer. In addition to the reunion and a quick trip to Laurel to see my Smith grandparents for a bit longer I also made a trip to Little Rock which included the wedding of a college friend and a quick stay with Laura and Breck in their new home!

Miriam, Blair, me, and Ashley. Mir and I were suite-mates of Ashley and Blair at MC-this was taken at a dinner the night of Blair’s wedding which was absolutely beautiful!

Unfortunately I can't seem to find any pictures on my camera with Laura and Breck but the good news is that they have their own blog you can check out...

After getting back to Philly from the Little Rock trip Miriam and I spent some time at the Fair and had the treat of seeing Ashley and Simon and some of their friends… The picture on the porch of the Bailey cabin was taken during a debate on some matter of the secession of Missouri between Simon and his brother. Let me just say it was much more intelligent than any of the debates I've ever had with my siblings! Ashley and Simon were nice enough to help Miriam take her stuff to the cabin the first night she stayed out there. And I appreciated the three of them walking me out to my car since it was pretty late!

Then it was time for me to head back home to GA…since they still had just a couple of days off Miriam and my mom rode back with me. While they were here we went shopping, ate hibachi (and actually sat next to a lady from Jackson-small world, huh), and painted a "vintage" washstand that I have in our room.

Oh...and of course we used our coupon book for a meal...Lunch at My Friend's Place.

It was lots of fun having them here-these are some parting pictures as we dropped them off to pick up their rental car (complete with satellite radio) for their trip home. We actually booked this the night before, so we thought they ended up with the pretty good end of the deal to land this ride for the long drive back!

Although it was sad to see them go, we didn’t have too long to be down because just after Sunday School we headed to meet David and Emily for lunch. They made their way over from an Atlanta trip to spend the afternoon with us. And as usual when the four of us get together there were a couple of fierce Spades rounds:) One of our running Spades jokes is my perpetual desire to go double blind nill. There’s only two problems: 1) we’re not sure it that’s actually possible and 2) Claude is never up for me going any kind of nill. Nonetheless I played “safe” all afternoon.

Well needless to say after all the visiting I was a little “homesick” to wake up the next morning to realize that there were no immediate visits pending anymore. So it was a great surprise to actually have some familiar faces drop in this past Saturday night.

Any Webb reading this will recognize these faces…Stephanie, Susan, Aunt Anna Blanche, Andrew, and Brianna.

I got a message from Stephanie mid-week saying this bunch would be passing through on Saturday. They had been vacationing their last days of summer away in Charleston and we had an impromptu supper of pizza, salad, chips, and brownies. I had such a great time hearing about their summer and upcoming school years-in fact it made my week to see ya’ll! So thanks for coordinating it all Stephanie:)

So as the days of summer start to come to an end I hope you all had a great summer of your own and that you make plans to come see us soon this fall!

Rachel