Rarely am I not in church on Sunday. In fact, I don’t know when I last missed. (I’ll save my reasons for another post.)

But today Trudi and I skipped going to church.

A friend of ours blessed us beyond measure with a week at a condo on Marco Island. (If you don’t know where that is, look it up…there’s not much south of here that’s still in the U.S.) We had a very relaxing day today, getting up very late, having breakfast, taking a walk on the beach, watching football and movies and generally doing nothing.

Tomorrow we return home to take Sam to his basketball game, then we’ll come back to the beach for the rest of the week. Looking forward to it.

That title is more literal than you might guess. We finished Scrooge on Monday, with mixed results. The cast and crew got better every night, and Sunday was a great crowd, full and very responsive.

Monday was small and “appreciative”. All-in-all, everything went very well.

Now it’s over, and I’ll be spending most of the rest of the month out of the office. Yesterday was full of several errands and about 30 minutes in the office.

Today is the “pooped” part. Our septic tank at the house has backed up. Barry the plumber – a very nice man from church – is currently trying to determine whether there is a clog or if we need our drainfield redone. (“A drainfield for Christmas for me?! Oh, you shouldn’t have!”)

In the meantime, I missed the opportunity yesterday to wish my brother-in-law, Terry, a very happy birthday. So, happy late birthday, TS!

There are probably few opportunities left for us to have vacations with the whole family. Shae will be a high school senior this fall and after that – well, you just never know.

We all had a great time in Orlando – right after Fine Arts – at the end of April and beginning of May. We were given a week at Orange Lake. The free week cost us quite a bit – trips to Universal and Islands of Adventure, along with the premiere of Spiderman 3 at the new IMAX – but it was all worth it.

Along the way, it looks like we picked up a new member of the family.