Last time I wrote, we were about to head back home late that night. At the absolute last minute, we instead decided to go to Chicago. My mom and her sisters were taking my grandma there to celebrate her birthday, and I thought it would be fun to accompany them. Thursday we drove to my aunt's house in Indiana, then took the train into downtown Chicago. We managed to cram in as much fun stuff as we could during the two days we were there. I carried Noah in the sling while we trekked all over the city, and my shoulder is still recovering.

When I changed my insurance after I got my new car, I told the guy I don't drive it to work and he said, "So since you only use it for recreation, you probably drive about 10,000 miles a year?" I said I guessed so, but yesterday I realized that I have put over 8,000 miles on it since I got it - and that wasn't even four months ago!

I've decided that next year I'm going to stop being such a wimp about the snakes and plant some milkweeds. My mom has a bunch of them at her house and apparently they are the only thing the caterpillars that turn into Monarch butterflies will eat. Her little patch of milkweeds is full of these caterpillars. Once they've eaten for a couple weeks and become fat, they crawl over to the house and build a little cocoon somewhere. There are tons of these things all around my parents' patio. I want to have these at our house because I think it would be really interesting and a great learning experience for Emma. For that reason, I am going to spend all winter building up enough courage to actually go into our yard and plant this stuff.

And, of course, more pictures: