Hello, everyone, and I hope you all  are well.  I’m still on vacation from my day job (yea!), but I’ve returned from my out-of-town trips and am slowly dipping my toes into the warm waters of the blogosphere.  My first order of business after publishing this post will be to respond to the many comments I’ve received as well as to catch up with as many blogs as I can.

I do want to tell you that we had a lot of fun on our trips.  First, we visited my mom and oldest sister in Saint Petersburg (FL) and took them on a day trip to visit with my aunt and her daughter.  For context, my mom is 90 and her sister is 89.  My aunt thinks the world of my husband for being willing to participate in these “old lady” meetups. My husband and I also did a few odd jobs for my mom which both surprised and delighted her, not an easy thing to do :)  The trip was fun but exhausting as we had to drive A LOT and Florida traffic is never any fun to drive in.

The 2nd trip was to a bed-and-breakfast cottage in Gainesville, home of my husband’s alma mater.  We ate too much but made up for that with a 30-mile bike ride on the Gainesville-Hawthorne bike trail.  For context, I hadn’t been on my Raleigh hybrid in a couple of years.  I thank my yoga practice for giving the strength and humility to get off and walk my bike when my thighs were about to burst into flames, rather than try to be the “superior woman” my husband thinks I am.  In spite of the pain I was left with for a couple of days, the ride was worth it.  The trail is beautiful, the temperatures were mild, and I got the pleasure of seeing this little critter: