A day at the beach

This weekend's weather forecast was so glorious, and I was so sure it would be completely accurate, that I convinced T to take me to the beach today. (At 38 weeks pregnant, I'm in a carpe diem sort of state of mind.) We went to Assateague Island National Seashore. Although it is under a two hour drive from where we live, we'd only once before made it there.

The weather was as perfect as I'd hoped, and we had a lovely afternoon together.

Circle of friends, revisited

And just a day after writing about how blessed I am to have a circle of friends not (physically) far from where I currently live, yesterday I spent some time reading the blog of a friend in Micronesia; I called my mom in Nebraska; and I talked on Skype with friends in Florida, Ontario, and Morocco.

How lucky I am.

Circle of friends

There are some experiences we don't have many photos of, not because the experiences aren't worth remembering,  but because we were too busy living them to worry about taking pictures. That was the case for the road trip T and I took about a week and a half ago.

First, we drove up to Brattleboro, Vermont, to visit Jack and Sher. T and I know Sher from the community college the three of us worked at in Wyoming. She was and still is a mentor to both of us. 

Next, we drove to Hamden, Connecticut to visit Jonathan and Leslie and their three girls. We met them in Morocco, where they became very good friends to us.

I love these girls.

The two eldest helped me custom tie dye onesies and newborn shirts for Baby S. (and shirts for themselves, of course!).

And in case you're not yet getting a sense of how small the world really is, we currently live within a two hour drive of visiting my mentor from when I was in graduate school in New Orleans (that was about a decade ago) and just a few hours from an aunt in Virginia. 

Given how random it seemed that we'd ended up in Maryland, it's a nice feeling to have this unexpected circle of loved ones around us. I hope we'll have the same feeling at our next location.

What makes me happy

Despite what my husband might tell you, it doesn't take much to make me happy. Really, all you need is a parrot. Or a few parrots.

Rose-breasted cockatoo, greenwing macaw, Amazon, and Congo grey

Last weekend, T and I drove a couple of hours to the town of Damascus on Maryland's "western shore" (we live on what's officially known as the Eastern Shore) to visit the Wilson Parrot Foundation. We had two purposes: First, it was time to give up the cage that had housed our beloved Mango bird until her death. That was hard to do. But I was looking forward to our second purpose: for me to get my parrot fix. 

I was not disappointed. Mr. Wilson introduced us to just about all of the parrots, and since they are so well-trained, we had lots of photo opportunities.

Scarlet macaw and blue and gold macaw

Hyacinth macaw (the largest of parrots) and rose-breasted cockatoo

This Moluccan cockatoo was rather enamored of T

After we met the birds, we asked if there was any way we could help out (Mr. Wilson didn't have any volunteers that day). I happily spent an hour or two cutting up fruits and vegetables for the parrots while a little severe macaw sat on a perch above the sink, talking to me about food, singing, and whistling. Whenever I handed him a piece of food, he declared, "Look what I got!"

It was heaven.