Thanksgiving

Last week Peri, Tom, Kelsee and McKenzie graced us with their presence for Thanksgiving, and we are sure glad they did. It was really nice to have a little taste of home. We had Thanksgiving at Janet & Dyion's house and there were about 25 people there (Janet's sister & family and Dyion's children & families), so it was really important for Heather (me too) to have her sister here. Thanks Peri. But the absolute best part was that the temperature was in the 70's and for the first time, I (we) got to have Thanksgiving dinner outside.

While they were here, we did some of the typical tourist things (like going to Southport). In Southport, there is a Christmas Store (of course called "The Christmas Store"). As we were heading into the store, we saw this Santa and his elf. Now we know why Santa is always so jolly. (Of course the elf wasn't turned this way originally, but Tom made me do it. He is such a bad influence on me).

(Sorry Mom)

By the way, I have a new blog. Its called "The Weekly Rant." It's a place for me to vent all of my many frustrations. Check it out. simonsweeklyrant.blogspot.com

This weekend, we finally got the rings we ordered two months ago! We both wanted remembrance rings for Julian, so we picked out a stone that is the softest baby blue that we could find. The rings are white gold and the stone is Larimar--and we were able to have Julian's name inscribed on them.

It took us so long to get the rings because the stone is kind of hard to get. It's just now beginning to be used in jewelry, and is most often found in cruise ship gift shops because of its blue ocean color. Also, the only place in the world that the stone can be mined is on a small island in the Dominican Republic. Larimar was discovered in 1974 by Norman Rilling (a US Peace Corps volunteer) who gave it its name by combining the first part of his daughter's name, Larissa, and mar, the Spanish word for Sea. Its metaphysical properties are supposedly that it helps people remove restrictions they impose on themselves, helps them discover the deeper meaning of why they are here and most importantly (for us) the Larimar stone is supposed to bring you peace. But truthfully the reason we choose this stone is the beautiful baby blue color...the perfect representation of our beautiful baby boy.