rain, a fast baby, and a final trip

After two days of sunshine and warm temperatures in Monterey, today’s weather took an abrupt turn towards winter.  Winter in Northern CA means gray skies and some form of rain, whether mist, light rain, steady rain, or hard rain.  We need all the rain we can get, as our reservoirs are dangerously low, but at the same time, the lack of sunshine makes for some depressing days.  Today was one of those days, made worse by the fact that it was the day following a vacation, which is always a mildly depressing day.  But, God is good, and blessings still abound despite the gloominess of the day.

Curious J gave us a scare today, but blessedly, she is okay.  JJ brought the girls to my Music Together class this morning.  After class, we were talking with a friend when we realized that J was gone.  Quickly, we headed for the front door of the building, which, to our horror, we found standing open.  We dashed out the door and saw J standing on the curb of the street.  !!!  We raced out and scooped her up, although thankfully no cars were coming.  There were three Hispanic men standing nearby watching her suspiciously, and I like to think that they would have rescued her if she’d headed out onto the road.  But, luckily her guardian angels were taking good care of her.  And, we realized that man, that kid is fast!

Although, we already knew that Curious J was fast — she pulled a similar stunt at the Aquarium on our trip.  While at the big Kelp Forest tank, I put her down for a moment to listen to what the guide was saying about some fish, and five seconds later, I looked down but didn’t see her anywhere at my feet.  Luckily, she had an orange shirt on, so when I looked around, I saw a little orange shirt already 20 feet away and going as fast as possible amid a throng of people.  I raced after her, retrieved her, and carried her back, much to her annoyance.  That girl does like to run, that’s for sure.  You wouldn’t think such a little toddler like her could go so darn fast!

Finally, JJ is leaving tomorrow for his last plane trip of 2008, headed to Wisconsin.  If all goes well, he’ll leave around noon tomorrow and return around noon on Tuesday, so it will be just a quick trip back.  He then has no more trips then until January!  Yay!  However, all of his trips to WI and back in the last year or so have earned him “executive status” on Midwest Airlines, meaning he can go through a special, shorter security line (whoop-dee-do), but it also means that he is not charged a bag fee for his luggage.  This is nice, not that he has had much luggage on these trips, but it means that the next time we all fly to WI together as a family, those same perks will apply to all of us.  Yay!  Now we just need to plan a trip…

Rain, a safe baby, and hubby’s last trip of the year — All reasons to be thankful on this gloomy day.