Down in the Boondocks

After waking up last week to the old song, Count Yer Blessings, I set a spiral notebook on the counter and began recording the full half of life instead of feeling sorry for myself and everyone else. It has been a wonderful adventure "tradin' my sorrow, and tradin' my pain...for the joy of the Lord."

So this morning, instead of being miffed when Bob and Rob decided to be homebodies, when I had a picnic lunch prepared, I hopped in the car with James and Peter and off we headed down to hunt gators at the state park.

We were careful to obey Bob's admonition to watch out for "logs that moved," but did not encounter any aligators. We did shoot James' new sling shot out into the Pearl River though, for practice, just in case.

We scared a rows of seven turtles off a log, and stood in awe at the top of a bluff overlooking a lovely sandy beach. Watching in awe, we saw a blue heron and a white heron spread their wide wings in slow motion and lift off the river and fly briefly before landing down again. We saw an abundance of Spanish moss hanging from cypress trees, and we hiked through everglade type swamps and bamboo thickets and swung from a thick vine dangling across our trail in the woods.

Crowning our day with some manmade fun, we stopped in at the town Family Festival, and while I stood by grinning, the boys bounced grinning on moonwalks and banged and bumped themselves, grinning and laughing on bungees and down slides and round the park on a kiddie Choo Choo train ride. Finally they climbed up a wall to ring a bell. "It ain't as easy as it looks, Pa Paw!" All this to the crooning of Billy Joe Royal himself and in person in the band shell.

It was a fun day "down at the boondocks." Then before bed we all lay on our backs on the deck and watched the fireflies while Rob took pictures of Jupiter's bands through his telescope. About time for bed the Lord treated us to two shooting stars.

That comes to quite a few blessings to record, and all in one day!