Friday September 21 - Thursday September 27th

Well, what do you know - I am behind again. On Friday the 21st, Elizabeth was here for the day and I worked. That evening we went to family services for Kol Nidre - the start of Yom Kippur. This is the holiday where we fast and is the Day of Atonement. The family service was very nice and very kid friendly. We were happy to see our friends Miriam and Jason there with their two boys. Indigo behaved very nicely although she did have David and I passing her back and forward between us a lot. We had not had a chance to have finish work and have supper before the service so we went to Thai food afterwards for our last meal - I maintain that the sun had not yet set. On Saturday we went in the late afternoon to break the fast at Lenny & Mark's house. Since Indigo had just been there for Rosh Hashanah she was very quickly comfortable at Aunt Lenny's house and was running about. She really enjoyed herself and we had a wonderful time. She just loved playing with Aunt Lenny's Matryoshka dolls. The pretty dress she has on is from my cousin David and his wife Brandi.

On Sunday morning we went to our favorite local diner for breakfast where the lady always fawns over Indigo. Later that afternoon, our friends, the Tills came over and we were able to enjoy the lake again. It might be the last time we are in the lake for the season but we had the most marvelous time and swam for ages. Terry and I actually swam from one beach across the lake to the other beach and back again and then Mary wanted to swim out too so I swam about 1/2 way over with her and then back again. The kids played in the sand, swam and enjoyed the swings. I think it was hard for us all to drag ourselves away. We came back to the house and had a great dinner of salad and grilled burgers.

On Monday and Tuesday Elizabeth was here while I worked. Indigo seems to be doing very well with Elizabeth and loves that Elizabeth takes her to play on the beach all the time.

On Wednesday I worked at home in the morning and then went into the office from noon to six p.m. After work I went up to the zoo to meet the cheetah folks and zoo bar for a drink and then over to the zoo for our monthly cheetah meeting. It was a cool meeting because Craig, the head cheetah keeper, had just returned from being at Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia and he had awesome slides and tales to tell us - perhaps one day you would like to hear about electro-ejaculation of male cheetahs. Anyway, for me, it was way cool. Also, while Craig was in Namibia, the science team that was there, doing all the repro science was actually able to create cheetahs through in vitro fertilization. It's the first time this has ever been done so now there are some frozen cheetah embryos in existence! Some of us little cheetah groupies stayed behind after the meeting and talked poor Craig's ear off. David had a great evening with Indigo and she was asleep when I got home. She woke up crying at about 12:30 a.m. but then was okay the rest of the night.

Yeah - on Thursday, for the first time that week, I was not working.

I spent the day with Indigo and we went to the garden. Since I had been so abysmal in photographing her, I took a bunch of photos. In the photo on the bench she is holding a sandwich in her hand and the foil wrapper in the other - in case anyone was wondering. I say that because David had thought it looked like something more suspect. She was very excited about the geese which came up very close to us. We had a lovely time although it was very hot. We just hung out the rest of the day and then that evening I went to knitting while David cared for her.