Yesterday was our last day in Pittsburgh, and my in-laws wanted to take Claire to South Park to play. South Park is … well, it’s a park. A huge park near my parent’s house in Pittsburgh. There are ponds, paths, and playgrounds. They have a "duck pond" which is a Game Reserve in the park, and you know when you return to something years later and it looks littler? Well, the duck pond was smaller, but it really was. It looks like they cleaned it all out, filled the bottom with rock and then made a new pond. They also put in a huge filter with a fountain in the middle. It was cleaner and had a guard rail around it, so you could no longer go down to the water to get attacked by the geese like Jaime did 15 years ago. And the chicken coop? Well, there was nothing there. Just an old beat up building boarded with nails. There were still a few sickly-looking peacocks, too. The deer were still there, but they were now through two fences and we could not get very close. Ducks & rabbits use to chase us around as children, but they were mostly gone, too.

Donna will tell you how proud she is that she got buffalo to come down to the fence to see her. She threw graham crackers at these 1/4 ton animals who slurped them up out of mud around the trough. Claire was most impressed by the geese who moved and flew and quacked. The buffalo bored her and she couldn’t see the deer and turkey well.

Today we flew home and Southwest was good to us, as usual. There were some rude ladies on the plane, and Claire didn’t want to sleep AT ALL but we made it. Ho ho ho…