Today we are heading to my brother Colin’s for the week. He is a squadron commander at Eglin AFB and we will be staying with him and his wife and 2 girls. Katie and Grace bracket Elise in age and she is VERY excited to have time to play with her cousins. We will be there through Thanksgiving and we are really looking forward to seeing family. But first, stitches have to come out. Say a prayer for us Monday afternoon. Elise is really worried they will hurt as much coming out as they did going in. We have tried to convince her that the hard part is over, but have met with limited success.

Another aspect of this visit I am particularly looking forward to is . . . mail! Every now and then we get a big batch of mail from home and I love it! Friends have asked us how we get mail and it goes something like this. About one and a half to two weeks out, we find a place where we know we are going to stay for more than two days. Then we try and find a relatively small post office nearby. Once we have located it, I call or email my parents and let them know the address. They package up whatever has accumulated at their house in a flat rate Priority Mail box that we already paid the postage on (thanks for the idea, Rich!) and they send it to us at the assigned post office, general delivery. We always call the post office to let them know that some packages are coming and they hold on to them until we get there. We have done this twice and it has worked fine both times.

This time, my brother and his family are acting as our post office. Mom sent three packages earlier this week, my sister sent one, a friend sent another and we ordered a bunch of stuff that is going there (Christmas is just a month away, after all, and it’s hard to Christmas shop for the people you are constantly with!). One of the things I ordered was our Christmas cards. You are going to be getting one and we would love one from you (hint, hint). Just send it to my parents’ address. (Incidentally, this is where you can send us any mail, not just Christmas cards!) If we sent you a card in August with an address on the back of it, that’s my parents’ address. Use that. If you can’t find it, email me. I’ll get it to you. We want to put our Christmas cards up in the trailer so we can think of you all this Christmas. We already have one up thanks to Uncle Matt and Aunt Irene! So come on, help paper the Welshes’ trailer this Christmas! We’d do it for you.