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We are now back from a wonderful trip to Florida to see this adorable baby:

This is Grant. He slept 95% of the time we were there, but that's OK -- I still held him and cuddled him and sniffed his head (there's just something about the smell of a baby's head, you know). He is the son of my sister Leslie and her husband Steve. They are going to be awesome parents. And yes, that is an Auburn pacifier clip you see in the picture. It's never too early to start brainwashing preparing for a college education!

Side story: Grant was born on 9/10/06, a Sunday, but my sister's labor started on Saturday, aka college football day. Steve wore a Gators shirt to the blessed event, and my father countered with an Auburn shirt. Both of them had it in mind that the first sports team little Grant saw would be their favorite team. In the end, the Gator shirt was the first one Grant saw. However, from the picture, it appears that he will now equate Auburn with the comfort he receives from his pacifier. Or possibly, he will equate Auburn with sucking. It's a bold psychological experiment, but I guess only time will tell how he feels about Auburn.

We had an otherwise uneventful travel experience, even on the budget flight. The new travel arrangements only added about an hour and a half to our travel time and cost us half of what we would usually pay. It was actually really nice to go to an uncrowded airport, park for free, land at an uncrowded airport, walk right out to the rental car and get on the way. They did have seatbelts and they claimed to have oxygen masks, although we did not (fortunately) get proof of that.

We experienced a 50 degree drop in temperature from the time we visited St. Augustine on Friday in the 90+ degree heat to today's 40s here in St. Louis. Usually, I would not say that 40 degree temps are cold. But today, I was cold. Brrrrrrr.

I've posted pictures of our St. Augustine trip and some pictures of our beach vacation from June on my Flickr page, if you are interested -- click Flickr page under the links category. Since the Cards are playing, I'm going to get back to the game, my Dr. Pepper and some pretzels and chocolate chips.