Trip to Pearl River for Christmas

We headed out for Pearl River on Friday morning, December 18, and visited with Darla and the girls briefly before settling in at Abita Springs. We visited with the family on Saturday, and Rod and Jeff did some work at the new church facility which they are preparing and then helped with the set up for the worship service at the athletic club where Northshore Church is meeting. We attended church on Sunday and took Jordan and Elyse back to Abita Springs with us while Jeff and Darla attended a football game with the church youth, including Ashleigh.

We had supper in our place at Abita and settled in for an evening of movies.

Every once in a while, the girls get interested in watching Granddad Rod shave, he being one of the old guys who still shaves with a razor and shave cream. Well, it's more like they are interested in playing with the shave cream. Elyse lathers herself and has a good time.

The cold morning brought an extraordinarily heavy frost. The girls were excited about going out and playing in it, frost being a rather extraordinary thing around New Orleans.

When we went out to the car, the frost on it was thicker than any frost I have seen around Atlanta - you could peel it up in strips. The air must have been really saturated last night.

Jordan collects frost from the car.

Jordan worked hard to collect frost and enjoyed making frost balls and putting them in the freezer.

As you looked further down the lake, the trees disappeared into the fog. It reminded me of a Japanese painting.

We made a trip to the dock, where the girls were fascinated by the dew drops on the spider webs.

Like strings of pearls, the tiny water droplets lined the strands of the spider webs. Ever the experimenter, Jordan found that she could lightly run her finger along the web and collect the water droplets without breaking the strand.

On Monday evening, Dec 21, Ashleigh went out to the Hillcrest Villas at Abita Springs to spend the night with us. We had a good time watching movies, and in the morning we walked down to the lake behind the villas. As we approached the lake we saw this nice white heron in the tall grass.

The heron took off and flew gracefully over the cypress-graced lake.

We watched a flock of coots feeding in the shallow lake. They were not greatly alarmed, but were swimming away from us.

The coots were regular visitors each morning.

Ashleigh watches from the dock as the coots take flight over the lake.