Tomorrow I leave for Switzerland, to return November 7. Mom is coming back to help Beth after the first week. I'm going to miss Halloween!

Got back yesterday from Beth's 20-year high school reunion. Friday we drove up to Kalamazoo after work, checked in, and took the kids to ol' Plainwell High for a reception. The reception was a big tent and hotdogs kind of event just before the football game (vs. Gull Lake HS). We didn;t stay long after the game started because Beth was getting pretty sore from her surgery. Getting the kids to sleep in the motel was a disaster. Missy cried, Alex yelled, they were both hyper and kept each other up with various tactics. Missy was just beside herself for a couple hours. Finally, at midnight Beth took Missy for out a drive while I stayed to get Alex down. Alex was asleep almost as soon as Beth shut the door behind her. She was back an hour later with Missy finally asleep. Saturday, we had breakfast at Pam & Marve's before going to visit/clean up Becky's grave site. Then we took the kids to Plainwell Ice Cream, left them with Stephanie and went to meet some of Beth's old friends at the Comfort inn for a pre-reunion get together. The reunion reception was held at the Club Car in Alamo, not terribly interesting for me but I did get to talk to some spouses/partners of Beth's old friends that didn't seem terribly interested in it either. The kids got to sleep better the second night, although still no picnic. Sunday we went to church and had dinner at Pam's, and headed home.

I am definitely going to Switzerland for work. I had just about abandoned the idea. Judy was here for week and half.

I drove mom back to the Indy airport with Alex and Missy yesterday. It took nearly all day. I was determined to find a place for Alex to watch planes, and the only place I could find (and anyone knew about) was the top of the parking garage. So we went there. Missy didn't care and Alex watchjed 1 plane then just wanted to run around and climb the wall around the edge of the garage. We headed up US-31 on the way home, and there seemed to be something going on at the old Grissom AFB. I swung by to check it out and it turned out to be the Festival of Flight. Alex wanted to stop and look at the planes. I was about to tell him no, we can't stop to look at the planes, when I thought, why the heck not? So we stopped and went to the festival. Some fighter jet did a low flyby just as we were walking around, which scared Alex a lot (didn't bother Missy) but he recovered, especially when we got the the displays you could go inside. They have an old jet with a tunnel formed by the air intakes in one of the museum buildings, and Alex crawled through that thing over and over. He like sitting in the planes too. Once on the way again, we took the long way home through Plymouth so I could drop off the bugs I collected in Fort Wayne a couple weeks ago at my cache.