Happy, happy Saturday. It is a partly cloudy, 61 degree morning. The sun is slowly breaking through the clouds and the day is supposed to warm up significantly. I'm glad the weather is nice since we are doing a road trip today.

Today is officially "Cuzin" day. We are having the first ever Heumann family reunion. There aren't that many of us anymore. I have one Uncle and Aunt tha are still alive. Uncle Howard is 92 and his wife, Louise is 88. I think there might be ten of us cousins that are still alive. There was a cousin Donna, and might still be, but I haven't seen or heard anything about or from her since I was about 16 or 17. She was a couple of years older than me. Most of my cousins I haven't seen since the last funeral I attended over in Illinois. I decided that with only one Uncle and Aunt left, we needed to get together somewhere besides a funeral home. So, my cousin Debbie arranged for us to meet this afternoon for an evening meal over in Giant City State Park Lodge. I'm really looking forward to it.

Ms. Kate and I had a day-date yesterday and went to the matinee and lunch at a local theater. The movie was good, and the food wasn't bad. . The best part of course was that we were having a day-date and doing something special together. I'm a firm believer in couples still dating regardless of how long they have or have not been married. It is something that I stress to the couples that I counsel during pre-marriage counselling. In today's American society, so many young people move in together and live together, buy homes together and then think about getting married. I find that too often even they forget to "date" one another anymore. That's sad.

I did some yard work yesterday in the flowerbeds and then I mulched the leaves again with the lawn mower. I'm trying to stay a little ahead of the game and keep the leaves cleaned up. I know that shortly the leaves are going to fall in earnest and the trees will be bare. I had to go buy a new 18v battery for my leaf blower yesterday. One of mine had quit taking aa re-charge at all. This morning a lot of the birds are ground feeding where I raked up the leaves from yesterday. There must be some seeds they like laying there.

I guess I better get ready to head to Illinois. Ms. Kate is busy making greeting cards again this morning and I need to pull her away from her desk too. Here's wishing you the very best weekend possible. Pray for our friends down south wh are stil;l dealing with floodwaters from the hurricane last weekend. The devastation has gone away just because the news media has moved on. Peace.