At a doctor’s appointment yesterday wee E., as Nathanael calls her, weighed in at a whole six pounds and twelve ounces, finally overcoming her birth weight. She’s getting so big and can’t seem to shut her eyes. And speaking of anniversaries, ours was July 31, but it seems wee E. has far overshadowed that. We dropped her off at her great-grandparents’ home in Destin Saturday night and went to eat at McGuire’s Irish Pub on a balcony over-looking the bay (well, mostly, but not if they keep putting up blasted high rise condos) and then went to the beach, smoked a cigar, watched the night sky and kept wondering where Evelyn was.

Alors, the trip to Minnesota has been lovely. The weather has been most cooperative. Sarah’s parents have, in my opinion, the absolute best lawn in the world, so we had several outdoor meals and parties. For more pictures of wee E., clicky-clicky!

Ft. Walton Beach - the “small metro area” - that Valparaiso falls under in the classification of cities has been ranked by Forbes magazine as the #52 small metro in America. Obviously, this score reflects the nature of opening a business in the area, but it factors in some characteristics of the town that are important to people living here. For instance, we are ranked #136 of 168 for cost of living. That’s terrible! In fact, the cost of living here is only slightly less than that of the real Twin Cities, Mpls/St. Paul. (The Niceville/Val-P area has come to be known the Twin Cities as well.) Anyway, there are a lot of factors that go into cost of living metrics, but most of them make it costly for a young family like us to live here. The benefit of having my family close outweighs all that of course, but Sarah and I still like to rant about how terrible it is for young people to try to make it financially in this town. Anwyay, check out the Forbes list and see how your town fares.

(Note: We do rank thirteenth for the number of engineers per capita. Hurrah for the military/academia complex.)