We're In the Bible Belt!

 It's the first week in December, and there are still flowers in bloom!

The row of azaleas was probably prettier before the rain today knocked so many of the blossoms off --

Without a doubt we are in the so-called "Bible Belt" of the United States. Or maybe it should be called the Church Belt... Or maybe the belt of churches with unusual names. These are just some of the ones we saw today when we drove to Robertsdale to get our mail:

     * Church of God of Prophecy
     * Bible Deliverance Church
     * Harvest Church
     * Liberty Church
     * Abiding Love Fellowship
     * New Covenant Church
     * Lifepoint Church
     * Bible Way Assembly
     * The Dwelling Place
     * Church of the Harvesters
     * House of Prayer
     * God's Place
     * Church of the Celebration

In addition to these, we saw two Churches of God; three Churches of Christ; two Catholic Churches complete with attached schools; one Greek Orthodox Church; three United Methodist Churches; half a dozen Community Churches; and at least twenty Baptist churches! And that was in a thirty-five mile or so drive.

We mailed our stack of Christmas letters today and I sent a digital meat thermometer to Son Sean as well .(I realized when he was talking about his Thanksgiving turkey that he didn't have one!) We had two packages waiting for us at General Delivery. One was a packed box of our forwarded mail from Daughter MM. The other was a wonderful box from Sister Sherry. She had sent four kinds of homemade chutney -- two different kinds of apricot, one of cranberry and one curried apple; two different kinds of pepper jelly and one jar of quince jelly. There were two jars of ground pepper flakes -- one of which is Brother Pat's VERY HOT batch (I'll definitely be sharing that one with our friends Tom and Juni.). But the very best part was a plastic box filled with a variety of her homemade biscotti! You can bet I will be rationing those to have with my evening cup of decaf coffee.

While we were out and about this afternoon, we went looking for an Alabama key chain for Granddaughter Havela's collection. We realized that we had been in this state for two weeks and hadn't yet found one for her. After fruitlessly checking several stores, we finally stopped at a Love's Truck Stop. We should have gone to a truck stop in the first place -- they had a whole bunch of them.