Headed home.

Kristi and I are headed home tomorrow. The plan is to wake up early tomorrow so we can pick up Brooks; the weimerainer, before the vet closes. We are going to go visit the cemetary before we leave in the morning. There's still a lot of fresh flowers out there as well as some of Gray Man's stuffed monkeys. Kristi's ordered more lady bugs... we let them go this evening for Kinsey and Grayson.

I hinted in an earlier post about a suprise I had been planning for Gray's celebration. We decided to let the grandparents and uncles pick their favorite monkey; we picked our favorite as well, but we didn't tell them why they were picking one of little man's monkeys. I made cards that Wanda got laminated that had our blog address as well as a note that had his P.O. box address. Attached was a little plastic monkey from the barrel of monkeys game. The note and monkey were tied together and attached to balloons that were in turn tied to each of the 5 monkeys; each representing a day in Gray's life.

After the service, Brother Davis asked for the family members to retrieve the monkey they picked. We walked across the road to the grave site and Brother Otis talked about how monkeys became such a large part of Gray's birthdays. He then read the note attached to the monkeys. The notes ask that anyone who finds it to please return it and the plastic monkey to the P.O. box as well as posting on the blog. After the balloons were detached from each of Gray's monkeys everyone said, "Godspeed, Little Man" and the balloons were released. It was great to watch them take off and fly away.

We hope that someone finds the card and monkey. Getting one of those in Grayson's P.O. Box would be amazing. Everytime we go on vacation or go somewhere we plan on releasing more balloons with the monkey and note attached. Kinsey gets lady bugs and butterflies so we knew we wanted to do something for him as well. It will make checking his mailbox even more exciting!

Brookhaven Monument is finalizing the plan for his head stone. We spent a few hours with Kevin, Linda, and Penny a couple days ago working on the design. It will look very similar to Kinsey's stone, but will have more of a little man feel to it. Penny came up with a great idea to replace the flowers; it's going to look great. While we were working on the design I was introduced to a Brookhaven icon... Dude's. The biscuits were GREAT!! Thank you Linda for the Diet Dr Pepper and Dude's. That was kind of like drinking a Slim Fast while eating doughnuts I guess, but it sure was good.

It doesn't look like we will be home long. We plan on heading to Dallas to see some of our dearest friends. There will be a lot of laying around, more eating poorly, and some catching up with old friends. No planning anything, no worries about timelines, and no early mornings. It will probably mean a break from the blog as well. It has definitely helped us both and after reading all the comments our story has definitely touched a lot of lives. It will only be a short break though. Kristi will more than likely pick up from here and keep everyone updated. Thanks to everyone for the flowers, monkeys, cards and prayers. Godspeed!