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Part of Dale’s family lives in the town of Natchitoches, Louisiana. Every year the town has a Christmas festival with a parade, fireworks, and lighted displays along the riverbank. I have never been there for the parade and the festival, but each time I have seen the lights, I have loved them.

The displays are reflected in the water and the pulsing, colorful bridge lights are timed to music. There is a tunnel of lights that flash in patterns which make you dizzy. There are the normal holiday lights of snowmen, skaters, trains, candles, nutcrackers, and Santa with sleigh. There are the Louisiana unique lights of magnolia, crayfish, and alligators.

My favorite lighted scene, however, is the depiction of the stable with star overhead, Mary and Joseph, babe in the manger, shepherd nearby, and kings making their approach. There are two lighted signs in this scene. One says Silent Night and the other says For God So Loved The World.

Nativity Christmas Lights

Every time I see it, I take heart that in this small southern town a Christmas display still depicts the birth of Christ and tells you quite clearly why God sent His Son.

We just returned from our visit with Dale’s family down south. When departing any location, Dale and I are used to saying “Manry Clan – Let’s go.” Finding ourselves around others who could also answer to that, Dale was finding it difficult to figure out what to say. His brother solved the problem by declaring, “All Southern Manrys, over here.” Not wanting to accept being termed a Northerner or a Yankee, Dale insisted on saying “All Virginia Manrys – Let’s go.” To be “The Northern Manrys” was too much for him to accept.

While in Baton Rouge, we visited the Rural Life Museum with Uncle Dwayne. The area is set up as an old plantation with church, jail, post office, and commissary buildings. It also has a sugar cane mill where we watched the farmer squeeze the juice out of the cane and boil it down. Zeke, although fond of the jail, liked the commissary the best. He set himself up behind the cash register and started taking orders.

Zeke is now five and a half and believes silence at any time is unnecessary. His mouth starts moving and won’t stop. “Sir, how may I help you? May I take your order? What would you like?” he queried. His father, thinking he could shut him up, responded, “I would like a boy who obeys his mom and dad.” “That’ll be one thousand dollars,” Zeke responded.

Zeke mans the cash register

Dale loves to run. I do not love to run.

Zeke once listed our family by order of speed. “Josiah is fastest. Daddy is second. Zeke is third. Abby is fourth. Gabe is fifth. Mommy is last, ” he informed us all. When his two older siblings objected to being slower than him, he reluctantly rearranged the order. “Josiah is fastest. Daddy is second. Abby is third. Gabe is fourth. Zeke is fifth. Mommy is still last,” he said.

Admittedly, my last place position is warranted. Josiah has taken after his father and loves to run. Abby and Gabe have taken after me and run when they must. Zeke has been a bit of a tossup since he loves to run, but also loves to stop.

After watching Josiah run throughout the Cross Country season, Zeke declared he wanted to enter a race. So, Dale entered himself  and Josiah into the 5k Turkey Trot and Zeke into the 1 mile kid’s Turkey Trot in Fredericksburg on Thanksgiving morning.

Zeke lined up for the race with boys and girls 6 and under alongside his two handlers Dale and Josiah. The pistol fired and he took off at a sprint. It took Dale and Josiah two blocks to catch up with him. I saw Zeke pass the 1 mile mark with a look of pain and agony on his face, he was running hard.

Zeke Running with Josiah

He finished with a time of 10:45, 61 out of 145. All runners who finished received a medal. He was proud of himself.

Zeke's Finishing Sprint

Then “the losing someone in a crowd drama” occurred when Dale, Josiah, and Zeke  walked one way and I walked another. I lost them in the crowd of 2415 5k runners and their families. I was wearing a bright red jacket and hoped that if I stood in the middle of the road intersection ahead of the start, they would see me. They were on the top of the steps of the library in the hopes that I would see them.

I had both my and Dale’s cell phones and with the 5k race fast approaching, I prayed quite a few frantic prayers and asked various people I knew if they had seen them. Losing someone in a crowd is quite unsettling. Thankfully, they saw me and Zeke did not have to run the 5k.

The first runners to finish were two Kenyan runners from Chapel Hill, NC. They finished together at 14:35. It was amazing to watch the sprint to the finish. I saw Josiah just after 20 minutes. The guy next to him said, “Come on little man,” and started to sprint. I think he was a bit surprised when Josiah out sprinted him as well as the guy in front of him to finish at 20:11 (99 out of 2415).

Dale’s training this autumn had been a bit lackluster compared to Josiah’s. He finished at 24:17 (387 out of 2415 runners). This time I stayed where I was and let Dale find me. They all ate their bagels and cookies, drank their water and gatorade and got their turkey t-shirts.

The Happy Finishers

When we got home, Zeke was complaining to Gabe that he hadn’t gotten to do anything fun yet. Gabe replied, “What? You just got to run a race. That’s fun!” Zeke answered, “Running a race isn’t fun.”

So, the child remains an even division between Dale and I. He wants to run the race like Dale, but he sure doesn’t consider it fun. A bit of his mother in him there.

Visiting one of our newly constructed wells north of Sinjar Mountain, we encountered a goat herder and his family living in the pump house.

In a previous post I mentioned the family with 7 kids living in the tent next to a pump house, but this family actually took up residence inside the pump house. Based on the satellite dish in the picture, I think they might be distantly related to the Manrys!

As we were preparing to leave, the goat herder offered us glasses of fresh goat’s milk. While warm, chunky, goat’s milk may appeal to some, I had to politely decline the offer.

On Saturday, Josiah participated in the ACSI National Spelling Bee.  There was a reception the night prior for the students to meet and get to know each other.  They were each given a list of statements (I live east of the Mississippi.  I am the oldest in my family, etc) and they were supposed to find students who matched the criteria.  I know it will surprise many of you to discover that Josiah was not wandering around asking questions of kids he didn’t know.  However, he could not avoid those who came to ask him.  And so, we met Jack, a 6th grader.  He walked up to Josiah and said, “So, where are you on this list, son?”  Josiah offered him a couple options and upon seeing Josiah’s name badge said, “You’re from Fredericksburg, Eh.  You must know all about the battle of Fredericksburg then.”  When Josiah replied that he did not, Jack spent the next several minutes explaining the battle to Josiah.  Jack finished his military history lesson with “The bottom line, south won!”  Then off he went to harangue the next unsuspecting speller.  Later in the evening, each speller got up to introduce themselves.  They had to say their name, grade, school, and claim to fame.  Jack said, “I am mostly known for my shy and reserved demeanor.”  Even though the students had only known each other for 30 minutes, plenty of people laughed.  Josiah’s claim to fame was that he had lived in Australia for 2 years.  He even said, “Good Day, Mate!”  Another boy’s claim to fame was that he had memorized the Gettysburg address in 1st grade.  Some students were mortified to speak and others relished the spotlight.  I was greatly entertained by all their uniqueness.  On Saturday morning, the spelling bee started and it was very obvious that most of the students had memorized the published words list.  For the practice round, Josiah had to spell eventual.  In the 1st round, he spelled lingcod.  In the 2nd round, he spelled cavil.  In the 3rd round, he spelled geriatrics.  In the 4th round, he spelled toponymy.  In the 5th round, the judge went to the unpublished list and Josiah had to spell, escritoire.  When she said it, I knew he was done.  Unlike some of the other parents in the room, I had not provided my son with a French tutor to prepare him for the Bee.  He gave it a go and almost had it.  He spelled it escritoir.  He left off the last e, and he was out.  If only my Grandfather had not taken the e off of the end of Meloche, Josiah may have thought it best to always throw an e on the end of a French word.  He finished 25th out of 46 spellers.  Of course, including all the students who participated in the Bees leading up to the Nationals, he finished 25th out of 7000.  It sounds more impressive.  I’m fairly sure, Jack will use a similar statistic throughout his life.  Josiah was disappointed, but as the Bee went on and he began to realize the skill level of his competitors, he leaned over to me and said, “I could have never won”.  By the 6th round, there were 12 students left.  One girl asked every question she could before she spelled a word. “May I have a definition?  Is the language of origin French?  Is the root word …?, and on and on and on.”  It took her 5 minutes to spell a word.  The Gettysburg address boy was eliminated and his father protested twice to the arbitrator.  His father had a laptop computer that he showed to the judge to try to prove that something unjust had occurred.   I leaned over and told Josiah that he needed a better arbitrator.  I didn’t even have a dictionary, let alone a computer, and I certainly didn’t have a French tutor.  The boy’s father was denied twice.  The Gettysburg address boy was officially eliminated.  Jack was eliminated as well.  There was one boy who upon receiving a word, would scan his eyes back and forth as if reading pages of the dictionary in his mind.  He was eliminated by an Italian musical term.  By round 13 there were 2 students left.  The girl spelled without asking a question,  The boy only occasionally asked for a definition.  The boy spelled words I had never heard of.  He would spell with double p’s, or l’s or oui’s and I would think, “There’s no way that word is spelled that way.”  Yet, he was always correct.  I thought for sure he was going to win and yet he got thrown off by a dog breed.  He misspelled dachshund.  The girl, who never paused, then spelled susurration and cetacean to win.  When it was all over, I was happy to consider that the seemingly endless spelling hours were over.  We picked up Zeke, and on the way home he started, “M-O-M, mom, D-A-D, dad, N-O, no, Y-E-S, yes.  Apparently, it’s never going to end.