Thanks for the well-wishes everyone. I'm hoping to have a doggie-shower to properly welcome him into the family in the next couple of weekends. I'd love to hear your ideas for decorations and activities.
Derby has settled in very quickly. He is lying next to me and Miles the cat on my bed right now. He spends all day strewing his toys all over the house and just generally being lovable.
I am bursting to tell you the neatest story about our adventure to get him, though:
The day we went over to Mary's to pick Derby up and take him back to my parents' house so we could make the stepping stones, I was leading him to my car when a red butterfly flew up to us, circled my head, then circled Derby's head then landed on my car before flying off with another butterfly.
I was very moved by this and knew in my heart it was a sign from Tracy letting me know that she approved and sending us her love.
But wait, it gets better: when we were driving through the Arkansas mountains, we got stopped for a while due to an overturned turkey truck blocking the highway. As we were sitting waiting for it to clear, a red butterfly flew in our window, landed on the camcorder my friend was holding and then flew off again.
And, at a gas station in north Louisiana where we had stopped for some refreshments, a red butterfly flew in front of me as I walked back to the car.
Now, maybe I'm just making more of this than there really is, but I NEVER see butterflies anymore - and to see so many in such a short period of time - and all of them looking the same - I choose to believe it was Tracy's way of letting us know she was watching over us on the trip home.
To make this even more meaningful to me, one thing I always remembered about Tracy in high school was a play she asked me to come see that she did for an elective drama class. They put it on during school and I was only able to see it because I was on the newspaper staff and could use that excuse to skip out on y regular classes. The play was about kids in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. It was called, "I Never Saw Another Butterfly."
