Meet Mary Staples

Who's Mary Staples? She's the answer to all our prayers, that's who. Why is she the answer to our prayers? Because she's going to solve one of the major problems in our lives. Why am I making such liberal use of rhetorical questions, a trite and overused style of writing? I dunno. Lazy, I guess.

Anyway, Mary and her husband, Derek, just moved to Switzerland. They live in Zug (or at least really close thereto). They'll be here for at least three years, as I recall, and we've been doing some hanging out and touring. They went to Engelberg to see the cows with us a couple of weeks ago, for instance. Stace is taking Mary and her mom to Ikea tomorrow. (My goal is never to set foot in Ikea as long as I'm in Switzerland, and then to continue to not set foot in Ikea once we go back to Minnesota.)

To get to the point: Mary loves to take pictures. As all three of my faithful readers know, I don't like to take pictures. Neither does Stace. I like to write. Mary doesn't like to write. Think of Mary as the anti-Ethan (with all of the good things that says about Mary). So as I was checking out Mary's blog the other day, which is liberally sprinkled with pictures, it occurred to me that Mary was doing all the work that I should be doing. For example: Mary went to Lucerne a couple of weeks ago and took a picture of the lion monument, among other things. And then Mary went to Lucerne a couple of days ago and took another picture of the lion monument for good measure. All of this goes on her blog. Mary takes more pictures in an average day than I've taken in my whole life. She's younger, she's got more energy, she doesn't have kids, and she loves pictures.

So why should I duplicate all that effort when Mary's already doing such a good job? To that end, I'm going to include a link to Mary's blog in my blog, so you can go check out Mary's pictures of Switzerland. I will, of course, include pictures of the kids now and then, and I'll include pictures of things like the cruise, but if you want the real pictures of Switzerland, check out Mary's blog. She's at http://derekandmarystaples.blogspot.com/. I'll include that address permanently in my blog so that you can go check it out anytime. (For the record, I have Mary's permission to use her blog in this manner.)

Heck, maybe I won't even need to keep my blog anymore. If you're wondering what's going on in our lives, just check out Mary's blog. She'll let you know if anything's up with the Woods.

I'm kidding. As Mary always says in her blog, "Gorgeous, beautiful, wish you were here." (I suspect that's the last time I'll use that phrase in my blog. A tad upbeat, don't you think?)