So... we're back. And hopefully that means back to blogging. I make no promises, but I will do my best to make sure it isn't a month before the next post. Not that I have anything terribly relevant to say other than "we're back," but since when has that stopped me from blogging, eh? 
So for lack of something better to share, let me share the oh-so-fantastic surprise we found upon our return (and yes... that is indeed a seemingly unimportant and utterly pointless cane hanging in the tree outside of our apartment).
To explain the joy of this we have to go back about a year to a Halloween party. We bought aforementioned cane to complete Bryce's costume, but afterwards couldn't quite figure out what to do with it. It floated around from place to place in the house, and even down to the storage unit a few times, but in a moment of purging, it was finally decided that we no longer needed to keep it around it for our not-so-geriatric selves and I told Bryce that he could go ahead and throw it away. We went about our business, cane-less and perfectly fine with that until a few days later when I looked up at the tree outside of our apartment, and there it was... our very own cane hanging from the branches. Bryce had apparently been waiting for me to discover it. I got a good laugh and left it there until I could go out and return it to the dumpster the next day. However, upon waking up the next day I found that it had moved. It was still in the tree, but in a different location. And thus it has been every morning since. Every now and again we'd see the neighbor kids playing with it or see it on the ground around the yard, but always it ends up back in our tree. I said my final goodbye to it as we headed out for the summer (I didn't really, but we did have a conversation about the slim chances of it being there when we got home) and then I promptly forgot all about it. That is until we pulled into the apartment at 2:00 am and saw it sitting in our tree, a little worse for wear, but still welcoming us home. Melodramatic, I know. However, the impressive part of the tale is that we had a storm to beat all storms the other night--lightning, hail, trees blowing over, etc. When we woke up in the morning, outside of our apartment was a disaster. There were tree branches everywhere and all sorts of craziness, but there sat our cane, like it hadn't noticed a thing in the night. We've decided it's a land mark. 
So there you have it, a needlessly long story simply to say that I'm glad to be home and I think I might really miss it if my poor little weather beaten cane were to one day disappear.