Sam's Birthday Celebration

Here she is opening her dad's card. He gave her a nice check. The card was rude... it made them all laugh.
Here she has opening the hat, scarf, and gloves Mike got her. She seemed to like them a lot and kept them on for awhile.


As Daren and Sam were about to leave, everyone posed up for a picture with the birthday girl. Happy Birthday, baby! Twenty-two years old... Sniff sniff sniff

Sam and Daren.

Sam and Mike
Sam and Jimmy
Sam and Me.

Christmas

Mike says it looks like Christmas threw up in our living room. I've put lights and bows on everything that'll sit still. This is the little metal tree I bought at some Dollar type store. I love it so much I went back the next day to get Kathryn one.
Here's our tree. It's nothing if not well-lighted.

I put little lights on the ficus.
Bows in the ferns.
Lights in the other tree thingie.

Here's the tree.

And some decorations. Oddly, in these pictures my house seems hardly decorated at all, but walking into it feels very Christmas-y.

Chelsea and two of Sam's old friends...

Chelsea won a spirit award for her volleyball team for her good attitude. That's her in the fron row, fourth from the left. This is Jeffrey and MacKenzie. She is a really sweet kid.
And this is Rocky. Samantha had the biggest cursh on him when she was 13. Sam, I put these two pictures up here just for you.

Random pictures off my phone...

From where we sat at "Stomp" in NYC. I loved "Stomp". From where we sat at "Rent" in NYC. "Rent" was pretty good, too.
These are from a few months back when Bill and I went to see Nickelback.

Now jumping ahead, here's Sam and Darren last weekend dressed for a Halloween party. Sam
Mike's new tattoo (still with the blood on it... ewwww....) it's about the size of a half dollar.
Now back in time again, this is Jake (left) and Mike (right) in last year's production of "Bus Stop".

And this is Times Square from the NY Trip.

My Baby is 18!!!

Samantha is serving the cake and we're singing Happy Birthday. It was just the 3 of us last night, but Mike had plans later. And earlier for that matter. Nightmare Before Christmas came out in 3-D and he has an "in" at the theater, so he went with a group of friends to see it. He invited Sam to go with, and she did. A good time was had. Here he had just blown out his candles. Eighteen of 'em. God, I can't believe that... Just think.... 18 years ago today....
Here he's opening a flash drive he needed.
Here he is hamming it up with the flash drive.
That's all the pictures I took, but not all the gifts he got. He was very pleased (so it seemed) with everyone's gifts. Thanks Bill! Thanks Aunt Kathryn! Thanks Sam! Mike wanted a pair of flip flops very badly and Sam thought the size large would fit.... Nuh-uh... Size 13 shoe for Mike! So it was back to the Rainbow store for Sam today to get the XL. Happy Birthday, Buddy! Sniff sniff... 18....

Kathryn and Bill and Bonnie Visit Chimney Rock. Again.

I was supposed to go with Kathryn to visit Huntsville, AL, the place of our birth, but Michael learned a lesson about driving fast on gravel the hard way... So money issues as well as Mike-being-carless issues precluded my trip. So Kathryn came here! Yay! We had the best time. It was great to see her. She wanted to visit Chimney Rock so we did.

Here are Bill and Kathryn with the scenery there. Me and Bill.
Me and Kathryn.

Kathryn is holding this rock up! See the grimace??
Hickory Nut Falls was woefully slow. A trickle, really. I remember standing on that deck years ago and the water came down with such force that we got wet just from the spray. Not any more.
Kathryn and Bill rocked a little in the chairs in front of the gift shop.
This is one of those machines where you put in a penny (and 50 cents...) and you turn the crank and your penny gets smushed into a little copper souvenier. Kathryn did the penny smushing.
And so did I... Here's me with my penny.

And Kathryn with her penny.
This tree at the top of Chimney Rock grows right out of the rock. How does it do that???
Bonnie and Kathryn.
This little guy was IN THE TRASHCAN and scurried out with a snack.
He charged at me right after I took this picture. Everyone laughed at me as I scurried away. OK, maybe he just jumped out of the trash can and startled me, but I FELT like he might be charging...

Kathryn and Bill and I tried repeatedly to get my camera to take a good shot with the timer set. By the time we got this one, we were all crouching down.
Kathryn and Bonnie and scenery.
Us again.
We had a great time. We watched the original "The Producers" (thanks Mike!!) which Kathryn, unbelievably, didn't even know existed! We played Scrabble. We went to Mike's pre-birthday party. We chatted. We had a great time. Hey, Kathryn, come back next weekend, OK?

Now she's back home and Bill's left for a very long trip, so all is kind of back to normal. That was a good weekend.